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IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR LONE SIGNAL USERS FROM THE CEO:

I have been both elated and humbled by the experiences of the last eight weeks. To date, Lone Signal has had visitors from over 12,000 cities and 163 countries speaking 50 languages. We are officially the longest running targeted METI experiment in history, effectively creating a time capsule traveling at the speed of light into deep space.

Your messages constitute an important documentation of our times, full of both the beautiful and the controversial. Lone Signal is harnessing science to do the bidding of passion, and that is a wondrous thing. While we have a lot to be proud of, Lone Signal has also made strategic errors that have threatened our ability to contact new targets and continue funding this amazing experiment. At the core of our problems is the fact that the revenue from our site barely covers a quarter of our electric bill. During our intense efforts to secure new funding to keep Lone Signal running, we failed to reach out to the multitude of people who belong in our core community and we failed to keep you informed of our complex and costly technical challenges at Jamesburg Earth Station. Our financial shortfalls led us to reluctantly reduce our transmission schedule, and, now, our latest blow has been software issues that have all but halted transmission over the last two weeks. Needless to say, the future of Lone Signal seems uncertain at this time. We are hoping our server will be fully functional by the time we start tracking Gliese 526 on Tuesday. In the event this doesn’t happen, we have created the following backup plan to get all queued messages sent out: We have manually archived all queued beams to be directly ported to the Jamesburg comm block in the event our messaging system of Lonesignal.com is not operating properly by transmission time, 2:15 PM EDT. We humbly apologize for any disappointment or inconvenience you might have experienced due to our website issues. We are at a crossroads here at Lone Signal and we want more than anything to continue offering our service to the world. To make sure your beams are sent out this week, I highly encourage you to use your beam credits by 1 AM EDT WEDNESDAY AUGUST 28th, as we must hand process each one by end of transmission. Long overdue, we have created a free FORUM where we wish to communicate directly to you, our intrepid following. Please come and engage in our forum to ask questions and read other beamers’ queries about the Lone Signal Project. We will also be communicating major updates via our FACEBOOK page while giving our latest information on TWITTER. Sincerely, Pierre Fabre CEO & Co-founder of Lone Signal

#lonesignal earthcalling

Check out this segment that KSBW Action News 8 did on us last night. It includes an interview with our electrical engineer, John Livergood, and some great shots of the interior and exterior of our Jamesburg Earth Station.

So many good points made at today's Google+ MADE Hangout on Fashion and Technology. Let us know what you think!

#milkmade #milkstudios #milk made #milk studios #lonesignal #lone signal #earthcalling #wired #the creators project #ontheracks #nasa #google hangout

You're Invited – MADE Hangout: Fashion & Technology with Lone Signal and Other Guests

Join us from the comfort of your computer Friday, July 12th at 2PM EDT for our first ever Google+ #MADEhangout that explores Fashion & Technology with our very own CMO, Ernesto Qualizza, a representative from NASA, Jeffrey Marlow from Wired, Mary Huang from The Creators Project, an expert from FashioningTech.com, and Laura Ellner from OnTheRacks!

Get the lowdown on how fashion and technology fit hand-in-hand, why some designers are so inspired by space-age concepts, how groundbreaking technology is allowing you to potentially communicate with alternate lifeforms (via #LoneSignal), and so much more!

Want to weigh in on the conversation? Tweet us @madefw using our #MADEhangout hashtag!

To tune into our #MADEhangout Friday July 12th at 2PM here

#milkmade #milkstudios #NASA #lonesignal #Lone Signal #earthcalling #wired #thecreatorsproject #the creators project #fashioningtech.com #ontheracks #google+#google hangout #madehangout

Ray Kurzweil's beam has already made it .03 light years!

Mr. Dan Aykroyd has sent his thoughts into the universe

Jamesburg Earth Station... Where our transmission are being sent from.

#outer+space #earthcalling #lonesignal

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Do Extraterrestrials Speak English?

Human explorers in science fiction often find themselves encountering new worlds or alien species. Television series such as Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica as well as films such as Star Wars and Alien have created a diverse cast of alien forms—big, small, with and without antennae, adapted to different climates—in an attempt to characterize the diversity of creatures in a galactic empire. In spite of this visual diversity, many of the explorers of early science fiction found that they could communicate quite easily with extraterrestrial beings in their own native language of English! While this is partly a storytelling device to keep audiences entertained, it is worth asking ourselves: if we do beam messages into space, will the aliens understand?

