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Forget The Cloud, Kickstarter Project Aims To Back Up Humanity Using Stars And Nano Spacecraft As Time Capsules

By Coburn Palmer
Published on: 11:54 PST, Jul 23, 2016

With cloud storage, people can easily store their photos, music, and books, but what if there was a way to back up all of mankind’s knowledge on one tiny Humanity Chip.

That’s the goal of a Kickstarter project called Voices of Humanity run by Philip Lubin who is also helping Stephen Hawking and Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner send a fleet of nano-spacecraft to Alpha Centauri.

With 45 days to go until their deadline, the Voices of Humanity project has managed to raise more than $4,500, project co-founder Philip Lubin, a UC Santa Barbara physics professor, told Space.com.

“We sometimes use the phrase, ‘We want to back up humanity,’ which is not a joke, we want to do this.”

This Kickstarter is for anyone who has ever wanted to leave behind a lasting legacy. Once the project hits its $30,000 goal, backers will be asked to send in their data, which will then be uploaded onto a single wafer-thin Humanity Chip and shot into space, according to their Kickstarter page.

“The Voices of Humanity campaign’s purpose is to give a voice to all of humanity and to immortalize those voices. In this way, your voice will literally live forever.”

The Kickstarter campaign is being led by Lubin who is also a key player in Breakthrough Starshot, the initiative headed by Stephen Hawking and Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner that aims to send a fleet of wafer-thin nano-spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. Using Earth-based laser beams and solar sails, the nano-spacecraft can reach 30 percent the speed of light.

Once construction of the wafer-thin nano-spacecraft is complete, the Humanity Chip will be loaded onto one and launched into low Earth orbit before it heads out into deep space.

Lubin envisions a reality where every mission into space carries a Humanity Chip complete with a record of our DNA, the complete Library of Congress, and video messages from Earth, according to Space.com. He’s started another company called Directed Energy to accomplish that.

“Personally, I would like to send out a blueprint for life on Earth and how to reconstruct us, how to make us. Everything required to have a do-it-yourself ‘build humanity’ project.”

If the Voices of Humanity project reaches its stretch goal of $100,000, the team will construct a ground-based laser system capable of sending massive amounts of information into space. Backers can pick the planet, star, or black hole of their choice and the team of researchers will send their data.

“In a sense we will “back up humanity” and use the universe as our “cloud”.

There’s also a bunch of Voices of Humanity swag up for sale that include a mission patch, digital wallpaper, baseball caps, and coffee mugs.

As an added incentive to the politically minded donors, the team is offering to launch a Political Party Chip into orbit around Earth. Each party would get one, even independents, but only the winner would have their data beamed into space.

Lubin hopes to start launching nano-spacecraft with Humanity Chips onboard by mid-2017, according to the Kickstarter page.

“You will be able to place your thoughts, pictures, videos and your own unique digital DNA sequence on the Humanity Chip.”

Not everyone thinks beaming humanity’s blueprints out into space is a good idea, however; Stephen Hawking previously warned mankind that giving aliens a map to Earth could lead to our destruction.

That doesn’t bother Lubin, however; he says we’ve been beaming information into space since the invention of the radio and television, so there’s really no added risk.

Would you donate to secure a space time capsule?

[Image via ThinkStock]

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