Now, Voyager

Ah, Voyager has left the building.

Yesterday NASA confirmed that the unmanned probe called Voyager 1, launched 36 years ago this month, has boldly gone where nothing from this planet has gone before. We’re pretty sure.

It’s doing a good job; but so is its sister craft. Voyager 2, is also still soldiering on. And I have a personal stake in V2.

Back in 1977 I was working for the Pasadena Star-News; I’d started as an intern at the beginning of the summer (just before my junior year in college), but when a couple of their reporters were invalided out, they brought me back as staff writer. Getting money to write stories every day. I thought I’d been hauled straight into heaven without all that pesky business of dying first.

They put me on General Assignment, with an emphasis on features, because it was always the human side of the stories that interested me. And I have a gift for it.

But on 20 August 1977, for some reason, the guy who reported the science beat wasn’t available to get out to Jet Propulsion Lab to cover the launch of Voyager 2 (which was sent up a couple of weeks before Voyager 1, but on a slower trajectory). So they sent me, one of my last assignments before the Fall semester started.

I didn't really know anything about the program, had never been to JPL, so I focused on what I do best: the people.

What I found was a bunch of mostly men (though a few women), in short-sleeved shirts, as high as it’s possible to be in a strict no-booze/no-drugs work environment. And before the days of energy-drinks. They were whooping and wheeing, just buzzing around the room like bees on supercharged pollen.

And what I remember was one of them explaining to me that what the whole Voyager program was “like putting together a huge jigsaw puzzle with the picture side down and you’re not sure you have all the pieces.” But they were thoroughly and completely dedicated to putting that sucker together and figuring out what to do with the picture that emerged.

I often thought of that when I watched Space Shuttle launches (and disasters). It’s a tremendous leap of faith to embark on projects like that.

Speed well, Voyager.