The Farthest Page #12

PORCO:

It was like humanity

had just become an interstellar species.

It was like knocking on eternity's door.

STERNBERG:

When the Voyagers' power sources go dead

and when the spacecraft

can no longer send back

any useful information,

that's really the point

at which the Golden Record

becomes the primary function

of those missions,

that when everything else is turned off,

those records are still floating

somewhere in interstellar space,

completing the last part of the mission.

[splashing noise]

LOCATELL:
The chance that

advanced intelligence beyond us

would detect oh, hey,

there is a radiating body

coming into our area,

let's go out and find out

what this bottle in the ocean,

what message it might have.

Now is that a grand mystery?

Whoa!

NICK SAGAN:

I love the optimism of it,

I love the idea that these are things

that are meaningful to us,

maybe you'll find them meaningful, too,

hypothetical alien, and yeah,

it just touches my heart.

FERRIS:

One thing we know about a metal record

with these grooves engraved on it

is that information is good

for at least one billion years.

The inside of the record,

which was more protected

from cosmic rays,

two billion years or more.

BELL:
There's no wind,

water, rain, weathering,

there's no planets or comets

that they're going to run into,

and over thousands, millions,

billions of years

they're predicted to remain

pretty intact.

NICK SAGAN:
Because there's

no proof that there's anything

that Voyager's ever going to encounter,

ultimately, it's a story about us.

LOMBERG:

Voyager is rarely out of my thoughts.

Always some little part of me

is wondering where is Voyager tonight.

Whenever I look up at the night stars,

I look in the direction

that each of them is going.

SODERBLOM:
There is never going

to be another mission like it.

It was the first and last

of its own kind.

KRAUSS:
Maybe someday,

another being might find Voyager

and at least know of our existence.

It's highly unlikely,

but it's not impossible.

And that small possibility

surely gives us hope.

LOCATELL:
Is the universe

any different than it was then?

No.

But are we different?

Absolutely!

The thrill of the discoveries,

reaching the heliopause,

completing the Grand Tour,

I mean man, our child has just made it.

[guitar/xylophone music]

HANSEN-KOHARCHECK:

We're the generation

that sent something out into space

that's not only going to outlive us,

it's going to outlive our star.

Four billion years from now when

our sun turns into a red giant,

Voyager is still going to be trucking

out there through the stars,

and the songs of our time

are going to be out there.

Chuck Berry is still out there...

We'll still be out there.

[contemporary guitar interpretation of

"Johnny B. Goode" plays over credits]

[music continues]

[music continues]

[music continues]

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