Mother’s Day can be a very sad day…

Mother's Day message

Mother’s Day is on 22nd March in the UK but for some it can be a very sad day indeed. For people who have lost their mothers, it becomes a day of remembrance – and unfortunately, this is going to happen to all of us eventually as part of the cycle of life.

But what about the mums who have lost a child? This should be a day of joy and celebration but becomes a day of anguish and mourning instead. Once you’ve been a mum, you always will be a mum, forever, and that fact can never change.

The Child Bereavement Charity is promoting this fact in the UK due to the approach of Mother’s Day – and a wonderful job they are doing too. Prince William recently became patron of the charity and spoke about how ‘Mother’s Day makes me feel empty’ referring to his late mother, Diana.

Already at SentForever, we have transmitted our first Mother’s Day messages this year – including very special remembrance ones. So if you’ve lost someone who is very special to you on Mother’s Day, an eternal message may be a way for you to say some things that aren’t possible to say by any other means.

Our messages are sent into space using one of British Telecom’s specially modified, high power radio transmitters. This enables us to transmit your Mother’s Day messages so they will travel through space and time for the rest of eternity. Remember Mother’s Day this year by sending a very special SentForever Mother’s Day message.

SentForever and Virgin Mobile – Texts into Space

by Chris Thomason

Some great news in that Virgin Mobile have partnered with SentForever to allow all mobile users to send a text into space simply by sending a message to 80995 (in the UK). Here’s the press release:

Virgin Mobile today announce the launch of ‘Texts into Space’, a service which allows people to send their text declarations of love and affection into the uncharted territories of space where they will travel through the cosmos for all eternity.

Ever said ‘I’ll love you forever’? Well now you can prove it!

Launching just in time for Christmas this is a unique gift idea for any loved one. The texts are transmitted via a satellite Earth Station in Cornwall by SentForever.com. Once sent you can ensure your message will live on eternally, a concept that will surely touch the recipients heart.

The ‘text into space’ costs the price of a normal text and can be sent from any mobile phone by texting the desired message to the Virgin Mobile short code 80995. Then, for just £9.95, the message recipient will receive a formal ‘Certificate of Transmission’ from SentForever.com confirming the launch of the eternal message and details of how to track the message on the SentForever.com website as it continues to travel through time and space. Email updates are also available to alert the recipient as to when their message has passed key milestones.

Tim Dowling from Virgin Mobile said “We are quite literally over the moon at the thought of millions of wishes and messages of love being texted into space”.

Stephanie Baillache, Managing Director of SentForever.com, said, “We are delighted to be working with a leading telecoms organisation such as Virgin Mobile. The collaboration of these two innovative brands will ensure our exciting service reaches a much wider audience and thankfully there are no roaming charges in space!”

World Space Week

Our home - Earth

By Chris 

Did you know that October 4^th to 10^th is World Space Week? I didn’t. Apparently the United Nations General Assembly in 1999 declared October 4-10 annually as World Space Week. Today, the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna provides the overall global coordination of World Space Week, under the guidance of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and with the support of World Space Week Association, a non-government organization. 

I’m impressed that so many bodies are actively promoting the education and awareness of space across the globe. Mind you, we do often take our position here on Earth for granted. In a previous posting I spoke about the Pale Blue Dot. That view of Earth taken by a Voyager probe that shows our planet as a pale blue dot against the un-inhabitable vastness of outer space. Solitude. Precarious positioning. A living planet so remote from any other living body in space. 

I am particularly interested in the pale blue dot as I once worked for a mining company and have spent more time underground than the vast majority of people on this planet. And I mean deep underground – about a mile or more. So deep that the rock temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius and rock starts to flow over short periods of time due to the intense pressure. 

We regard Earth as our home, but in fact we can only live on the very surface of it. Some creatures do live in the ocean depths – but not humans. We are effectively trapped on the surface of a small round piece of rock, surrounded by a tenuous atmosphere floating in a loosely defined orbit in the vastness of space. Whew! 

But I’m glad – of course. As so many wondrous things happen and exist on our planet, and of course among the human race. I don’t believe for one moment that we are alone; there are other life forms out there, somewhere. Hopefully, at some time in the future, mankind may establish contact with them. It’s a long shot but I hope so.      

But by celebrating space week we are actually celebrating our potential neighbours, and hopefully educating people and broadening their awareness of what is all around us. And who knows who may be receiving the SentForever messages that are transmitted? Have a happy World Space Week.

