Saturday, January 13, 2024

We Need a Voyager Movie Dammit!

Why hasn't there been a movie made about the Voyager space program? I'd fucking watch that over & over: its very existence is only possible thanks to a once-in-175-yeras phenomenon allowing for gravitational assist, one day maybe millions of years from now some other life form will discover the Golden Record on it and not only learn about human life on Earth but it will just happen to focus on the incredibly short span of years that coincides with our very own lifetimes (Hail to the King!), is presently traveling through interstellar space which I can't even try to wrap my stupid brain around and had a personal, direct effect on me twice:

The greatest countdown in 4th grade history being topped
(grrrrrrr 😡😡😡😡)

and

its rendezvous with Mars once thrilling a fourth-grade me...

The only time I ever wrote a letter and got one in return is in the 4th grade, when Mr. Futchko had us choose a planet and write to NASA with questions. I asked about Mars ("Hi NASA. What's Mars like? By the way, I'm not gonna be 36 and alone, right?"), and a coupla weeks later BLAM! a little packet with a bunch of pictures from I think Voyager's 1976 passing of Mars. It was unbelievable.

...so much I'd use use the moment 40 years later in my second book:

He told them how he’d been in love with her since they were in Mrs. Harris’ fourth grade social studies class, how she’d helped him choose Mars as the planet he’d write to NASA to ask for information about, and that when he got a package of photos of Mars from the Voyager space probe, he knew they were meant to be together. Sure, the two of them never actually spent any time together after that; she would go on to high school at St. Margaret’s while he went to the public high school and their social paths never seemed fit to cross, but Tim always felt that if Todd freakin’ Blanton could cross the Rubicon then goddammit, he could too.

Sadly, they think that by 2026 we'll lose any connection to either Voyager and they'll be lost to us forever; happily, you can keep up minute-by-minute on its NASA website.

Thank you, Voyagers.

No comments: