Divermarv

“It calls back a time when there were flowers all over the Earth… and there were valleys. And there were plains of tall green grass that you could lie down in – you could go to sleep in. And there were blue skies, and there was fresh air… and there were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosures blasted some millions of miles out in to space.” Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) Silent Running 1972

In a previous post, Message In A Bottle, I blogged about Voyager I on the cusp of leaving the solar system, and that it was inconclusive whether or not it had actually left yet. Unlike smaller things that we can see and touch, the boundaries of some things are very hard to determine. Probably one of the most difficult constituents of determining the boundary of something like our solar system, is actually defining what that boundary really is. Fortunately there are a lot of very smart people who have made all the technical decisions for us. And now it’s just the waiting game.

Well, the wait is over! According to this article, Voyager craft exits the Solar System, by Jonathan Amos, our baby is all grown up and has left the nest.

Confirmation of the probe’s exit from the heliosphere – the bubble of gas and magnetic fields originating from the Sun – was confirmed on Tuesday in a release by the American Geophysical Union

These are exciting times for space exploration, and in NASA‘s case, we accomplish so much with so very little. I am amazed by how much bang NASA can get for the half a penny per tax dollar. These women and men are doing wonderful things. Add to that the incredible accomplishments made by other folks such as SpaceX and we catch a glimmer of what our human minds are capable of. Me, I’d like to up that spending a bit, I would love to watch the first human walk on Mars.

However, hearkening back to Voyager I, I can’t help be feel a little melancholy at the thought of the solitude where she is at. It reminds me of the movie Silent Running, where a craft is sent off into the unknown. An unknown future with an unknown outcome. Voyager I could suffer from an incalculable number of deaths, yet for every second she lives on she is sending a message for us, “We are here, and we come in peace.” I hope we can live up to that. Now back to our regularly scheduled carnage at seemingly every location on the globe.

Peace and love.

Marv