The Farthest Page #3

kind of like the eyes,

and the big antenna was the ears.

STONE:

We had eleven scientific instruments

peeking out to see what's out there.

BELL:

When everything is fully extended

to its greatest dimensions,

it's comparable in size

to sort of a small school bus.

A strange-looking being for our planet,

but perfectly happy in space.

[Beethoven's 5th]

[Beethoven's 5th]

[music continues]

[Tchenhoukoumen percussion, Senegal]

NARRATOR:

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

was one of twenty-seven pieces of music

chosen for the Golden Record.

FERRIS:
I became the producer

of only one record in my career,

and only two copies of it were made,

and they were both hurled off the earth,

so I don't know if that's

a credential or not.

[needle sliding off record]

[Izlel je Delyo Hajdutin

(Golden Record)]

The launch window for Voyager was set.

and they sure as hell weren't

going to wait for the record.

[Fairie Round--David Munrow]

LOMBERG:

We had six weeks to do it,

that's what always draws

the biggest gasp,

that you had to figure out a way

to explain the world to aliens,

and by the way it has to be

finished in six weeks.

[Melancholy Blues--Louis Armstrong]

FERRIS:
We had two goals

in making the Voyager record,

we wanted the music to represent

many different cultures around the world

and not just the culture of the society

that had built and launched

the spacecraft.

[Ugam--Azerbaijan bagpipes]

The other criterion was we

wanted it to be a good record.

[Mozart--Queen of the Night--Eda Moser]

LOMBERG:

It's a very idiosyncratic message.

It doesn't seem like something

made by a committee.

It's too quirky.

[Mozart--Queen of the Night--Eda Moser]

[Cranes in Their Nest,

Japan (Shakuhachi)]

FERRIS:

If you listen to the Voyager record,

it would be remarkable if you

didn't hear some pieces of music

that were quite unlike anything

you had heard before.

The Japanese shakuhachi piece

or the sixteen-year-old

pygmy girl singing

what's called an initiation song,

a kind of puberty song,

in the Ituri forest of Africa

is just unbelievably beautiful.

[Pygmy girl initiation song]

There was a certain amount

of hunting up rare records

here and there.

I remember the back of an Indian

appliance store in New York

where they had some Indian records,

and there was one copy of a raga

that we ended up putting on the record.

[Jaat Kahan Ho--India--Surshri]

[piano note]

[cello]

[cymbal crash]

FERRIS:
I would love

to have had a Bob Dylan piece.

But really there's only room

for at most one contemporary rock piece.

[electric guitar]

But you know you're up against

Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode,

which Bob Dylan himself would

admit is an awfully good single.

STEVE MARTIN:

It may be just four simple words,

but it is the first positive proof

that other intelligent beings

inhabit the universe.

LARAINE NEWMAN:

What are the four words, Cocuwa?

MARTIN:

Send more Chuck Berry.

[laughter and applause]

FERRIS:

The world is full of fantastic music,

and it goes without saying

there's a lot more great music

that's not on the Voyager record

than there is on it.

Which is a good thing, too,

I mean, if you imagine

living on a planet

that was so pathetic

that it only had 90 minutes

of decent music.

NARRATOR:

In the summer of 1977,

final preparations for two

launches began in Florida.

BELL:

When it was launched,

it was of course all folded up,

it was like origami.

LOCATELL:
Here was this almost

unexpected encapsulation.

I mean, we knew that we were

going to be encapsulated,

but the emotional effect on that

was kind of surprising,

I noticed that

in just looking around me.

I realized that this was the last time

any of us were going to see

the spacecraft with eyes.

And, um, that's a f...

that's a fairly moving experience.

[picture flash sounds]

NARRATOR:

Journalists converged on Cape Canaveral

to cover a once in a lifetime mission.

FERRIS:

When the reporters came to the launch,

they all wanted to know more

about the record.

Most of the press release drawings

show the other side of the spacecraft

so you can't see the record.

There was always a lot of

ambiguity in NASA about this.

There's no question that

the Voyager record is useless

from a scientific standpoint,

and the officials reluctantly

arranged a press conference.

[polka music plays]

FERRIS:

The press conference was a joke really.

It was held in a hotel room

separated by one of those

accordion folding barriers

from what was literally,

as memory serves me,

a Polish wedding reception.

We did the whole press conference

with the oompah sound of

a wedding reception next door.

But I think the public seemed to get it.

[polka music plays]

MAN ON LOUDSPEAKER:

Environmental control, ready.

MAN:
Roger.

KOHLHASE:

We actually launched Voyager 2 first,

and this gave the media,

uh, drove them nuts.

We launched Voyager 1 later,

but it was launched

on a faster trajectory,

so it overtook Voyager 2

in December of 1977.

From that point on, Voyager 1

always got to the planet

before Voyager 2,

and the press was happy,

they understood it.

SPEAKER OVER TANNOY:

We have just had a report

from John Casani,

the Voyager project manager,

that we'll be able

to count down at 10:25.

[gentle guitar music]

NARRATOR:

After five years of planning,

the assembly of the spacecraft's

65,000 parts

and untold mathematical calculations,

it all came down to this.

[gentle guitar music]

SPEAKER:

Five, four, three, two, one.

We have ignition and we have lift-off.

LOCATELL:

You see those solids ignite,

and you are really not prepared

for what's about to occur.

[gentle guitar music]

The sound waves then catch up

and then this forceful shaking,

the body is actually moved

in resonance with this energy,

shaking it, right.

[audio of rocket taking off]

LOMBERG:

We were sitting in bleachers,

and they keep you pretty far

from the launch vehicle

because they can explode, and

it's basically, it's a big bomb.

LINDA SPILKER:

So there's a little bit

of holding your breath and

wanting to make sure you see it

get that first little motion

off the pad starting into space.

[atmospheric guitar music]

DRAKE:

We were all thinking this thought.

There it goes, it's going to be

out there to represent us

for the next five billion years.

[audio of crowd cheering and clapping]

LOCATELL:

There were outbursts of joy.

We were on our way!

CASANI:

And then we launched it,

and then other things went crazy.

[piano music]

[radio noises]

The spacecraft began to do things

that we had no expectation

that it would have done.

STONE:

Voyager was not in control of itself,

it's just riding this big rocket,

and that was shaking it in such a way

that it thought it was failing,

and so it started

switching off various boxes,

changing to the back-up this,

to the back-up that.

Trying to figure out why

all this stuff was happening.

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