What Do We Say to the God of Extinction? Not Today.

Syrio Forel teaching Arya Stark how to use a sword. Source: HBO’s Season 1 Game of Thrones

We live in an amazing world. There are billions of us now on Earth today and each person has their own life, families, hobbies, and passions. Even with the issues that we currently face, it’s impossible to deny that humanity is absolutely incredible. Look at all the things we’ve built, the books written, the songs sung, and the relationships we’ve developed amongst ourselves. The best part is things are continuously getting better — worldwide, less people are living in poverty, there is less hunger, and less war.

However, as we’re all aware it’s not sunshine and rainbows as far as the eye can see. There are real dangers to our way of life. What will the world look like for our children? Our grandchildren? What are we doing to protect our achievements of enlightenment and progress? What happens if the climate does change and food production is unsustainable? If a meteor strikes? A new virus or plague spreads? A global war with nuclear consequences?

In the past, humanity has always survived by exploring and moving to where the grass is greener. We can do the same. The known world is explored but technologically we have progressed to the point that with enough human will, we can explore the stars. We can become an interplanetary species.

SpaceX render of future launch site. License: Public Domain

In February, I announced on my Facebook Timeline that my friend, Connor Maddox and I were working on a web & mobile application to send notifications when rocket launches were happening. Our goal is to create a free notification & media app that helps people get excited about the possibility of becoming an interplanetary species.

After the initial excitement, we realized we needed to automate some of the pieces since it was a little much to manually send the notifications out given our busy day jobs. Additionally, we wanted to make sure that if we were going to do it that we did it right. We hired a world class UX designer and we’re working with her to create something that we’re proud to call our own.

We’ve been working our proverbial (and literal) nights and weekends to make that a reality but we’ve still got a bit of a way to go till we’re ready to launch. However, in the meantime we thought it would be fun to hire a talented illustrator to make some t-shirts. The first six shirts are live and are available through Amazon. There are five colors available for each shirt and we’re using the best base material that was available. Prices range from $18–22 depending on what’s printed.

If you’re not interested in any shirts but the idea of the notifications sounds cool, you can totally give us your email address on our landing page. We won’t spam you. Well, unless you consider notifications about rockets launches & cool space things happening in the world spam. Then yeah we’ll spam the hell out of you.

Note: We make roughly $3.50 per shirt. It goes into the LM fund to host the app, pay for the SMS services, etc.

1. Launch Manifest Logo T-Shirt

2. Welcome to Mars Rover T-Shirt

3. Support the Colonies T-Shirt

4. Interplanetary Species T-Shirt

5. Save the Rovers T-Shirt

6. Mars Space Helmet T-Shirt

Have any cool ideas for shirt designs? Maybe ideas for the app? You can send them my way austin@launchmanifest.io

Software, Technology & Life. Co-founder @ GetTactic.com