With recently announced initiatives directing us to space exploration once again, with the space shuttle again in orbit, and with the recent announcement of a tenth planet discovered, it is worthwhile to look back at a piece of history in the first great era of planetary exploration, whose heyday is arguably the journeys of Voyager I and Voyager II, the last great interplanetary probes to make a grand tour of several (in fact, most) of the planets in our solar system. Considering the difference in technology in our daily lives from the 1970s to the present, it is remarkable indeed that people were able to get such results and spectacular findings from spacecraft that by today's technical standards would be considered substandard and behind-the-times. Yet the Voyager spacecraft had more than just a tour of the home worlds in mind -- unlike most craft humankind has sent into space, these were not planned to return to earth, crash into an atmospher, or get locked into an everlasting orbit of the sun. These were intentionally sent out into interstellar space, beyond the confines of our solar system. One has to wonder, since it will be at least 40,000 years before these craft encounter even the next nearest star on their trajectories, and even if humanity is still around, the transmitters on the Voyager won't be functional -- why send them?
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