I back-up my data, not quite religiously, but regularly at least. I even have two back-up places for some data, a local one just by the side of my computer using a portable hard-drive and a second network drive that is somewhere on the internet – not sure where it ‘physically’ is though! I’ve even got stuff on my memory stick kicking around in my backpack.
I’ve also had the dreaded Windows Blue-Screen of Death, hard-drive failures, power supply glitches and even the odd dropped laptop. I’ve lost some time, maybe lots of time, in getting it all sorted out. So, being a real nerd about backup security and also a space geek, I was interested in the story about ESA (European Space Agency) getting involved in the Doomsday Ark which seems to have been first proposed by the Alliance to Rescue Civilization at New York University, back in 2006.
The idea is that all the world’s most important information is stored on the Moon – something that is sure to survive any major catastrophe befalling the planet, and similar in principle to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, only even more secure.
With a Moon based data vault, even if the entire planet was trashed by a meteor strike (which missed the Moon?), or global nuclear war, or a cascade of disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes and disease...or maybe just rampant global climate change, any or all of which could lead to the collapse of civilization, there would still be the option of getting back up and running way faster than having to re-invent the last 2000 years of human history.
The initial idea is almost like putting Wikipedia on the Moon, storing in hard discs filled with all human knowledge and recorded in Arabic, English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish. In the event of a global catastrophe, the Moon Ark would start broadcasting the information back to Earth, to secure data receivers on the planet, so that survivors would be able to reboot civilization quickly – I guess a bit like rebuilding your operating system and favorite apps but without the hassle of having to buy all the installation discs again.
Useful things like how to make things, grow things or medical information, would be needed to help the human species survive and flourish again. Later, more items would be added to the Moon Ark - things like DNA, cultural artifacts, seeds, even plants and microorganisms, maybe even cloning technology with human and animal embryos stored for disaster re-population.
The Moon Ark concepts even include a habitable environment, using plants and algae to provide carbon dioxide and oxygen for a living biosphere, perhaps with human (or robotic?) workers to look after the precious vault contents.
It all seems doable, at least the data storage, but the rest is pure sci-fi unless you had a couple of hundred billion dollars to spare. Still, the idea is to get a Moon Data Ark up and running by 2020, with the living contents ‘uploaded’ around 2035, and ESA trying out the bio-sphere idea with tulips (I guess the phrase -Tulips From Amsterdam - since ESA is headquartered in Holland will take on a whole new meaning).
Visit: Doomsday Ark
Via Treehugger
Trevor Williams is a University of Victoria Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate specializing in renewable energy, power grid modeling and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He has a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering, a Masters in Management Science and over 23 years international experience in the space industry, having worked on Earth observation and telecommunications satellites. He is the author of the Eco-Geek blog.
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