So Clever

When not exploding space shuttles, crashing Martian landers, or questioning the sobriety of their astronauts, NASA tries to get attention with useless commemorations.

As the broadcast the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" heads across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star, the event celebrates the 40th anniversary of the song, the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of NASA.

"Send my love to the aliens," Paul McCartney told NASA, although he didn’t specify if that applied to all of them or just ones who had not lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. The song, which he co-wrote with John Lennon, will take 431 years along to reach Polaris, which is 2.5 quadrillion miles away. An MP3 of the song (DRM free?), will transmit it from a giant antenna in Madrid, Spain.

Anyone or anything around Polaris would need an antenna and a receiver to convert the digital signal back to music, the same way people receive satellite television. Now they can enjoy the psychedelic folk tune written about transcendental meditation that has nothing to do with the space program. Ahhh, tax dollars in action!