Back in the 70’s, famed astronomer Carl Sagan and a team of scientists and artists put together a collection of golden phonograph records, which were sent to space aboard Voyager 1 and 2. They contain greetings in 55 languages, a plethora of animal sounds, traditional music from around the world, Mozart’s and Bach’s masterpieces, as well as Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry tracks. Now, a Kickstarter campaign wants to give us lowly Earthlings a chance to own a copy of the Voyager Golden Records as a box set.
The campaign, launched by Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz, aims to raise $198,000, which definitely looks doable. Its 1,094 backers already pledged $130,000 as of this writing. Most of what Pescovitz and his team will make from Kickstarter will be used for royalties and to pay for the snazzy-looking box set’s production. See, the team decided to remake the records as three gold LPs in a cloth-covered box with gold foil.
The set will also come with a hardbound book containing the records’ history, as well as a copy of the original diagram depicting how to play them. You know, as some sort instruction in case aliens ever get their hands on the spacecraft. Both Voyagers are still alive ’till this day, and 1, in particular, left our solar system and crossed into interstellar space a few years ago. If there’s any spacecraft that has the potential to reach intelligent beings from other worlds, it’s the Voyager.
But let’s get back to the copy we Earthlings can get. You’ll have to pledge $98 to get one box set, though you can also snag a digital copy for $25 if you don’t care for the physical LP records and their fancy packaging. Take note that NASA already released some of their tracks on SoundCloud, though. The team is aiming to ship all rewards out by August 2017, exactly 40 years after NASA’s Voyager spacecraft embarked on their journey.
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