Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Geeks In Space - A Science Post for Gumby

Space - the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the
starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Thanks to Gene Roddenberry these are words known to billions of people and most especially to the geeks of the world. Don't get me wrong - I love the original Star Trek series but I like to think that i am not geeky enough to refer to it as TOS (for "The Original Series").

Well who does refer to it as TOS? The Paramount marketing department and Geeks - many of whom are Gamers (Science proves there is a high correlation between the state of geekdom and the state of gamedom).

But at least the Gamers will realize their Final Fantasy (not bad, huh? huh?).

"Lord British" the nickname Geeks have given to video game designer Richard Garriott, has decided to launch "Operation Immortality".

He's going to take the DNA of any player of his game "Tabula Rasa" into space when he goes to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

His website, Operation Immortality, is not launched yet but has the phrase "Leave Your Mark. Save Humanity". The site apparently launches today.

But let's think a few steps ahead.

What happens if some malevolent space being ( let's say Ricardo Montalban as Khan) gets all of the DNA, extracts it and synthesizes it into one unstoppable monster.

What would it look like?

Scientists have come up with an artist's conception. You can access it here. But I warn you. it is not pretty.

Lord British ought to think twice.

1 comments:

GumbyTheCat said...

OMG. Now I have to poke my eyes with a red-hot soldering iron. Rosie/KSM will do that to you. [shudders]

My missed opportunity was when I coulda sent my scanned signature to NASA and have it placed on a CD-ROM with hundreds of thousands of others. That CD was placed on the Cassini probe, currently orbiting Saturn. Alas, I procrastinated, ended up forgetting about it and missed the deadline.

I would have passed on the DNA though. I sure Homeland Security has everyone's DNA anyway, therefore we are all immortal in a sense.

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