Happy 30th Birthday, Pioneer 10

tlon writes: "Pioneer 10, the spacecraft that brought us the first pictures of Jupiter, turned 30 today. Launched in 1972, the probe is now some 7.4 billion miles away, as it cruises out towards Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus. NASA will attempt to contact the spacecraft today, (it was successfully contacted last year), but the round trip time is over 22 hours. How's that for a ping latency? See Nasa's Pioneer 10 Page for more details."

Comments

Oh, really?

[Steve Franklin]

Like the American Indians who fed the Pilgrims? Do I really have to draw you a picture? "Over here, Cortez! Let us help you land your boats. Here, have some corn and mashed potatoes." Just keep one thing in mind. You don't get to "play again" in the real world. This isn't a video game. If there are as many habitable planets out there as is becoming apparent, a good percentage of them can be expected to be populated by something other than clones of Mother Theresa. In that environment, you don't take off your red long johns and run them up the flag pole. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, "Speak softly and carry a couple of squadrons of star fighters."

But that's really not the issue here. The fact is the geniuses at NASA are still operating in Lavoisier mode. These guys really don't think there *is* anybody out there. They send their little craft out of the solar system and send radio messages to the stars and listen for reruns of alien TV shows, but deep down they're still living in their little perfect Newtonian universe where the sky is unsullied by living organisms. That's how they can presume to endanger the lives of every man, woman, and child on this planet: they still think that any being advanced enough to travel in space must be a god, or at the very least an archangel, i.e., Adamski's "space brothers." No Osama bin Ladens in starships. Perish the thought. Only us lowly earthlings could possibly have monsters like that [irony].

Troll? Well excuse me. I can't express a practical opinion without being called names? Methinks thou art the troll.