Most of us will never go to space - at least, not for a decade or so. But while we may not be able to go on a space walk or bounce around in zero-G, the prospect of being able to send something into the Great Beyond sounds like a decent consolation.
IntoSpace.org is hoping to make that happen for a mere $2.
The site is offering a deal that is reminiscent of the Million Dollar Homepage. You pay $2 for the rights to a 0.4×0.4 inch block on a piece of paper, on which you can include a photograph, piece of text, or logo. If you purchase more than 20 blocks at once, you’re eligible for a small discount. There are around 250,000 blocks available, which means IntoSpace could potentially earn around $500,000.
It sounds like a neat idea, especially for the ridiculously low price. Unfortunately, it seems that the site hasn’t really figured out the logistics of actually getting to space. There’s a tentative launch year of 2010, but it seems the site has yet to work out any further details:
The right to choose the company (space agency) which carries out space programs and the way of catalog delivery into space is due to the organizers of the project. Sending of the catalog into space is due to be realized within 2-year time frame after the last seat in the catalog is booked (excluding VIP and free invitation seats).
And, of course, the site reserves the right to change its terms at any time without any notification.
It could easily be a scam - it would be nearly impossible to ever verify that IntoSpace ever made good on its promise. But I can’t help but picture the site’s founder, Arthur Stubbs, triumphantly carrying his massive binder of photos as he boards one of the first consumer flights to leave for space.
For $3 I will personally write your name on the moon!
I just wrote Into Space a letter offering to post a link on a blog that I maintain at a social network site for educators if they give away a few picture places for students who write the best essays on why they want their pictures to go into space. This blog is part of the Classroom 2.0 social network site which has more than 11,000 members. The address is http://blog.classroom20.com.
200 pages (double sided) (if 10×10 sheets)
Jason,
It says if you write about it, you get your pictures in the void for free: http://log.intospace.org/?p=5
Anyways, picturing Arthur Stubbs with the binder is quite funny.
Paper? What a waste? Why not just email to anybody@space.com, or share from Flickr?
My name is already on moon and Mars. I kick IntoSpace’s ass.
I have plans for servers on the moon, still under development working out the logistics. For a small fee of course. That was going to be one of the perks along with many others.
hmmm, not appealing.
http://gatesandjobs.blogspot.com/
So now we’re polluting space?
Pff, that’s nothing. My startup promises that your photo will actually get incinerated by the sun! And we beat them on price at $1.98 per.
Soon we’ll be expanding in a new direction where we will bury your photo in the ground for $3-4. We’re still working on pricing but it’s an exciting development.
Sounds great! I’m with you, dude! =D
pay me $.99 and I’ll send your pic attached to a balloon into space.
now THIS sounds like money well-spent!
hmmm how saying TrashIntoSpace.org? lol
… and for only $3.99, you can get your name on a grain of rice on the 3rd St Promenade in Santa Monica!!!
ZingerSteve, I like your biz model
It’s a sureshot scam….but must say a well executed and innovative one
send your (ladies only) photo to me and I guarantee make you happier than going to space !
Hi all! Thanks for a wonderful conversation lol. I’m commenting back not to defend my project, but to tell that I’m ready to take the responsibility for launching the catalog to where no gravitation laws apply. In case of good support and funds, of course
After all, is there anybody here not willing to become that famous?
Hmmmm. Cost of flight to space = $20MM. Revs generated from venture = $500K. Sounds like a sound web 2.0 business plan if you ask me.
There will probably be much cheaper consumer flights in the next decade or so.
TechCrunch will be on the spaceship now they’ve blogged about it too =)
What languages are taken caption?
What language understood aliens?
If you buy into this, you are waaaay out there…
Anyone would like to tryout?
What a waste… I personally wouldn’t buy into anything without at least a solid plan or agency they plan to use to get to space. It bugs me that sites like this actually end up doing well.
who’s going to see it??
Yeah this is easily the worst CPM deal ever.
Were on the homepage apparently going (off2.com) but none of my team submitted or blogged regarding it!! oh well looks like were going to space anyway!!
Cheers for letting us know! lol
I’m really sorry, James (Off2). We’ll make sure to correct the mistake(yes, we’re human and we’ve got a lot of activities to involve into).
Haha!! No please leave us on there
Im just intrigued how we ended up on there, if you found our logo or if someone in my company signed us up (ive asked around with no joy as yet!!).
Feel free to email me at my name at off2.com
Good luck
Nice… the graphic and logo include the dying technology of the Space Shuttle - isn’t that on its last leg and possibly already extinct now?
From my comment to Arthur Stubbs on the Intospace site: “It is unclear to me what the purpose of the catalog is, but I think it’s probably one of two things: either it’s reading/shopping material for people on a space flight, or else its “commemorative” function has something to do with putting artifacts of our civilization out there to be found. In both cases, the presence of humans in space is reduced to just another consumer activity that fosters the buy-me-this mentality, perpetuates the notion that consumption is what the world (and now the universe) is about, and — obviously paramount — turns yet another physical environment into a venue for advertisements.
Not only is this crass, but it’s also a great disservice to those non-government-affiliated venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who are genuinely trying to make space travel a possibility: whereas they are developing the technology and the financial model that will get us there, you are trivializing the project and diluting the public discourse around it by reducing it to a gimmick. So I guess my answer is that I imagine space exploration will, in the absence of adequate public/government funding, be a capitalist enterprise — but hopefully one that doesn’t have to mean replicating the same stupefying cultural blights that make so many of us want to escape Earth in the first place.”
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