Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Get outta here!

Voyager 1 has finally left the solar system and no longer feels the effects of the Sun's gravity (at least according to some). Ok, since my blog isn't a place I normally use to report on the latest news, why is this here? Well, growing up, I was utterly obsessed with all things Space. I could name major moons of every planet and also tell them apart by picture; I could tell you where various spacecraft had been. Basically, I was a space geek.

This all came from a fascination with the pictures relayed to us from so far away. I remember staying up very late one night just so I could see the latest pics from Voyager 2 as it neared Neptune. Every time I saw pics of far away planets or moons I would imagine what it would be like to fly with the spacecraft. How dark would it be? How big would the planets seem? Would you feel a sense of moving past the planet?

This wondering obviously lead me to aspire to become an astronaut. In fact, the Challenger disaster devastated me like none of my classmates. Of course, I didn't pursue the astronaut career...I chose something much more bland, but my fascination still remained.

So anyways, reading about the recent "death" of Galileo brought back thoughts of Jupiter, etc. But hearing news about the old-school Voyagers really takes me back to my childhood since I grew up fascinated with how such simple machines (especially by today's standards) could send back such amazing images. Here's to the ingenuity in NASA & JPL. I don't know if kids these days are fascinated by spacecraft like I was, but I don't know if such moments in history will every be repeated.

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