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Making the MoonChip

Writers on the Moon Moonchip

How we made the hexagonal metal medallion we've dubbed the MoonChip...

Once the excitement of setting up the Writers on the Moon website and project was past, I began to think of all the ways it go could wrong. The SDcard could be damaged by radiation. Then what would we have? A future anthropologist wondering why people from the past were so foolish as to use outdated technology to store information instead of the obvious choice of a holographic quantum crystal. I wasn’t worried they wouldn’t be able to pull the information from the SDcard due to the tech being old. Heck, if I can buy a floppy-disk reader on ebay, the Future People will just whip up the programmable matter-tron and conjure a way to get the information I’ve stored in 2021. The problem was what would happen if the information was gone.

We, of course, had the website as the ultimate backup. But only the books are there, and the stories behind the stories, but not everyone’s actual data (although I’ve got the Writers on the Moon google drive which will be handed down through the generations, like the monks in The Fifth Element). But how would our future anthropologist find the website? Or even know it existed?

I started thinking old-school tech, things that would survive hundreds, even thousands, of years (hey, you never know). The paper mini-book was my first thought, and that evolved into something more descriptive, capturing the spirit of the project and pointing to the website. My husband, Kerry, being the mechanical engineer he is (also a Lead Engineer on the rover team at Astrobotic), suggested metal engraved with the website. A brilliant idea, but I had no idea how to get such a thing made, especially on our short time schedule.

Being talented and resourceful, he did.

CAD designs for Moonchip
CAD designs for Moonchip

Being also skilled in CAD, he whipped up several designs for me. Nothing like having your own in-house CAD designer who also knows how to get metal cupons manufactured on the quick.

After consulting with the manufacturer, we settled on a design that should have had high enough contrast to be plainly visible when etched.

Final CAD design for Moonship
Final CAD design for Moonchip

Then my husband said the magick words: “You know these are cheaper to make in quantity.”

CAD file for Moonchips
CAD file for Moonchips

After some back-and-forth with the manufacturer, my very sweet husband went and individually numbered the first 100 of these (back when we thought we’d only have 100 authors, max). Then he made some extras with no numbering. I was just sure I’d regret not ordering more, but we put in the order and hoped they would come out looking as good as we envisioned.

Narrator: they did.

(The manufacturer, when he found out what these were for, was so excited he subscribed to our newsletter to follow the project!)

Kerry had them shipped directly to him in Pittsburgh (I’m temporarily living in Chicago while our youngest finishes High School). He wanted to sand down the edges before they went out to people. He was concerned they might be sharp and people would cut themselves. I demanded photos the instant he got them.

They looked just as good as we had hoped!

(Note: the one flying to the moon–MoonChip 0, although it’s not numbered–is the only one without a hole. The rest have a hole drilled into them in case you want to put it on your keychain or some other dangle place).

I didn’t get the MoonChips until a few weeks later, after they’d been polished up and made human-suitable, but they turned out terrific. I can’t wait to send them out to people as part of their manifest packages (more on that to come).

THANKS to my husband, Kerry, for making sure an emblem of the 
Writers on the Moon project will survive for the next thousand years!

Writers on the Moon payload
Writers on the Moon payload