Earth's first ambassadors to the galaxy
From https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
Copyright © 2017
by Ralph F. Couey
Written content only
On December 11th, President Trump signed a Policy Directive ordering NASA to lead a space exploration program with the goal of sending Americans back to the moon. The document, signed on the 45th anniversary of humanity's last lunar landing, implies a permanent base on the lunar surface, and also declares Mars as the next target of manned exploration.
It is a bold declaration, which of course will be strangled by politics, opposed by people solely on the basis of their hatred of the President, much as a similar directive by President Bush was ignored and smothered. Pun intended, it will never fly.
Manned space exploration beyond earth orbit was abandoned decades ago. Politics played a large part in that collapse of of mankind's boldest and most courageous effort to leave the natal womb of our planet. But the real cause was the abandonment of vision.
As a human race, we have always been at out best when pursuing high aspirations. Big dreams coupled with daring actions have produced extraordinary results and our understanding of the universe has increased exponentially. But for every question answered, a dozen more are generated, and thus the process of exploration and discovery should have its own kind of self-generated momentum. But for what I suspect are purely selfish motivations, there are those with access to power who persist in squashing vision.
Astronauts who have viewed our planet from space all share the same moment of epiphany. A planet without borders, home to a dominant species possessed of a questing intelligence and a burning curiosity to know the unknown. But returning to earth they are reacquainted with the reality of a human race that squanders the promise of the possible in favor of a crushing hatred of each other. The refusal to find a way to coexist may well prove to be our eventual undoing, perhaps sooner than anybody wants. Committing to a broad and aggressive...and multi-national program of manned exploration takes our eyes out of the mud and directed to the stars. It takes our minds away from territoriality and opens up the possibility of an infinite vastness with room for all with the courage to take those steps.
There's another reason as well.
In 1977, the United States launched two spacecraft, Voyagers 1 and 2. The initial plan was to take advantage of a once-in-two-centuries alignment of the planets that would allow a series of slingshot maneuvers to advance from planet to planet through the outer solar system. The resulting Grand Tour provided scientists with unprecedented views of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, as well as their system of moons. One of the great discoveries was that like Saturn, each of the four gas giants possessed a system of rings, albeit much thinner and fainter. The science gained from those missions changed everything we know, not about those planets, but the solar system as well.
That part of the mission has ended. There was one more directive sent to the spacecraft to turn it's cameras around and shoot what was called "the family portrait," the planetary family of our sun. Out of that came this stunning image:
Earth, from Voyager at the edge of the solar system.
NASA/JPL
It is a picture that is the definition of perspective. Whatever words of awe that pass through my brain when viewing that tiny blue dot, nothing come close to the words of Dr. Carl Sagan:
That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Cornell University, October 13, 1994
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still outbound, still recording and returning ground-breaking data. Voyager 1 has officially left the solar system, now 13 billion miles away, traveling at over 38,000 miles per hour. Voyager 2 is still within the heliosheath, that bubble that marks the outer influence of the sun's energetic winds, almost 11 billion miles out, zooming along at 35,000 miles per hour. They are the fastest spacecraft ever launched by humans. But even at those speeds, it will take them about 20,000 years to travel one light year. Both Voyagers will pass within a light year of stars in about 40,000 years. Their ultimate destinations, at least for now, for Voyager 2 would be Sirius, the brightest star in our skies, in just under 300,000 years. Voyager 1 will pass close to two stars, GJ 686 and GJ 678 in 570,000 years. After that, the two will continue to orbit the center of our galaxy, taking about 230 million years to complete a loop. Most scientists acknowledge that the human race won't be around when these encounters occur, so barring a catastrophic collision, it is likely that the golden records carried by both spacecraft will become humanity's tombstone, telling the story of a long-dead species.
But we need not entrust our legacy solely to the Voyagers. We have the capability now to step out onto the cosmic stage. Interstellar travel will remain beyond our technological abilities for now, but there are enough unknowns in our own solar system to keep us fully occupied for at least two millennia. And if we're kept busy trying to answer those questions, then we'll have little time to waste killing each other over petty earthbound concerns.
You see, it's not just science; it's survival. But we have to make the choice of what's more important. Our ability and willingness to choose outer space over inner conflict will determine in large part, whether we will still be around when someone else finds our Voyagers, traces their origins, and heads for our little blue planet.
It would be nice if some of us would be here to greet them when they arrive.
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