Voyager says Goodbye

[Ruhevoll]

I predict that in one year's time, there will be a news report that Voyager will be leaving the Solar System.

(source)

[pastoralguy]

One of the fascinating things about the Voyager missions was the confirmation of many of the hypotheses of Arthur C. Clarke in his book 2001 - A Space Odyssey. N.B. I do mean the book, and not the rather crazy film that people rave about, and then say how marvellous it is, because they can't understand it. The book makes it all perfectly clear and is the better for it.

Another version of Resurrection Man's video, this time as a slide show which works rather well. Just watch the image, it takes a moment or two to start.

Wow! Thank you for that.

[pastoralguy]

As I ponder getting our car repaired (following a mishap involving other half's driving), I hear that the Voyager spacecraft launched 35 years ago and now 11 billion miles from the Earth and hurtling ever further away at a rate of 10 miles per second is about to leave the Solar system.

I take it there was no room for Ron Shafferty?

[johncorrigan]

Fascinating and most enjoyable programme about Voyager on the Storyville strand this evening on BBC4.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09gvnty/storyville-the-farthest-voyagers-interstellar-journey

[ardcarp]

Yes, excellent programme. It was interesting to see how emotionally involved the scientists and engineers were over their spacecraft. Not that the programme was at all soppy. I find it incredible that, given the huge achievement in sending a mission to the outer planets and their moons, we the public see so little of the photos and hear so little of the discoveries (e.g. volcanos on Titan?). Maybe we are just not interested? Well, I am.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm interested, too - and that image of the earth from the other side of Neptune, smaller than a pixel: even more stunning than the iconic Apollo 8 photo of the Earthrise seen from the moon (and, like that, not originally intended as part of the mission). And the fact that Voyager 1 still hasn't passed through the Heliosphere, so many years on, and travelling at ten miles per second ...

And other historical oddities, such as "moral" campaigners objecting to NASA sending "filth" into space (the engraved image of the naked man and woman - and the suggestion that if the woman had been pregnant it wouldn't have been so salacious!!!) Great programme.

[pastoralguy]

Yes, excellent programme. It was interesting to see how emotionally involved the scientists and engineers were over their spacecraft. Not that the programme was at all soppy. I find it incredible that, given the huge achievement in sending a mission to the outer planets and their moons, we the public see so little of the photos and hear so little of the discoveries (e.g. volcanos on Titan?). Maybe we are just not interested? Well, I am.

No. The news outlets are too busy reporting on the mediocrities that are our 'leaders'.