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News & ArtsMonday, March 2, 2009
Science Voyager 2, How I Miss You
Posted by Jonathan Golob on Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:12 PM
Early in 1986, I snuck out of bed and turned on the ancient black-and-white television set close to my bedroom. Only eight years old, I sat down to watch a PBS special. The Voyager 2 spacecraft was about to send back the first close-up pictures of the planet Uranus.
Even at that young age, I understood I was enjoying a legacy of a prior era, a gift from a different time for the country. This was Reagan's America, dominated by stupidity and greed, inward thinking and striving. It wasn't a time suited for anyone bookish, nerdy and dreaming.
And yet, there I was lying on brown carpeting, watching excited engineers and scientists catch their first glimpse—anyone's first glimpse—of a distant planet. Men and women has created this carefully machined work of functional art, and precisely calculated a trip skittering along the vast wells of gravity dotting our solar system. It was magnificent. I wanted to join those men and women, to bring other such creations into the universe.
1
Jonathan,
We find this obsession with your anus at such a young age disturbing. No wonder you ended up at slog.
We find this obsession with your anus at such a young age disturbing. No wonder you ended up at slog.
2
My favorite thing about the Voyagers is the Golden Records they carry. Alas, Voyager 1 has been whipping along at like 35,000 mph for almost 35 years and has barely gone anywhere relative to anything but us (a mere 10 billion miles). So it'll get to the nearest star in about 2500 years (not that it's headed that way). Hopefully they have record players there.
3
I remember seeing a brief little clip about Voyager either on PBS or at the Science Center many, many times when I was a kid. Its very shape was incredibly intriguing to me and sparked my interest in space and astronomy.
4
@Jonathon:
Great post, as always.
@1:
Emphasis on the first syllable. /ˈjʊərənəs/ is the preferred pronunciation, not /jʊˈreɪnəs/
Great post, as always.
@1:
Emphasis on the first syllable. /ˈjʊərənəs/ is the preferred pronunciation, not /jʊˈreɪnəs/
6
"I wanted to join those men and women, to bring other such creations into the universe."
Congrats on writing for The Stranger! Dreams can come true!
Congrats on writing for The Stranger! Dreams can come true!
7
Thanks for posting this Jonathon, now you've made me nostalgic as well. When I was a kid, my aunt took me to a public library, and I picked up a book on Neptune. A huge book, almost entirely of Voyager 2 photographs of Neptune and Triton. The planet Neptune has been my favorite planet ever since. I know that's a little silly to have a favorite extraterrestrial body, but it's true.
8
Anthony, Voyager has a record player on board. There are pictorial instructions etched onto the disc.
9
She ain't dead yet!
I'm personally stoked about the upcoming Europa mission. We may just discover alien life in my lifetime and that would be pretty fucking cool.
I'm personally stoked about the upcoming Europa mission. We may just discover alien life in my lifetime and that would be pretty fucking cool.
11
Thanks for the post, Jonathan. When I was little I used to daydream about Voyager and where it was at any given moment and who might be listening to the whale songs we included with it. According to Wikipedia, right now Voyager 2 is twice as far away from the sun as Pluto.
12
@8 - If I'm not mistaken, it has a needle and cartridge on board, but no actual player. The instructions etched on it are largely meant to communicate how to set the stylus and how fast to turn the disc.
14
This pretty much describes my own experience, 17 years earlier than yours, watching fuzzy, static-laden live black-and-white images of Armstrong and Aldrin loping across the lunar surface.
Last July I pulled out my Spacecraft Films DVD of the complete video recordings from Apollo 11 and played parts of it for my cast during breaks in a long weekend rehearsal. I was shocked to learn that more than a few out of the 16 or so actors and crew had NEVER SEEN more than a few seconds of this footage! It wasn't shown in school, they hadn't seen any sort of televised retrospective - nothing! Unquestionably one of the greatest moments in recorded human history - and they had not even the smallest experiential knowledge of it! That to me is simply shocking beyond comprehension.
Last July I pulled out my Spacecraft Films DVD of the complete video recordings from Apollo 11 and played parts of it for my cast during breaks in a long weekend rehearsal. I was shocked to learn that more than a few out of the 16 or so actors and crew had NEVER SEEN more than a few seconds of this footage! It wasn't shown in school, they hadn't seen any sort of televised retrospective - nothing! Unquestionably one of the greatest moments in recorded human history - and they had not even the smallest experiential knowledge of it! That to me is simply shocking beyond comprehension.
15
One of my fondest hopes of all the talk we're hearing about the President's budget proposal is that when people say he's "ending the Reagan era," that will entail a resurrection of real space exploration. It boggles the mind that any era or any generation could be so self-absorbed as to ignore the vastness of the universe out there in favor of the shallowness and bullshit down here, but, well, I guess it happened. The restoration of the American sense of pioneering, of real ambition, maybe even of wonder, is something we really desperately need.
Anyway! Yes, I wasn't even alive in the era that real space stuff got done and I still draw inspiration from it. Cheers, Golob. You've really spoken for a lot of us here, a lot of us who have felt cheated for a long time and maybe needed reminding that wondrous shit has, in fact, gotten done.
Anyway! Yes, I wasn't even alive in the era that real space stuff got done and I still draw inspiration from it. Cheers, Golob. You've really spoken for a lot of us here, a lot of us who have felt cheated for a long time and maybe needed reminding that wondrous shit has, in fact, gotten done.
16
Jonathan, while I know that many may have felt that Donald Regan was the really the one in charge, I'm pretty sure it was "Reagan"
best
best
19
In 2007, Voyager 2 crossed the termination shock caused by the outward pressure of the solar wind and entered into the heliosheath, the outermost layer of the solar system before reaching actual interstellar space. Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space in the next 10 years or so.
21
The cool thing about Voyager (and other deep space or planetary craft) is that it has an ion engine.
25
I'm with you, Jonathan. I've watched the past six or so shuttle launches live, and followed every detail of the Mars probes - including the Mars Polar Lander Tweeter feed.
I've always wondered about those Voyager probes - isn't it extremely likely that they'll run in to an asteroid or planet or black hole before they'll ever find an alien species? I suppose it's worth the off chance, anyway.
I've always wondered about those Voyager probes - isn't it extremely likely that they'll run in to an asteroid or planet or black hole before they'll ever find an alien species? I suppose it's worth the off chance, anyway.
26
Why would we want to let an alien life form know where we are? If we are any example, they are likely hostile and looking for flesh to eat.
29
@26:
It's not terribly likely they'll run into much of anything in the interstellar void, aside from a few stray atoms of hydrogen.
I'd say the chances of humans overtaking them within 200 - 300 years is probably more likely than any other scenario; and I'd guess there are a lot of people, respectable scientists among them, who would set the odds of even that occurring very low.
It's not terribly likely they'll run into much of anything in the interstellar void, aside from a few stray atoms of hydrogen.
I'd say the chances of humans overtaking them within 200 - 300 years is probably more likely than any other scenario; and I'd guess there are a lot of people, respectable scientists among them, who would set the odds of even that occurring very low.
31
Don't sweat it @31. By the time those plaques actually reach another solar system, in say a hundred thousand years or so at current velocity, and assuming there's even an intelligent species there to read it, it's still going to take them, at best, another five or six thousand years to get here.
Plenty of time for Jeff Goldblum's three hundred times removed grandchild to write a computer virus that'll knock out their systems for sure.
Plenty of time for Jeff Goldblum's three hundred times removed grandchild to write a computer virus that'll knock out their systems for sure.
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