Thirty years ago two small spacecrafts were launched a few weeks apart to explore our solar system and report back to the mother ship - earth. Oddly enough Voyager 2 was launched first in August 1977 followed a few weks later by its twin - Voyager 1. The mission was projected to last for five years. Fortunately (and thoughtfully), their NASA engineers and designers neglected to add a cut-off switch that would have ended those transmissions. In one case every day (Voyager 2), and in the other once a month (Voyager 1) these tiny radios in a bottle have been performing those tasks with marvelous consistency.
To think of all that has occurred in the intervening years - the cycles of births and deaths, the moments of relative calm interspersed between days and years of conflict. The fall of one empire, and the diminishment of another. The early emergence of still another empire just on the horizon. In all that time they have still manage to withstand the rigors of such an intense environment of remote space.
The
engineers in Australia still tracking and conversing with the Voyagers need to use equipment that is of that vintage. Modern computers are not up to the task of sustaining such an Entish pace of conversation. And now some 15 billion kilometers from home, the conversation is but a whisper. But whisper or not, the conversation, the link to us, is still there.
At the time the technology was cutting edge. Today, a three-dollar calculator probably has more computing power, and a flashlight uses more energy. Yet this little message in a bottle continues to float in space carrying with it a record of who we are as a species, and where we live in case anyone wants to drop by for a visit sometime.
There is something hopeful about this worth noting.
In this past Sunday's SF Gate there is an excellent article tracing the origins of Silicon Valley. It lays to rest several pearls of common wisdom about that origin, including how it rose suddenly out of the farms and orchards near San Jose in the early 790s. But perhaps most interesting is how the article looks back to the early days of radio for the taproot of this history, and then moving through the days of Fairchild, and the "Fairchildren" that followed. The pictures that accompany the article are gems as well.
