The incredible advances we’ve made in exploring the solar system.
Tonight at work – and I’m not sure how this came up, but – a co-worker said something about going to Saturn. He thought it would take weeks.
I said “actually about 4 years.”
“Wait…what?”
He didn’t realize that we’ve been, and if we want to go back? Anywhere from 3 to 6 years in space.
Then he said “yeah, but Pluto.”
Nine years.
“Wait…what?”
We’ve been there. It took nine years.
And the Voyager probes? They’ve been speeding out into space at just shy of 40k mph since Jimmy Carter was President and they’re barely beyond the edge of what is traditionally thought of as the solar system. Into the Kuiper Belt.
Yeah, that’s a mind-paralyzing thought in and of itself, but the really cool thing is that we’ve done it.
Sixty years ago we hadn’t even landed a man on the Moon, but since then humanity has landed probes on Venus, Mars, Titan (!) and done multiple fly-by’s of Jupiter, Saturn, and sent spacecraft so far away it takes almost an entire day to reach the Earth at light speed.
We’re actually pretty good at this space exploration stuff.