Yesterday I stumbled across the images that were sent to the starts with the Voyager space craft and I found it to be a much more emotional experience than I would have anticipated. I think it raised such strong emotions with me because the speech included by President Jimmy Carter is one of such optimism and hope.

Although I may seem pessimistic at times and tend to speak about the future in terms of doom and gloom I do remain blindingly hopeful about our abilities and capabilities. Unfortunately I am not as optimistic about what we will do and what will happen. Usually I am able to compartmentalize things enough that this grim distinction does not bother me but when reading the text we sent to the stars that wall came crumbling down and I was almost overcome by facing these conflicting emotions.

Here is the text:

This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some–perhaps many–may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.

Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America

At the time of this writing, Voyager 1 is over 18,469,800,000 Kilometers from Earth. Over 120 times as far away as the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

I really hope we have what it takes to resolve our conflicts and take our place among the stars. I hope we can prove that we deserve it. Right now I am not convinced, and that is heartbreaking.

As always, if you made it this far please take a second to share and vote!

Here are the images, enjoy!



Read more at NASA: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/scenes.html