They don't build them like that anymore

Space
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Forty-five years ago today (Sept 5th), Voyager 1 lifted off. And it’s still returning useful data!

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Voyager 1 and 2 continue to impress the heck out of me. Very robust spacecraft.

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Considering all JPL spacecraft are only guaranteed to work for 90 days according to a former JPL worker that also volunteered at Planes of Fame until he passed away in 2013.

Wheels

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An ode to Voyager written about a decade ago , set in the future .

Alone
Alone you fly
Through an emptiness you can not feel
And time incomprehensible
With the planet of your birth
An infinitesimal blue dot
Your Sun a star among many
And those that built you
So long dead

Alone
Alone you fly
Bearer of philosophy
A work of Science and Art
Mathmatic’s child
An engineering marvel
A monument to what men could do
With slide rules

With an isotopic metabolism
A digital brain
A crystalline heartbeat
And hypersensation
You recorded Jupiter’s plasmic chorus
The shepard moons of Saturn’s rings
The plumes of Io , Europan oceans
The comet trails of Callisto
Titan’s tides and methane rain
Mimas and Hyperion

Before your heliospheric exit
To brunt the particulate winds
Of interastral flight
Your final mission
Merely begun
Carrying humanity’s soul
To infinity

The images and sounds
Of an exquisite Mogul monument to love
Balinese dancers
Amish barn-builders
And old men
Whale songs
Chuck Berry and Mozart
Monument Valley
And the nature from which we sprang
How cruelly the poet
Is denied his place
Unable to speak an alien tongue
Yet what you are is poetry

Soon your senses will shut down
One by one
The narrowing of a dim mechanistic near-conciousness
Your nerves paralytic
With no messages to carry
You will slowly die
One half-life at a time
Absolute Zero
Reclaiming its own

Yet you carry on
Ballistically
A shot in the infinite dark
Stating we were
And asking the question
“Are we alone” ?

Also , anyone else remember the “V’ger” episode of Star Trek ?

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Actually it was from the first movie.

Wheels

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Superb sir, thank you for shining up my day!

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Thank you . Glad you found some merit in it .