Did you know that there are not one, but TWO spacecrafts that are nearly outside of our solar system? Am I the only one that thinks that’s fucking crazy? Two thousand years ago we were making stone castles… now we have small boxes that are about to go whizzing into open space to whatever their fate may be.

It’s amazing the things that we have done in terms of space travel. Not only do we have countless satellites orbiting our planet which we rely on daily, but we sent men and probes to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, and beyond. Currently, Voyager 1 is not only the furthest man-made object from the Sun, it is the furthest natural-made object not including comets that are on long paths.

To put things in perspective: it is farther away than Pluto by a long shot. It is so far away that NASA has to wait nearly 15 hours to receive data from it. It is a massive 9.87 BILLION miles from our planet. I get pissed walking out to my car and this thing is nearly 10 billion miles from home.

Even further, it will come within two light years of another star in a mere 40,000 years. A long time to wait if you ask me. However, just in case, NASA scientists placed two golden records on it containing audio and imagery of the life and culture of Earth. Though its likely a bit dated at this point, it would be interesting for later humans or aliens to find it.

My only fear with that kind of device is that, what if they lack the technology to play the record, either being too advanced(try finding something that plays that old automatic piano sheet music, for example), or not advanced enough. Or, what if it collides with an asteroid or comet of some kind. Or happens to be engulfed in the gravity of a star that it may yet pass…. who knows.

Either way, I was thinking about it today and was kind of shitting my pants at the idea that objects can really be this far away from earth when, less than 50 years ago, we could barely escape this planet.

Some food for though…