NASA, please pimp your Martian Lander

I'm a little disappointed in NASA. When Pioneers 10 and 11 were launched, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin, a time capsule of sorts for extraterrestrials and terrestrial space travellers of the way, way distant future. Pioneer 10 is still out there somewhere between our solar system and its destination of Aldebaran, a star in the constellation Taurus. When NASA launched Voyager, they upped the ante considerably. Included this time was a gold-plated copper disc (above) containing phonograph recordings and images meant to convey the diversity of life on Earth, along with a message from President Jimmy Carter that reads:

This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.

Its destination is the Alpha Centauri system, a distance that will take 40,000 years to cover. The symbols pictured above are intended to instruct one on how to build a playback device for the recordings. A full explanation of the diagram can be found here.

Basically, we went all out on creating this monument of civilization, at least as far as the technology of the 1970s would allow. The "Golden Record" has even seeped into pop culture, appearing in numerous movies and television shows, weighing in as the "first contact" with extraterrestrial civilization in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Starman (among others).

So what's up with the picture below?



Do you see the little disc next to the American flag in this picture of the Phoenix Mars Lander? It's a mini-DVD from the Planetary Society. A mini DVD. Kinda looks like a CD you burned on your home computer, eh? Not gold etchings. No fancy cover graphics. Sure, it's a DVD and is said to be filled with messages in the form of sci-fi stories and art inspired by Mars, and for some reason it contains the names of more than a quarter million earthlings, but where's the bling? Where's the glory? Where's the I Am Earth, Welcome! It's a little disappointing. The whole friggin' lander should be coated in hieroglyphics. It should be graffitied from antenna to foot. We need to pimp our landers, NASA, get with the program!

Incidentally, what is the deal behind the quater million names? I should be honest and say I didn't go to the Planetary Society web site to learn the back story on that, and I'm guessing it probably has to do with a fund raising scheme of some sort ($10 to get your name on the Martian disc), but off-hand it sounds scarily like an alien abduction list. Here's a quarter million human volunteers for your anal probes, or some junk : ) Hope I'm not on the list. What's the Privacy Policy of space discs anyway?