http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/NEWS02/503060320/1007

March 6, 2005

Send your photos, videos spacebound

BY TODD HALVORSON
FLORIDA TODAY

CAPE CANAVERAL - Some might call it throwing money into a black hole. Others, a cosmic message-in-a-bottle. Jim Lewis and Deep Space Communications Network consider it a chance to contact life elsewhere in the universe.

Prices aren't set yet, but the Cape Canaveral company is offering to beam digital text, still photos, audio and video to the edge of the solar system and beyond.

Clients could send poetry, the works of William Shakespeare, or the text of the Bible or the Koran.

They could beam up pictures of junior's bar mitzvah, the giant pumpkin that took first place at the county fair, or that self-portrait little Sally drew in kindergarten.

The radio broadcast of War of the Worlds could be transmitted or a series of heartbeats representing prime numbers.

You could even send video clips of stupid pet tricks, every episode of "I Love Lucy" or the classic movie "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

But it will be much cheaper just to dispatch a simple message like, "Is Anyone Out There?"

"We're serious about this. But we're not so serious that we
don't have a little fun with it, too," said Lewis, managing partner of the company.

"I think there's always a possibility of extraterrestrial life out there, and who knows, we might touch it. Or it could be your message that touches it."

Strange as it seems, Deep Space Communications Network is for real.