David Kipping

We're trying to create like an open source version of the golden record that future spacecraft are able to download and basically put on a little hard drive that they can carry around with them and get these distributed hopefully across the solar system eventually.

Is it going to be called the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

It could be.

That's a good name for it.

We've been toying a little bit with the name, but I think probably it would just be Golden Record at this point or Golden Record Version 2 or something.

But I think another benefit that I see of this activity

is that it forces us as a species to ask those questions about what it is that we want another civilization to know about us.

The Golden Record was kind of funny because it had photos on it and it had photos of people eating, for instance, but it had no photos of people defecating.

And so I always thought that was kind of funny because if I was an alien or if I was studying an alien, if I saw images of an alien, I would, I'm not trying to be like a pervert or anything, but I would want to see the full, I want to understand the biology of that alien.

And so we always censor what we show

Yeah.

And Sagan had that with the Golden Record.

There's a male and a female figure to pitch on the Golden Record.

And the woman had a genitalia originally drawn, and there was a lot of pushback from, I think, a lot of Christian groups who were not happy about the idea of throwing this into space.

And so eventually they had to remove that.

And so it would be confusing biologically if you're trying to study xenobiology of this alien that apparently has no genitalia or the man does, but for some reason the woman doesn't.

And that's our own societal and cultural imprint happening into that information.

I don't think the- They don't even know which way to hold the picture.

If they only have sound as their only way of navigating the world, it's kind of lost.

There's been a lot of conversation about sending video and pictures, and that's one of the things I've been a little bit resistant about in the team, that I've been thinking, well...