NASAs "Send Your Name to Mars Program" has been wildly popular. You email your name to a special NASA Web site, the agency burns them on a CD-ROM, straps the CD to the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, and when it launches (currently scheduled for April 2001) you're on your way sort of.

Last year, when NASA did the same thing for the Mars Polar Lander, they aimed their campaign at children. John Lee, who runs the project, says the interactivity really connects with kids and "stimulates them to look further into our program." Lee says he gets about three or four e-mail messages a day from fans of the project, kids who want to learn about Mars for school, and astronaut hopefuls.

When almost a million people registered for the Polar Lander, however, NASA began to suspect there were a lot of adults who wanted to play. So this time, they opened the game to everyone. Lee says over 215,000 names have been registered since the site went up three months ago.

"Many people think that it would be cool to have someone maybe explorers in 2011 or 2013 go there and retrieve [the CD]," Lee said.

But there's the hitch. Even if somebody does go get the CD, there might not be any names on it. The CD may be stuck to the exterior of the craft, where solar radiation would destroy all the data during the first few days of its nine month journey to Mars. NASA says it doesn't want to spend the resources to case the CD in protective material, Lee said. But all those people in search of immortality may still be remembered: a replica of the CD is to reside in the Smithsonian.

Why doesn't NASA tell people that their names might be going on a suicide mission? Says Lee, "It takes the fun out of it."