Remember a lost baby – the saddest dream

By Chris 

This post follows on from Stephanie’s recent post Remembering the Lost Babies a few weeks back. 

Some years ago I had the saddest dream about a baby. Usually I forget my dreams but that morning I remembered it and so I wrote it down. As you start to write a dream down, more and more details are remembered and the dream started to get longer and longer. I wanted to capture this dream in as few words as possible, so this is what I wrote: 

A young baby always knows if it is going to die that night. So when its parents put it to bed it cries and cries to tell them not to leave it alone as it is going to die – but of course the parents don’t understand what the baby is saying. That night the child dies, thinking that its parents didn’t love it enough to save it. 

Now I don’t believe this is true for a moment – it was just a dream I captured. A very moving dream. 

Parents who have lost an older child say that the important thing is to ensure that the child is remembered. That they existed on this earth and they did this, achieved that, and their lives are often captured in many different memories and photos over the years. 

However, when a baby passes on its very different. A baby isn’t really in a position to give the parents anything that is material – it’s usually the parents giving to the child – care, attention, toys, but above all else, love. 

There is a saying that we should live each day as if it were our last. Well perhaps every day we should love our children as if it were their last day – but in a positive sense of course. Let them really know how much they are cherished and loved. 

For the lost babies, this can be done too. In our hearts, our thoughts, our actions and our prayers. And maybe in a special way too by sending a message into eternity. Because, when the baby’s parents and near relatives pass on, how will that child be remembered in the future? 

By sending a message into eternity, that message will exist forever. Your love that is captured in that message will live forever, their memory will live forever. 

We can help ensure your lost baby is remembered forever. And for those babies that are alive today, well, love them just that little bit extra today. Take care.

Top baby names in the UK

Want to know what the top baby names in the UK were last year? Well, I found these statistics quite interesting. The top ten names for boys in 2007 were: Jack, Thomas, Oliver, Joshua, Harry, Charlie, Daniel, William, James and Alfie. Interestingly, Mohammed came in at number 17.

For girls, the top ten names were Grace, Ruby, Olivia, Emily, Jessica, Sophie, Chloe, Lily, Ella and Amelia

Interestingly, in 1934 in the UK, the top five boy’s names were John, Peter, William, Brian and David, while the top girl’s names for the same year were Margaret, Jean, Mary, Joan and Patricia.

There were 669,000 babies born in the UK in 2006 while 502,000 died.

If you are having a baby and have decided upon the name, then why not send a message into eternity that announces the arrival of this very special person to the rest of the Universe. After all, your child will become a national citizen of the country of birth, but also in the bigger scheme of things your child will be part of the Universe.

So why not send your child’s name and birth details into eternity with a message from SentForever that will quite literally be sent forever.

Eternal numbers

Numbers have always fascinated me, but some of the numbers involved in a SentForever message transmission are quite amazing.

Our eternal messages are transmitted from BT’s satellite earth station in Cornwall UK and our dish points in a South Easterly direction. In the blink of an eye the messages are passing 550 miles (about 880 kilometres) above the French Mediterranean coast, as they start their eternal journey. In space, radio waves travel at the speed of light, which equates to 670 million miles per hour (about 1.07 billion kilometers per hour).

The nearest star to Earth other than our own sun is Alpha Centauri, and it would take our messages 4.2 years to reach there if we transmitted in that direction. So you can get a feel for how far the messages go, check these numbers out:

• In a day your message travels 16,070,000,000 miles,

• In a week your message travels 112,000,000,000 miles,

• In a month your message travels 482,000,000,000 miles,

By the time the one-year anniversary of your message being sent occurs, your message will have travelled 5.9 trillion miles. And that’s only the first year of your message’s eternal journey.

For an unusual gift for somebody, or if you want to send somebody special a very personal message, then SentForever can help you to do something really different. Send them a message into eternity – it’s the most unusual way to say something special.

SentForever’s Goonhilly earth station transmissions

Our messages into eternity may have no final destination as they travel forever, but they do have an interesting starting point – the BT Goonhilly earth station in Cornwall, UK.

Goonhilly was once the largest earth satellite station in the world, with more than 25 dishes in use and over 60 in total. Its first dish, called Arthur, was built in 1962 to link with Telstar, the world’s first active satellite. Arthur received the first ever live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite on July 11, 1962.

