VOYAGER…GOING…GOING…GOING
(…and on to galaxies far, far, away…)

Thirty five years ago we launched a small space probe from Earth.

It’s still going strong today, having remained in communication with us all that time as it passed by the outer planets of our neighborhood, going some 17 billion plus kilometers away from us, through the outer limits of our solar system, and on to galaxies far, far, away, for perhaps further exploration of the mysteries of deepest space.

Meanwhile, the latest thing it has sent back to us is a rear-view-mirror type shot of our own Milky Way, in which Earth is barely visible as a very, very, very tiny bluish spot. Who knows, that may be the last thing we’ll ever get sent from it…to us.

When it was launched, all those years ago, it was the state of the art of our human space technology; and, we had stuffed it full of data about us back here on Earth, just in case it came across some other “beings” out there, somewhere, to let them know we were here… and friendly besides.

Just to prove it, we included a lot of our cultural examples, including samples by musical icons such as Beethoven, Mozart, and Chuck Berry (what…no Beatles… or Elvis? Egads!). Granted, that wasn’t much of a selection, but keep in mind, back then, we didn’t have the digital marvels of megabytes and nano-pixels we have today, so there wasn’t much room on board such a tiny craft. We might say it was the space equivalent of a message in a bottle. Something that would at least give any extraterrestrials some idea of what to expect from us…should they ever decide to reciprocate…or even actually plan to visit us.

Such presumption simply shows how full of ourselves we earthlings are, and how over-developed our egos are to think that any “alien’ species would either care about any of that data, or, that those samples of our music were anything but incomprehensible noise to them. As they say in Greek…hubris. Which brings to mind this bit of verse by Stephen Crane, from his little known book of poetry titled – War Is Kind -:

“A man said to the Universe:

Sir, I exist!

However, replied the Universe,

That fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

Well, after all those billions of kilometers of travel the only thing left for us to say about it is…Bon Voyage, Voyager, and keep on…keeping on.

CENTURION