I’m old enough to remember a similar thrill in 1957 when Sputnik went up. Turned on my ham receiver and heard “beep…beep…beep…”
No video, no digital color pictures, no infrared cameras, no pressure sensors, so solar wind detectors, no uplinks, no downlinks, no web sites, no cosmic-ray amalgimators, no death rays, no remote-controlled probes, no nothing.
Only “Beep…beep…beep…”
And it was exciting! Just think! Man (yeah, the Ruskis, but still mankind) actually had launched something into space and it was orbiting the planet very 90 minutes! Whoopee!
Nowdays I could probably do the same thing with a $99 satellite/rocket kit from Toys R Us.
Is anyone else just flat-out gobsmacked by the basic reality of the circumstances ofthis mission? Human beings built a machine, crossed their fingers, and flung it out into an inconceivably huge void, and years later it falls on an infinitesimal rock and beams back a stream of photographs and other information, which arrive back here on Earth over an hour after being transmitted, and which any ordinary peon anywhere on the planet can peruse at leisure on our personal computer screens as long as they have web access?
And it worked just SO right. Count me in as another one who got that feeling all over again.
Way to go, ESA and NASA, ya done good.
“Don’t get any closer, *ß¡¶D!”
“Why”
“It’s one’a dem alien vessel things!”
“What, a Flying Q¿6«çw Pot? Don’t be silly!”
" No, they’re real! One of them landed in Mr.
When did this probe launch? Seven years ago? That was 1999?
I am thrilled. I am in awe at our intelligence and potential. I am verklempt at our ability to reach for the stars and land on distant worlds. I am pleased as punch at the success. I am overwhelmed at our accomplishments.
I’m slightly disappointed that it didn’t land in a lake. But only slightly. How cool is it to get a bug’s-eye view of the surface, when only a few days ago we were limited to a few glimpses through the clouds!
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of Titan
I have to admit, while listening to the sound file of Huygens descending through the atomosphere of Titan, I was reminded not so much of wind as jumping randomly from one broadcastless channel on a radio to another to listen to the different varieties of white noise I might discover. I heard a reference on NPR to “wind”, which I assume would mean something differed in some segment of the recordings to suggest a coherent directional movement of gasses past the descending Huygens other than what one would expect of a microphone dropped into dead air. My ears could detect no such variation, as I alluded, but I lack training and analytical tools to discern such a thing at any fine level. Or, perhaps, there’s another sound file I haven’t heard yet?
How cool is it to get a bug’s-eye view of the surface, when only a few days ago we were limited to a few glimpses through the clouds!
