Sgt Pepper taught the band - - -no, no
It was 30 years ago today that Voyager I was launched, looking like a school bus-sized spider. It sent back the most amazing pictures of Jupiter and then Saturn. At that time you could write to NASA and they'd send you pictures, and they sent me maybe twenty 8 X 10 glossy color photos I hung around my office, which featured wallpaper depicting Earthrise from the surface of the moon. Hey, it was the seventies and I was in the dirt bidness.
Today Voyager I is almost ten billion miles from us - a distance from which it takes 14 hours at the speed of light for its signal to reach us. A 28 hour round trip between "Are you still there?" and "Yes, thanks for asking, still tradfatting along out here."
That's right, it's still out there humming along with its gold plate of ninety minutes of music and photos. (My brother and his wife gave me a book with most of the pictures and content of that disk, if you ever want to see what's going to be picked up some day by some alien being.)
Here's something else that's totally cool. How much power do you think is behind those increasingly distant signals from near the edge of the heliosphere? Nope. Only twenty watts. Yep. Less wattage than you need in your nite lite, and they're still able to pick up a usable signal. I think that's incredible.
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17 years to travel to the planet of Rakhat, where, if you're lucky, you'll be killed and eaten by the giant Jana' Atu. if you're unlucky, you'll find yourself in the stinkiest, gaudiest brothel you've ever seen with a jeweled collar around your neck. And then things go even worse.
It's good to know that you are still reading that book. I think we gave that to you about 28 years ago for Christmas. 20 watts went a lot further back then then it does today.
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