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space probes and football

I read 17776 about a week ago and besides being totally blown away and in love with the concept, it also got me thinking. Now I, being a fanfic lover (as many on this hellsite are), ran to ao3 for fan content as soon as I could. And, of course, I ran to Tumblr as well. And then I maybe fell down a wormhole.

Those who are familiar with the story will know that JUICE mentions this plaque on Pioneer Ten with naked people on it. We don't get a ton of context for that, so I obviously Wikipedia'ed it because what else was I supposed to do? Just accept the fact that a space probe had naked people on it and move on? I think not.

Here's a photo of the plaque, for reference:

So, to quickly break down everything on there, it's clearly a man and a woman in the nude, and then we have the hyperfine transition of hydrogen in the top left (don't ask me what that is; I have NO CLUE), a radial pattern to show the distance of pulsars to the sun and center of the galaxy?, and then, of course, the solar system at the bottom and a silhouette of the spacecraft at scale behind the people.

All this detail was reserved for two plaques: one on the Pioneer Ten and one on Pioneer Eleven, from 1972 and 1973 subsequently. At this point we've lost contact with both probes, whose purposes were pretty much to observe space and the solar system. The inclusion of the plaques was purely to provide some sort of information on the Earth if the probes were at any point encountered by intelligent alien life.

Next I want to turn my attention to the Voyager Golden Record, two identical records made for about the same purpose as the plaques that were launched on their crafts in 1977. What's interesting is that we still have contact with the Voyager probes, whose original missions were to explore far reaches of the solar system but have since moved far beyond the Sun and into interstellar space and are reporting on that.

Now, the records carried on Voyagers 1 and 2 contain sounds and images of the Earth, including over a hundred photos and sounds of human life, greetings, and music. The records also have many engravings similar to that of the plaques on them.

17776 posits that we live in a universe with no other intelligent life, and that people are perfectly okay with that. But all evidence of these "time capsules" says otherwise. All evidence says that people are always looking to space for more -- for answers that space may not be able to give.

I think that if we really were alone on this planet, it would be terrifying. Again, 17776 poses the idea that humans inherently seek out play above all other change. But isn't exploration play in itself? Isn't play just another form of discovery? And if it is, isn't space exploration and discovery inherently human?

I think people have by far accepted that there is a nonzero chance of aliens existing. And in a universe that is, for all intents and purposes, infinitely expanding, a nonzero chance is practically a confirmation, isn't it? Even in a universe as insanely empty as 17776's, I can't imagine humanity giving up on that small chance that we're not alone out here.

The idea that we're not unique in our existence is strongly non-creationist, which I will admit freely. It belies the fact that we are not a chosen people after all. But I think that we have a built-in desire to not want to be alone in the big, dark universe. Not a pale blue dot within infinite vastness, but rather part of a larger group.

Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in space ever. I think that's incredible. Maybe one day, extraterrestrial life will stumble upon our probes and play our records and hear the whale sounds recorded on them. Maybe they won't. But all signs show that we want them to.

#17776 #17776 football #voyager 1 #voyager 2 #pioneer 9 #pioneer 10 #pioneer 11 #anyways #that's just me rambling about nothing #i'm not even trying to make a big point #i just wanted to talk about space #and voyager #and pioneer #and i want to learn more #today i learned #til #okay #enough tags

And yes, I'm talking about the recent popular media I consumed by the name of Cyberpunk Edgerunners and Reverse 1999. There are a lot of other creative media that do this, too. I would simply chalk it up to a difference of culture because I had talked to some Russians, Ukrainians, and Chinese minors online and the sexual things they knew at a young age aren't something to be alarmed of. Japanese kids and teens are pretty sexual too. My cause of worry as the adult at the end of the conversation is that their sexual knowledge isn't from any sort of sex education. Circling back to fandom culture and pop media, I really thought some of the games I play and movies I watch are for adults or at least the characters are aged up. I would have a fun time enjoying content...until I look it up and see their ages. Sigh, this is why I only like to draw original art...

#reverse 1999 #cyberpunk edgerunners #media literacy #why are kids and teens #looking up the ages of reverse 1999 characters are humbling #idk i will always stan Zima and Moissan tho #and Voyager #comics #support small artists #artists on tumblr #small artist #digital artist #guys am still sick #cough be gone

so much star trek and so little time...

#i want to rewatch discovery #and lower decks #and prodigy #and voyager #and deep space nine #and enterprise #and the original series #and finally get around to rewatching the animated series #but alas. full-time study #(and other things)#star trek

Ronald Moore, co-screenwriter on MI2, on his and co-writer Brannon Braga’s writing process:

Ronald: What we did is we pretty much wrote together. One of us would be at the computer, the other one would pace and talk, and then we would kind of switch. I mean probably I did more pacing and talking and he did more writing if you really of added it up, but we both kind of did both things. So you would just do it a scene at a time, and we would just write in chronological order linearly through the script, and we’d just, ‘okay, fade in, and it’s this setting,’ and we would both go back and forth, and then I would look at the computer and see what he had written, and then we’d move on to the next scene. It was very much—it was very intense. It was a very intensive experience because you’re with them, all day, for hours and hours upon end, and—yeah, that’s how we wrote. Charles: Do you normally use outlines, or notecards, or what’s your process like? Ronald: I think we were doing—we would go back to our Star Trek offices, and we had white dry erase boards. And we would sketch some ideas down on the white dry erase board and then write it up on an outline and take it to Tom. And then as we kind of progressed we stopped using the erase boards, and it was pretty much, we just had the laptop. It was one of the crude early laptops that we had, and we kind of worked on that, quite a bit. And Brannon would take notes with Tom, on his laptop or by hand, and then we would kind of go back, and we’d rework those outlines, then we would bring them back, print them off, bring them back to Tom, and just keep going back and forth like that. Charles: When you write, what is your, what do you prefer to do as your process … ? Ronald: Well in general in television I like working with cards on a board. You know, in a room, you do a break, and we use, the best system I’ve found is there’s now a white dry erase board that has these magnetic cards, they’re like strips of vinyl, you can get them in different sizes. So you can write them like traditional notecards and slap them up on the board, it’s a lot easier than dealing with the push-pins of it all, and then you can erase and readjust the cards, instead of having to rewrite the whole notecard. And it’s just not quite as messy as just having a white dry erase board.

- Light the Fuse, ep 101 (27.51 – 30.04)