[Science] Voyager I

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When it comes to space and exploration, I always wish NASA could say 'Who gives a f**k about cost effectiveness, we're exploring SPACE!'. One will never know the benefits of exploration, since by definition you are going into the unknown, so we would never know if it's cost effective until after it's been done.

 

Talk to anyone who works there. We as a country don't consider it a priority anymore. One of the things I loved about America was her determination and success in the 1960s after she decided that having a man on the moon was going to happen, no questions. Kidney dialysis and GPS are a few of the several hundred things the space program helped produce.

And look where are now. NASA's budget used to be nearly 4.5% of the federal budget. Now it's less than 0.5%. In other words, if we treated NASA like it was in Kennedy and Johnson's day, its budget today should be roughly $130 billion instead of the measly $17 billion today. With more than 7x as much money to play with, imagine the kind of R&D they could do. Imagine the legacy of that robust R&D. Problem is, one administration makes a promise and then 2-4 years later another group comes in and reverses it.

 

But what if this record is found 20 million years from now? The plutonium reactor would have been out of juice for eons. It would be pretty damned lame to find an alien video that said 'push play' only to have it not work. Then it would be about 100x harder to reverse engineer everything. Any alien civilization that finds that record will know how to play it. The instructions are right there, written in mathematics.

When/if humans are ever able to travel the stars, I can envision a time when human school children take a field trip out to see Voyager flying through interstellar space. A museum could be built around the damned thing. I think it's more likely to be seem by humans again that an alien.

"Here you can see the first man-made object ever to leave the solar system." (or course, the kids will be completely bored by it)

I have always thought that would be an interesting field trip for middle school aged kids of the future.

 

Back, Back, Back, Back... Voyager went YARD!
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Voyager 1: Humanity's time capsule to the cosmos clears the solar system

It's official: Scientists say that Voyager 1, bearing photos and sounds from Earth and directions to our solar system, now has gone where no human craft has gone before, 11 billion miles away.

full article with vid

 

Astonishing. Someday, after we're all dead, no doubt, we'll send spacecraft far beyond where Voyager is now, and in a fraction of the time. It'll be routine. When I was a teenager, I never dreamed we'd be where we are today with both the space program, and manned space flight. I thought we would have progressed far beyond today's achievements. That's what growing up in the 1950's will get you, I guess.

 

Deckard- I can definitely identify. Growing up in the late 30's, I never even imagined we would make it to the moon.

 

I so so hope this is right, Deckard! I love the optimism, and I hope people keep looking to the stars.

 

I think we will have colonies in space in 50 years.