Ofcom has licensed SentForever to transmit our messages into deep space and our messages are transmitted in the Ku band in the 12 to 18 GHz wave band. At Goonhilly there is a visitor centre that explains all the activities that occur at the site. See http://www.goonhilly.bt.com for more information.

Our dish points roughly south east, and as we transmit our messages they pass 600 miles over the French Mediterranean in the blink of an eye. Within five hours the messages leave our solar system and travel at the speed of light for the rest of eternity.

All our messages are transmitted from the Goonhilly earth station, so whether you are sending a message for a newly born baby, proposing marriage in the most romantic way possible, sending a message of remembrance to honour someone’s memory, or simply expressing how much you love someone, your eternal message will commence its journey from Goonhilly.

The gift that lasts forever

I was recently at a friend’s house who had just had a birthday. The room was strewn with cards, wrapping paper and a selection of presents. What do you think of the gifts, I asked, to which the reply was a so-so waving of the hand. She later said that she would probably “recycle” most of the presents and give them back as gifts to other people. And hasn’t that happened to us all?

Not only is it the extraordinarily non-environmentally friendly wastage of paper, cards and packaging, but it’s the fact that most of the gifts will be consumed or disposed of in a short space of time. This is where a SentForever personal message really stands out.

The Certificate of Transmission of the message is mounted in an elegant presentation card and delivered in a very stylish envelope. It serves as both the card and the gift and does not require any wrapping paper. It also contains your own very personal message as opposed to an off-the-shelf verse – a message that will exist for the rest of eternity.

Even if the message is sent as a card, our research shows that the majority of people who receive their message perceive it more as a gift and not as a card.

So if you want to send someone special a very unusual gift, then a SentForever message is perfect for you.

Contact – the movie- searching for radio transmissions

Did you see the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster – made back in 1997? It’s based on Carl Sagan’s novel and it’s one of our favourite movies here at SentForever.

It’s based around the story of an astronomer who is searching for radio transmissions from other civilizations in deep space. Despite deep scepticism from people involved in the more traditional fields of science and astronomy, she perseveres and eventually finds one of these transmissions. The rest of the film follows the decoding of the transmission and how they go about following its instructions.

I was interviewed on BBC radio recently and was asked if anybody will ever receive the SentForever messages that are transmitted. It was a good question which I had to answer in two parts.

First of all – I don’t know if it will ever be received. Our transmissions go out in a narrow beam into one particular part of space ay any one time so on one hand the chances are slim. However, the transmission will last forever even though it gets weaker and weaker over time. So, on the other hand that boosts the chance of a message being received.

The other important element is that SentForever’s messages aren’t intended to be received. They are intended as eternal commitments and messages that people just want to send – and then to tell someone about what they have said. It’s called Unrequited Love.

So, if you’ve sent a SentForever message of unrequited love to someone here on Earth, then I hope they enjoyed receiving it. As to whether someone else out in the Universe will receive it – well, my answer comes in two parts….

If you sent a SentForever message, do you think it will be received? Let us know.

Everyday and once in a lifetime

I was thinking about things that we only intend to do once in our lifetime. Going to an interesting distant country that we like means we often go back there again. So it’s not about distance or places. With people, we tend to meet them regularly. So I started thinking about events and occasions.

Children – no we often have more than one. Death, well yes, that only happens once – but generally it isn’t in our best interest to die. Marriage – now that could be one of the few things that we imagine we will only do once (well at the time anyway).

If a marriage is such a special once-in-a-lifetime event then I was thinking how that occasion or special moment could be made to last forever. After all, in a Christian wedding, there is much ceremony around the “for ever and ever” aspect of getting married.

I made a list of the highlights of getting married and thought that this would make a wonderful service for SentForever to offer. Here are the things I thought of:

- making a proposal of marriage. What did you say to propose and what was the first photo you took of yourselves when you were “officially engaged” as a couple?

- what were your wedding vows that you exchanged at your wedding?

- a copy of your marriage certificate

- a significant part or reading of your marriage ceremony

- a photograph of you and your guests on the big day

- your special song

I think that soon after the wedding, if SentForever were to transmit all these items into eternity for you, it would be something that could never be recalled or cancelled. And hopefully that’s just what your marriage should be – something that will last forever.

SentForever would love to hear from you if you are getting married soon as we’d like to offer a limited number of these complimentary transmissions. All we’d ask is that you let us know what you thought of the service as part of our market research. Just contact us through our website if you are interested.