Understanding Space Travel (17 of 22)

Understanding Space Travel

I believe that humans will be in space for the best possible reason which is, we want to go there.
There's, there's a place for both.
For both robotic explorers and for human explorers......
And I think throughout you know, the history of space exploration, we've had the robotic explorers but, it's the human exploration that really captures the imagination and it really captures the soul of exploration and the soul of the human being.
The robotic spacecraft really are extensions of our senses.
They're our eyes and ears......
They're the way we can currently explore places we cannot go.
In fact, Voyager I, a robotic spacecraft launched twenty years ago, is now heading out of the solar system towards the stars.

Because Voyager I would be the first envoy of man ever to venture beyond our tiny section of the universe, the late Carl Sagan headed up a cross-disciplinary team to determine exactly what messages from earth should be sent along.
Ultimately the spacecraft was launched carrying a gold-coated record containing one hundred eighteen photographs and a large selection of music and sounds of earth.
Including greetings in fifty-five different languages.
That's Gugerati for "Greetings from a human-being of the earth.
Please contact." I think it was our sending which was the most important symbol rather than the idea that anything would ever actually receive the message.
It was the fact that we, as a civilization, had reached the threshold of being able to send such a message.