OK, it was a book. But check out which book(s) and how they did it.
When it comes to spreading the word of mankind around the universe, the Arch Mission Foundation thinks big.
REALLY big.
This week’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center by Elon Musk and his SpaceX crew not only carried a cherry-red Tesla into space forever. It also brought along a digital surprise created by the Arch Mission Foundation: three close-to-indestructible copies of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books, commonly called “The Foundation Trilogy.”
Why, you ask? Because, as the creators’ website explains, Arch (pronounced ark) “exists to help humanity preserve and spread its knowledge across vast distances of time and space. We believe that the purpose of life is to evolve and spread intelligence across the universe.”
And in the event that Earth is totally destroyed by nuclear war or some other catastrophic event, Earthlings will live on for eternity, if only in these three books riding along with that Tesla Roadster and the spacesuited dummy behind the wheel.
So what do we know about Arch and its idea to ride along on Musk’s rocketship? Here’s a bit:
Here’s a clip of SpaceX engineers during this week’s launch describing the Foundation’s payload as a “5D, laser optical quartz storage device that is meant to be able to survive even in the harsh conditions of space:”
