JCC Voyager I is now the first human-made object to leave the Solar System

Source www.nasa.gov

I think this is humanity's biggest achievement ever.

 

* Obligatory V'Ger Reference*

 

Damn it!

Don't worry, it'll be back.

 

The radio signal from Voyager as it was leaving the solar system as seen from the VLBA.

 

Yeah this happens every few months depending on what group defined what as the edge of the solar system. About as frequent as "magnetic monopoles" are discovered.

Regardless, it's gone pretty far.

 

I hope the Event Horizon eventually picks it up.

 

11 billion miles, 107 A.U., in over 30 years. if it were pointed at Proxima/Alpha Centauri it would take 70,000 years to get there. It is not pointed that way.

There are 4 such probes, Voyager 1 and 2, and Pioneer 10 and 11. I always thought it would make a cool hard scifi flick to go get one and bring it back as a goal. I think it would make an interesting real life goal for some future group of buckaroos with better technology.



I don't know what it is about the general form, but I have always loved how it looks.

 

Go forth, brave V'Ger! Go forth, and seek the Creator!

 

Each of those times were "rumors" and were never officially confirmed by NASA. This was.

 

V'Ger was Voyager VI, a fictional spacecraft. It did look a lot like the two real ones, though.

[face_beatup_nerd]

 

Eh, it will get destroyed in target practise by a Klingon bird of prey.

 

Each time this is announced, soon after scientists announce that the Solar System is a little bigger than they thought.

I remember the Voyager leaving the Solar System back when I was in elementary school. And in junior high. And in high school. And in college. And in grad school. And now as I'm working my first full job.

 

Next up, the Oort Cloud. It'll only take Voyager 1 about 650 years to get to the inner edge.

 

Killjoy.

 

Yes, I know it's Voyager Two, but V-1 has a golden record on it featuring bits and pieces of our language and sounds of the Earth. Foolishness, I say! Has nobody read The Forge of God??? :D

 

So how long before G1 Megatron finds the golden disk on Voyager and encodes his message for Beast Wars Megatron to find?

 

Lovely. It has only taken our race 36 years to pollute interstellar space. One of these days some aliens will stop by and address the UN requesting that we go out there and pick up our trash. When we tell them that we don't have the tech to go out there and grab it, the aliens will get snotty and then tell us that we shouldn't expect any help from them as we should have thought about this before we began to send our litter out into space.

On a more serious note, it is both encouraging and mindblowing to see just how far into space something made by humans has gone. It still seems strange that we're doing this when 500 years earlier we were still crossing the ocean in wooden boats to two explore two newly discovered (at least by Europeans) continents and how strange the new lands must have seemed to then. All I can do is hope that something so exciting and new like that will come up in my lifetime. Doubt it, but stuff like this does get my hopes up ever so slightly.

 

How did you know my middle name?!

 

Eh, I was more excited when the New York Times reported that that genetically-engineered warlord got his tuckus handed to him and fled to outer space with his nutty followers.

Now that would make a much more interesting movie...

 

I keep wanting Voyager I to encounter some kind of phenomenon that'll cause it to return... 500 years in the future.

 

My dividing line for "Are you a good person" is if you think this is awesome news or not.

 

Voyager passed an arbitrary line in space that sounds newsworthy!

...yay?

 

So, gonna mark that a "Not"...