Any extraterrestrial civilization that is actively searching for radio signals is at least as old, and probably much older, than humanity. In all likelihood, any extraterrestrial beings that we could conceivably contact will be much more advanced than us. Perhaps the aliens are really so much smarter than us that they can learn any languages of Earth with ease. If they do receive our messages—or someday welcome one of our astronauts—maybe they could learn English without breaking a sweat (if in fact they do sweat). Or perhaps they wear a universal translator device that allows them to understand any and all languages in the galaxy. If the galaxy is teeming with an empire of sorts, then perhaps this sort of translation technology is necessary for typical interstellar travelers. Maybe, just maybe, extraterrestrial beings could be able learn to speak like us.

The tricky part would be making sense of all the irrationalities, emotions, and cultural references that form the basis of all Earth languages. Aliens could be excellent mathematicians and could even have an uncanny ability to learn syntax and grammar rules. But would they be able to understand human concepts such as love, hope, anger, beauty, jealousy, or happiness? How would they make sense of words that describe the things of our world—cats, cars, carnivals, and kaleidoscopes—that may be entirely foreign to them? Would extraterrestrial beings even use language? Perhaps they have no sense of hearing at all and communicate in entirely different ways! We can never know for sure, at least until we make first contact. But in the meantime, thinking about the universality of language is at least a first step toward thinking like an alien.

-Pierre Fabre

#earthcalling #lonesignal

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The Mountain (by Terje Sorgjerd)

Everyone must watch…

alexs-favorite-stuff

SpaceShipTwo, Private Launch Vehicles, and Global Technology Development

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made its first successful rocket-powered test flight , yesterday. Departing from California’s Mojave Air and Spaceport, SpaceShipTwo was carried to just shy of 50,000 feet at which point it decoupled from its mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, and subsequently test-fired its hybrid rocket motor. SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket motor burn lasted just 16 seconds yesterday morning, carrying the craft to a maximum altitude of 56,000 feet and a maximum speed of Mach 1.2, which is 1.2 times the speed of sound. During proposed commercial spaceflights, SpaceShipTwo’s engine burn will last for approximately 70 seconds, carrying the vehicle to a maximum altitude of 361,000 feet and a maximum speed of approximately Mach 3.37, or around 2,500 miles per hour. Over 500 people have already joined the waitlist to ride SpaceShipTwo – a sub-orbital jaunt with a $200,000 price tag.

At least initially, very few people will be able to afford the prohibitively high cost of a commercially provided trip to space, but I’d argue that what transpired yesterday morning has even more significant meaning for the future of human space exploration and global technology development. Today certainly marked SpaceShipTwo’s most significant milestone to date; though, perhaps more importantly, this morning’s flight continues to suggest real viability for the privatization of industries and technologies that have historically only been entrusted to government entities.

The Obama administration’s space policy involves, among other things, an unprecedented reliance upon commercially produced launch vehicles for future space missions. While it has been the object of much criticism, in this writer’s opinion, this decision demonstrates a prescient vision for how future advances in technology and space exploration will be realized. President Obama has gone so far as to predict a manned mission to Mars orbit by the mid-2030’s. The reality of the situation is that smaller, private firms are typically more nimble and better able to respond to evolving challenges with evolving technologies. For example, the innovation of a trailer-sized fusion reactor such as the one promised by Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks within the next four years is specifically the type of technological leap required to manifest visions like a manned mission to Mars on President Obama’s proposed timeline. There are also debatably fewer disincentives to risk-taking and innovation in non-governmental organizations, which arguably are prerequisites to genuinely paradigm-shifting advances in design and technology. Furthermore, the privatization of space flight incentivizes efficient launch vehicles and programs because, like all other free market entities, private space firms will be driven by a desire to maximize profit. Competition breeds innovation - allowing the free market to drive innovation in space exploration is a necessary and inevitable step forward if we are to continue to push the boundaries of what human beings can do in space.

-Zachary Cutler

#spaceshiptwo #technology #green energy #space #privatization

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