Voyager I & Distant Earth

News that NASA's Voyager I spacecraft is still within our solar system (just), after some 35 years of travel at unimaginable speed, is truly mind-blowing.

Since last summer the spacecraft has been exploring uncharted territory where the effects of interstellar space, the space between stars, can be felt. Scientists don't know how wide this new found region in the solar system is or how much farther Voyager I has to travel to break to the other side. "It could actually be anytime or it could be several more years," said chief scientist Ed Stone of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission.


What an achievement though ! When held against 21st century drone strikes and cyber-snooping doesn't it show how far we have fallen into disrepute since 1977 when Voyagers I and II were launched? It reminds me of Pilgrim's Progress....but in reverse: from Celestial City to City of Destruction!



From NASA's website

(Voyager I has come up before in posts, in 2007 and 2012.)



Harking back to my old "Music Monday" habit, a piece of music occurs to me in relation to the above.

Songs of Distant Earth, Mike Oldfield's album released in 1994, based on Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction novel The Songs of Distant Earth, which I'm currently reading. The whole of Mike Oldfield's album, almost an hour long, is available on YouTube, as well as some shorter versions. Here's a 5 minute taster comprising two sections The Chamber and Hibernaculum

Arthur C. Clarke's novel is set in the far distant future: the 39th century, some 200 years after Earth's sun had "gone nova". Mankind had had a thousand years' warning of coming destruction, and had sent seed ships out into space in the direction of what appeared to be hospitable systems and planets. These ships contained seeds to rebuild mankind - human and domestic animal embryos, and the bacteria necessary for human survival. Early life would be shepherded by robots. Vast distances involved would take hundreds, maybe thousands, of years to cover. After the seed ships were launched, and during the following century or two discoveries were made enabling faster space travel, close to 20% of the speed of light. By the time Earth's destruction was imminent, a million humans, in hibernation, in a state of the art spaceship named Magellan, were able to escape the devastation. Their ultimate destination was a planet named Sagan Two.

The Magellan's route passed close to a planet named Thalassa, one of the destinations of an earlier seed ship. Colonization of Thalassa had been initially reported to Earth, but then all contact had been lost. The Magellan, needing to re-ice its deflector after collisons with space dust, decided to investigate the possibility of using water from Thalassa's vast oceans. The planet being mostly ocean with just three large islands where the colony of humans could have survived. Humans had survived - and flourished - in what appeared to be an idyllic existence. The Magellan's arrival upset the serene lifestyle of Thalassans. Magellan crew mingled with the Thalassan population, became involved in various ways with those who, though of the same species, fellow-humans, had never known life on Earth, and had felt little in the way of challenge or stress, throughout their lives. The people aboard Magellan, now out of hibernation, inevitably carried horrendous memories of Earth's last years.

Culture clash!

How could humanity thrive without the existence of challenge, one wonders. Human history has been filled with challenges and struggles from its outset, first against the elements, the search for food, wild animals, and of course struggle against one another, individually and communally. If the "struggle gene" were bred out of the species over several hundreds of years what would happen?
Thalassans?

I shall not get into the astrological argument which hovers here, I've strayed far enough from Voyager One already.