| ||
Ron Baalke (baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov) wrote: > NASA RENAMES MARS LANDER IN HONOR OF LATE CARL SAGAN > (snip) > The naming is reminiscent of the memorial dedication of the > Mars Viking Lander 1 in January 1981 to Dr. Thomas Mutch, a NASA > associate administrator for space science and former leader of > the Viking Lander Imaging Science Team, who died on October 7, > 1980, while climbing in the Himalayas.This is something I did not know. Is [Viking] Lander 2 still available for retroactive naming in the event Ray Bradbury passes on before NASA can get another more suitable spacecraft to the red planet? Or perhaps this could be a great new funding opportunity! If Candlestick Park can become 3Com Stadium and Joe Robbie Stadium can become Pro Player Park, maybe we could get OTHER spacecraft retroactively named in honor of large corporations in exchange for large sums of money. Imagine the corporate pride as Neil Armstrong's redubbed voice tells the world, "Houston, Microsoft Base here. The Coors Light Silver Eagle has landed." Imagine the bidding war to rename a less popular vehicle after a competitor! At a press conference in the neat future... "We at Coca-Cola are shocked and dismayed by the near disaster inflicted by the Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi Skylab on our fine friends and customers in the Indian Ocean and Australian sales and marketing regions..." Even the functional but non-glamorous satellites could be renamed for the highest bidder's purposes. "Shuttle data is being routed through the AT&TDRS satellites today..." or how about "These ultra-secret photos of the missile silos in Outer Freedonia were taken by our new Master Lock brand Keyhole series of spysats..." And for the REALLY big bucks, offer the names of natural bodies for sponsorship. "People gathered around their TVs today as the TimeWarner Pathfinder rolled off the Carl Sagan Memorial Station and beamed back pictures of the red planet Hershey." (This assumes that the Mars candybar people don't get their bid in on time...)
Consider the possibilities! -- Ed Dravecky III =<*>= This message was part of a complex plot dsheldon@netcom.com = to take over the world. (B5 S5 TNT WH!) [To which Carl Christensen (carl@op.net) responded:] >That's too scary. Can you imagine -- "Welcome to Mars, from the >Microsoft Lander 97" [Editorial aside: Christensen also went on:] > I wouldn't be surprised now, you can't even watch a sporting event > without seeing the score screen display with an advertiser -- "this > score brought to you by Chrysler". > > So now we'll have, "this scientific discovery brought to you by Kraft > Cheez Whiz" and "this Usenet posting brought to you by Hormel Spam" :-)I was thinking about this the other day. Pathfinder cost [approx.] 260 million [dollars], plus some additional fees for data collection and mission ops. This is trivially affordable for Bill Gates, currently worth [approx.] 37 billion [dollars]--hell, it's less than his house. If I were Gates, I could see going to JPL and asking them to build me a probe from personal funds. Great publicity, for much less than the Win95 launch cost.
Besides, it would be worth the millions just to see the JPL scientists' expressions when I tell them the probe has to run Windows. (Just kidding, guys. I could just see "Module Lander.DLL has caused a General Protection Fault at 0x18465b3. The Lander will now crash.") -- Eric R. edremy@chem1.usc.edu "See, I told you they'd listen to Reason", Fisheye, _Snow Crash_ If you think that I speak for USC, see your doctor now. |