The Golden Record
If you’re like me, you hadn’t even been born yet in 1977. That was the year that NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft, two unmanned space probes intended to explore the far reaches of our solar system and beyond. Unlike all other spacecraft launched before them, Voyagers 1 and 2 were never intended to ‘orbit’ anything; not designed to circumnavigate any particular celestial body. These probes were built to head in one direction: away from earth.
They each visited Jupiter and Saturn for scheduled photo-ops between ‘79 and ‘80, the images from which were beamed back to earth before they continued onward. Voyager 2 must have bribed an engineer so it could also visit Uranus in ‘86 and Neptune in ‘89. Both are now brazenly speeding beyond the reaches of the Sun’s gravitational pull. But then, that was 1977, and NASA has since launched plenty of cool missions. So what?
Well, one of the geniuses over at NASA (or possibly a beauricrat) realized that Voyagers 1 and 2 were about to become Earth’s first ambassadors to the stars. Long after their sensors would cease to beam information back to the mother-rock, these probes would still be electronic artifacts of this planet. And what if they were discovered by an alien life-form or some other consciousness, wherever or whenever that might happen? Luckily, said Nasa-genius also had a sense of style, and not wanting to give the gift of space-trash, they dreamed up…
A gold-plated copper phonograph of 115 images, 90 minutes of music recordings, 13 minutes of audio recordings (natural and man-made) and greetings recorded in 55 languages, including ‘whale’. They even ran out the record with Ann Druyan’s brainwaves. And all for the single purpose of communicating the existance of humanity on earth (or Timestamped-1977 humanity on earth, to be specific).
Yet where does one begin? It’s not as if it would be simple enough to write a letter that begins with “Dear Extraterrestrials,”. Good thing they had a Cornell Man on the job; someone who knows how to REALLY begin at the beginning.
In the subsequent set of posts, I will be curating selections of images, audio and text from The Golden Record. Though most acknowledge the unlikelihood that the Voyagers will ever be found or their records ever played, The Golden Record remains an enthralling time-capsule from 1977, as well as a fascinating attempt at beginning from the beginning.
And so shall we.
