[NicknamedBob]

"LOL -- that might actually work! Even though it's got nothing to do with what I pitched to the magazine. But they do want pictures..."

It's the height of Madison Avenue technique; give them a lot of hype about interstellar aliens, and then show them pictures of pogo sticks, solar panels, “D” cells, shoelaces, can openers, eggbeaters, clothespins, and shoehorns.

It would be rather a challenge to describe those things so the aliens could manufacture them, eh?

[sionnsar]

Once you've taught the aliens our system of mechanical drawings, bills of material, process flows and Six-Sigma processes... no problem!

They won't want to manufacture them.