Greetings!

I've been out of the loop for a while and am in the process of picking up the pieces of my online-life. This excitingly includes my Kickstarter backing of LM1.

If anyone could answer my questions, or link to where these have been answered before, that'd be awesome!

1) digi.me is set up to handle the transfer of files for the lunar mission - I don't need it yet (as a non-social media using person)? Correct? I can download it closer to the 2024 launch date, right? (Which would probably be wise as I'm not likely to be on the same computer by then!)

2) I can't find my voucher code for my digital memory box. What exactly is that for and how do I get another one?

3) Apart from social media snap shots, what are people planning to include in their digital time capsules? Is there a place on the forum discussing this? I understand there will be file restrictions; what will they be? (From forum posts, I understand .mp3, any others?)

Many thanks in advance; I hope to be posting more here over the coming years!

Greetings to you Saygah (fellow Luminaut)

I'll try my best to help you...

1) Yes digi.me is the company and there have been many discussions already about this (search the forums) Mike posted some very interesting questions/facts and Angela Lamont kindly gave us some responses to the questions posed.
Like you, many here do not use social media, so no you do not need to be a member of such a thing.
I think most members will download this software over the coming years, not sure they would download it quiet as close to the mission's launch as 2024 but I suppose this is possible.
Perhaps downloading the software over the next year or two and then slowing adding to it or re-arranging it is what most will do...and what I plan to do.

2) I don't think you'll need another voucher code...someone will help you find it.
Like you, I have not yet downloaded the digi.me software yet and so I've not even looked for my voucher code for my memory box yet but i'm simply assuming it's there somewhere if I look...and if not then i'm sure someone here will help you/and I find it.
So don't worry too much about this one.

3) I don't think there has been a specific forum focusing on what people might want to include in their capsules but I'm guessing it could be all sorts of things...

a) photo's of importance to you...holidays, marriages, parties, birthdays, trips, family, friends or just general everyday one's.
b) video footage similar to a)
c) original music possibly created by some luminauts?
d) social media will be possible (so discussions etc) although as of now this won't apply to you or I and a number of others here (but that could change for some)
e) text...might be a written letter to someone you love (old fashioned I know but perhaps a love letter) or your dreams and hopes for those in the future should this be discovered and read/seen, or simply information...this could be very important as you just never know what might be lost over the coming years but here they'll be a record of all kinds of things, engineering, medicines, hopefully a noah's ark of information.

The formats have been discussed and I guess once you join up to digi.me it should become clear what formats you will have to work with (but this might change in the future?)

My sadness at the moment is that the space I'd have hoped for sounds like a world away
We bought into this mission without really knowing the data space we'd be given and I still don't really know how much I/we currently have (I say currently because thankfully our leader has let it be known that with future data storage etc it may well be that we are allowed more and I would certainly hope so)

But however much we have to work with (I'm guessing it won't be the many GB's of data I'd have hoped for but hopefully a little more than has been suggested so far) I think we'll be chopping and changing right upto the launch date and that makes it fun.

Hope this helps a little...it's exciting right?

Paul Conway wrote:
Hope this helps a little...it's exciting right?

Thanks - you helped clear it all up. I'm up-to-date!

Regarding the amount of space; yeah, I thought it was going to be GB too. I hadn't really thought about the logistics of sending it into space. We'll see.

Many thanks, again!

Hi Saygah!

I can see Paul has answered most of your queries (in fact I though I had, too, but it doesn't seem to have posted), but as usual I'll chuck in my two penne'th!!

1) Paul is right, you can download it when you like. Many people may leave it later rather that earlier, but we are aware that many people told us that they specifically wanted to curate collections of things over the years as they went along, so we made it available as soon as possible. And Paul is also right in that although digi.me allows you to incorporate social media, you do not need a social media account of any kind to create your memory box, it's just an easy way of grabbing your favourite pictures, family announcements etc should you wish to.

2) You don't need a 'voucher' as such for your memory box, because your entitlement is registered to your online account. So when you DO download digi.me, you need to make sure you are logged in! Once you are logged in, the system recognises you have a digital memory box allocation so you can download digi.me from our SpaceStore for free.

3) Yes, the boxes are being used for all kinds of things! One lady has a son who started art college in 2014. She bought a memory box and is digitising every work of art he creates from now until the mission launches so she can chart his studies and (by then) career.

Some people are using their boxes for photography, a personal diary, family trees, music...really whatever is most important to them. Sir Paul McCartney announced that his box would be used to store details of animal cruelty so that in the future it will be seen that humankind were not always kind. I can see his point of view, as most people are putting only positive images and thoughts into their time capsules and I respect his decision to do this.

Rockers "Underground Zerø", who topped the British indie charts in '86 are putting their entire 30-year back catalogue of space rock.....IN space rock by using their time capsule as a music archive.

You get the idea! It's all about YOU. Your thoughts, beliefs, experiences and joys.

In this way, we hope that the main archive, together with the collections of millions of digital personal archives will give the most complete, accurate and vivid picture of life on Earth in the 21st Century that has ever been created

Lastly for Paul....we can't tell you your data allocation yet because we have not settled on the data compression and storage technologies that will be used. And this is GOOD, because of all the technologies that we are using for Lunar Mission One, digital data storage and compression is probably the fastest developing technology of them all!

We do have quite conservative estimates for the total amount of space we will be able to offer. This was calculated before the Kickstarter and was based on solutions available at that time. As time moves on you can see how due to the rapid development in this area, data compression and storage become better and cheaper at the same time. However, we are NOT talking about putting your data on a USB stick and sending that into space as there's no way it would last up to a billion years! So we are currently watching a few possible solutions that we will evaluate before choosing the best.

And as we do not need to decide on one technology now (and it would be silly to commit now when we have many development years ahead) this decision is not in the plan for several years.

As ever, I am asking you to be patient and I understand your frustration...I understand it, share it and appreciate it, because it is born from enthusiasm!

But just think how much data you could fit on a USB stick back in 2005 and how much now.....and you get an idea of the kind of thing I mean

Hi Angela,
It's nice to see you back on the boards again

two penne'th!! your older than I thought

Well Santa delivered so I may consider downloading the Digi Me software soon to begin organizing some (for the moment) photo's I might like to include.

As you mentioned data storage is indeed progressing....I remember having an old style PC in the late 90's and it delt in Mb for the Hard Drive
Hopefully, we shall each get enough to include a combination of documents, photo's and hd videos...yup a bag of usb's just won't do

One thing I would like cleared up (if at all possible?) is that when I went for this it was mainly as a present for my father and the impression given was that a £60 payment (actually gave £75 to include the COOL Lookin patch) gave entitlement to access any and all future Lunar Missions (if we are ever partnered with another mission i'm hoping it will include this?) but more importantly it included both data storage (as you say even now this is still not locked down as it improves yearly) but also that single strand dna hair sample.
Is this still the case for ALL these luminauts that went for this £60 option? which was the most popular I understand.

Should this mission look like it will progress as we hope then my sister and I may well be tempted to subscribe also or perhaps we might be able (along with other families) to pay an added fee to add their dna hair samples also.
Might add a touch of white paint to Dad's and include a note on my data storage to look out for it as he's a fun, kind and before getting a little older an entertaining fella, well they could do a lot worse than clone my dad in the future

BTW yeah I like your reasoning about McCartney who I like very much...perhaps subjects like this should also be included on file (hope he'll add a bit of his fab music also up there?)...we've had great moments in human history but i'm still not happy how we treat animals on this planet but we'll learn one day.