> Apparently, this is a project wherein a satellite will be loaded up with stuff from our time and shot out into the cosmos set to return to earth in 50,000 years. The website they have offers you the chance to write a message for those still living in the year 52010.

We have exaggerated ideas about our own importance and relevance even to other people living in the world today. I can't imagine that any form of life surviving on or around Earth in 50,000 years would care one bit what we have to say to them.

I can envision three scenarios:

1. Humans, or their successors, survive the next 50,000 years with their records and technology intact. They don't need the satellite; they already know what it contains.

2. All human life on Earth is gone. No one is here to receive the satellite in 50,000 years.

3. Human life on Earth has been nearly eradicated by some cataclysm or other, but there are survivors. If the satellite returns at *exactly the right time* during the rebuilding of their civilization, the information it contains might prove useful. But if they're able to rebuild civilization at all, they'll do so eventually with or without the satellite.

I feel very cynical writing this. Am I overlooking something that makes this satellite something more than a vanity project?

Iss "quasi-stellar" achar