We should go back to the moon and build a giant sling shot to shoot giant rocks into deep space for the purpose of contacting life on other planets. Much cheaper than robot space probes. We could hire the best spray paint graffiti artists in the world to paint cryptic and annoying messages on the rocks, announcing to the universe our presence. In a pinch, we could also use the sling shot to shoot down the alien spacecraft that will inevitably follow the path of the rocks or decode the cryptic messages and come to earth to destroy who it is that's being such a pain in the ass. I think we need this kind of adversity if we are going to amount to anything.-- hotdog, Mar 03 2000 Stop signaling aliens! http://www.halfbake...signaling_20aliens!Relevant HB idea [beauxeault, Mar 03 2000] Not a bad idea, considering that a railgun projectile is not *that* much slower than c, in the cosmic scheme of things. It will still take millennia before it gets anywhere. As far as the content goes, is graffiti any less cryptic or annoying than the Little Richard tune sent on the Voyager record?-- rmutt, Mar 03 2000 Yeah, I thought about the 'speed' issue....but then realized, that's the beauty of this thing. We will be long dead and gone by the time any thing happens. Along with high taxes and a global environment in turmoil, we'll be passing along a little present to future generations.....something to look forward to.....an alien invasion would be our legacy.-- hotdog, Mar 06 2000 if we're going to be throwing these rocks away, can we put cameras and sensors on them? Expand out sphere of observation outward from this system at close to C? There are about 100 stars within 20 ly of Earth. If you build a good enough transit system infracture here we could get things really moving.... really long rail guns powered by solar energy or quantum flux... Solar sails for the inner system... I think that if we can scale up things from the technical roots we have now somebody somewhere is going to notice us sniffing around the place, poking our noses into the wrong places and generally stinking the place up with our monkey odors.... some advance warning would be really nice....-- ghost in the machine, Apr 23 2000 The addition of cameras and sensors will drive the cost up.....and complicate the system...it's only intent is to bother someone out there...a proverbial 'thumbing our nose at the universe' kind of thing. By the time these reach anything of any relavance, we will have been dead several centuries. Who cares about warnings?-- hotdog, May 16 2000 Yes! I am all for angering all other forms of inteligent life. Lets us all leave a lasting legacy in the form of giant rocks hurdelling through space.... muahhaha-- dontthink, May 16 2000 It wouldn't be too expensive to stick a copy of the Voyager (or was it Pioneer?) record plate on each rock, the one which shows where Earth is in relation to various nearby pulsars. One presumes They will have enough celestial mechanics foo to figure out where the rock came from, but why take chances?
Of course, come the Revolution Esc-d Singularity, it won't be any more expensive or complicated to have a little robot probe grow on each rock as it goes outward.-- cosma, May 18 2000 Wait. While we're putting cameras and sensors on rocks, can we put people on them too? YEA! We can put people INSIDE OF THEM...and we could even put an engine on it so it could travel on its own. THAT would be useful too! Wait a minute...big chunky thing with cameras, sensors, people inside, and an engine flying around in space...sounds familiar...-- WRDRMR, Jul 01 2000 How about instead of rocks we fling politicians?-- purehyde, Jul 01 2000 The sheer force of acceleration from zero to a fraction of c in less than a second using a device of this nature would create more than enough gravititational force to reduce a human to a quivering blob of jelly.
Thus, it simply HAS to be used on politicians!-- BigThor, Sep 05 2000 random, halfbakery