The Farthest Page #2

in many of the NASA missions

to the planets,

including the Voyager one.

He was one of the scientists

on the Voyager imaging team,

but he also was the astronomer

who as much as any one person

made the study of

extraterrestrial life credible.

CARL SAGAN:

A comment by Thomas Carlyle,

a somewhat crusty old fellow

who upon thinking about the stars said,

"A sad spectacle.

If they be inhabited, what

a scope for misery and folly.

If they be not inhabited...

what a waste of space."

[laughter]

CASANI:

Carl Sagan was a good friend of mine,

and I called him up and said,

"Hey, would you be willing to undertake

to come up with something

for us to put

on the Voyager spacecraft?"

He says, "Yes, sure."

And he told me he could do it

for 25,000 bucks,

so I authorized him

to go ahead and do it,

and I sort of was hands-off

at that point.

BELL:
The Golden Record

followed in the footsteps

of a project called the Pioneer plaque.

CASANI:
The Pioneer spacecraft

had some line drawings

of a male and female form,

and some people went absolutely bonkers.

I don't know if you've seen it,

but it's the most innocent thing

you can imagine,

and it caused a lot of commotion.

But I thought that was great.

LOMBERG:
At first Carl thought

they'd simply do another plaque,

maybe with some more information,

but Frank Drake...

a brilliant theoretical physicist

but also a very hands-on kind of guy,

he came up with the idea

that for the same amount

of weight and space,

you could send a phonograph record.

[harp music]

DRAKE:
The people who actually

did the science part of Voyager

are always jealous and mad

because the Golden Record

gets more attention

than all the wonderful things they did

exploring the outer planets

of the solar system

except Pluto and all that.

But the main attention goes

to the Golden Record.

Because of the aura

that surrounds anything to do

with extraterrestrial intelligent life,

any kind of effort to contact

extraterrestrial life

is more fascinating

than knowing the chemical makeup

of a mineral on Mars or something.

[laughs]

LOMBERG:

The record is an old-style LP recording.

The only difference is it's on metal,

and that's so it will last a long time.

TIMOTHY FERRIS:

And it was recorded at half-speed

so that gave us two hours of total time.

An hour and a half of it

was devoted to music

and the other half hour contains

all of the other data on the record,

the natural sounds of Earth,

the spoken greetings

and the encoded photographs of Earth.

LOMBERG:
One of the first

questions a lot of people ask

is, well, they'll never

figure out how to play it.

And in fact, we included

a cartridge and stylus

in the package with the record,

and the drawing on the cover

of the record shows the method

by which the stylus is to be

placed on the record.

BELL:

Maybe what's written on it

will seem like kindergarten

scribbles to them,

but they should be able to figure it out

if they've got some smart minds

or whatever's in their heads,

if they even have heads.

[spraying sounds]

KOHLHASE:

What I find interesting

is to protect it from the dust

and tiny particles of the journey,

they put a cover over it,

and on the cover was engraved

the location of Earth,

our solar system,

in terms of its direction

from different pulsars.

CASANI:
A lot of people said,

well, why would you do that?

I said what do you mean?

They say, well, why would you

announce where you are,

you know, because there

are aliens out there,

that probably raid planets

and use them for food

or eat the people or make them slaves.

You know, if they find it,

their technology is probably

more advanced than ours,

they'll come here and destroy us,

so why would you do something like that.

Why would these people expose themselves

to our voracious appetite?

They must be very altruistic, you know?

[whale sounds]

[radio signals scrambling

and faint radio chatter]

NARRATOR:
In 1972, preparation

for the mission got underway.

Other great journeys of discovery...

by Magellan, Columbus, Da Gama...

all involved more than one ship.

And so would Voyager.

Two spacecraft would be built...

two chances for success.

[birds and wildlife noises]

BELL:

One of the things I just admire most

about the engineers who built Voyager

is that they're always thinking

about the most improbable things

happening.

You know, you want to take those people

on a camping trip with you

because they will think of...

well, you've got to bring...

what if these bugs come out,

what if the tent gets flooded,

what if you run out of gas,

what if you can't

start the fire, you know.

They're the what if people,

and when you're sending

something out into space

you can't go do a service call,

you can't bring it back,

so your what if list

had better be like that long

or you're not going to be able

to survive.

[machines spinning and grinding]

FRANK LOCATELL:

These projects begin

with a conceptualization period.

How do we arrange the spacecraft,

how do we take

the communications system,

this large 12-foot diameter

fixed antenna,

and arrange it relative

to the propulsion system?

The spacecraft took on

the dimension of being a child,

and our design teams, you know,

were like kind of parents.

This was actually a nurturing process.

Bringing that child,

if you will, into reality.

CASANI:
All spacecraft are made

basically of the same things,

silicon and aluminum, that's about it.

You know, that's probably 95% of it.

Silicon and aluminum is cheap

until you start making stuff

out if it, you know.

[beeping machines

and low bass drum beats]

RICH TERRILE:
1972 was when

you had the technology freeze,

remember we launched in 1977,

so you freeze technology

several years earlier,

and at the time the biggest

computers in the world

were comparable to the kinds of things

we have in our pockets today,

and I'm not talking about a cell phone.

I'm actually talking about a key fob.

CASANI:

What's wrong with 70s technology?

I mean, you're looking at me,

I'm a 30s technology, right?

I don't apologize for the limitations

that we were working with at the time.

We milked the technology

for what we could get from it.

ED STONE:

Voyager is about 800 kilograms.

Its main antenna is 12 feet in diameter,

which was the largest we could launch.

BELL:

There's this body,

this ten-sided can called the bus,

and that's got all the

electronics and the computers.

And that's got these arms and

these appendages that stick out.

It has these feet

that connected it to the rocket

and then a really long arm

with a magnetic field sensor

on it over here

and another arm over there

with this plutonium power supply

to give it its electricity.

You can't keep that too close

to the spacecraft

because it will radiate the spacecraft.

And another arm with this device

that had the cameras

and other instruments on it

that could point around,

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