What better way to celebrate 50 years of Doctor Who than by launching a satellite the shape of the Tardis into a low-Earth orbit? Thus reasoned Robert Doyle, a would-be film-maker from Florida, and his daughter Alex. Then they got onto Kickstarter.
One month and 3,231 backers later they have exceeded their $33,000 target by $55,880, thanks to the enthusiasm of Whovians across the web. A satellite kit from Interorbital Systems in California will now be launched into space on one of its Neptune rockets as close as possible to 23 November – the anniversary of Doctor Who's first broadcast episode.
"Originally our Tardis was going to be quite small: about 4in across. But when we exceeded our target we decided to build a larger one," says Doyle. "There is a practical difficulty in the size and shape of the launch tube. But what we've decided to do is build a spring-loaded wire frame which, when released, will expand to become a 2ft high blue, mylar police box. What could be more appropriate for a machine that is bigger on the inside than outside?
"In it there will be a hard drive to hold the data from our donors and a camera, which will be trained on the Earth, with a transmitter and a locator."
A matching website will also carry the donor's data – it could be personal info, art or anything – and there is a behind-the-scenes documentary by a website called The Nerdist in the pipeline. The point is that there isn't one, beyond the joy of knowing it exists up there – no small prize for the 16 major donors who supplied $300 each, it could very well have a value beyond rubies.
"Myself and my daughter are both huge Doctor Who fans," said Richard Shindell, a US singer-songwriter, when he played at The Old Queen's Head in Islington last week. "I donated $300 because that's the threshold above which you get all kinds of loot: T-shirts, a blueprint of the satellite and – best of all – five megabytes on the satellite's hard drive. I'm going to upload a song of mine about satellites. I'm going to do this," he added, "because it is an excellent use of $300."
