Voyager: Exploration, Space, and the Third Great Age of Discovery

by Stephen J. Pyne

"Blooms with such glorious rushes of exalted prose that I was dog- earing almost every page." -- The New York Times Book Review

As debate over the future of NASA heats up, award-winning author Stephen J. Pyne presents America's greatest space expeditions as the latest chapter in a continuous saga of discovery that goes back centuries. Pyne's luminous narrative not only recounts the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions, launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets, but also fixes their place in Western civilization's urge to explore-an impulse that links NASA's scientists with Magellan, Columbus, Cook, Lewis and Clark, and other intrepid seekers through the ages. Pyne's eye-opening look at what he calls the third age of discovery "reminds readers of the rich cultural history that underlies humankind's exploration of the cosmos" ( Science News ).

Genres: Science, History, Nonfiction, Space, Astronomy, History Of Science, Technology

464 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2010

Reviews

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm very disappointed. I wanted more details on Voyager...on the rise and fall of NASA's planetary exploration mission...I wanted COLOUR pictures! But all I get are hints of the behind the scenes drama...and a long, drawn-out thesis on how the Voyagers are an extension of the great waves and ages of past exploration. It isn't that I'm against the subject (I teach it, for heaven's sake), but all the digressions irritated me. I wanted to get back into space. I wanted to get back into JPL and NASA headquarters. Instead, the author wants to wax lyrically. By all means, do so...but couldn't it take place somewhere else? It could also benefit from a bit more subtlety; the message here is a thumb tack, being assaulted by a sledgehammer.

[Noah Guerin · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Going into this book, I thought this was going to be a book about the Voyager spacecraft and its voyage across the solar system, perhaps getting into the challenges, successes, discoveries, and perhaps cultural significance.

I was wrong.

This book is 80% about the history of exploration, 10% about Voyager's place in the history of exploration, and 10% about all that stuff above. I almost peed my pants laughing while reading the afterword where the author seemed to indicate that they actually trimmed down the references to exploration!

I found that the author takes an interesting idea, that Voyager is a continuation and a new age of Western exploration, same as Columbus or Magellan, and milks it until it's dry. I think that they could have made a few compelling chapters about how it relates to the history of exploration but spending as much time as they did on it just felt repetitive. Obviously, there were a few good points and connections made but again, they could have collected those interesting points into a chapter or two, not make it the entire book.

[Michael Duane Robbins · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping when I saw the title that this would actually be about the Voyager space missions, that it would focus on the flybys of the Outer Planets and all the discovering appertained. Oo boy. I understand the author’s purpose in trying to link the so-called Third Age of Discovery with the grand voyages of the past, but quite honesty, I don’t give a good damn about that. I don’t give a good goddamn about the politics or the Cold War machinations behind the scenes, or the ‘God gold and greed’ motivations of explorers’ past.
I expected a bit more than a glossing over the planning, assembly and launch of the grand tour. One chapter, ‘Missing Mars’, gives us at best a couple of sentences whereby both Voyagers breeze harmlessly past the Red Planet, plus 20 pages of exposition peripherally related to Mars. So it goes. This is as bad as the Harry Potter novels, where the villains blow 20 pages reciting all the past slights, real or imagined, that Harry has inflicted on them. Very little detail on the Voyager program, pages and pages on the ocean-going voyages of old, over and over again. Next time maybe the author can do a tome actually devoted to Voyager; for now I am disappointed.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting enough book about the Voyager mission, but I do wish it was just about the Voyager mission. Pyne focuses on Voyager but situates the mission within the history of exploration in general, namely great voyages in the 1400s and 1500s and then additional expeditions into the 1800s.

That isn't the worst thing. He draws a number of parallels and illuminates the differences of Voyager and past expeditions, and it works. But it is also clear that he is an exploration history buff. If the reader is not, like me, then many references will be unclear and, in the worst instances, just all blend together in a fuzzy blob. So it loses some impact.

I was much happier with the parts about Voyager itself, and wish there could have been more about that mission, and the types of information gathered from it. I mean, there were two chapters to cover Uranus and Neptune, and probably half of their pages were about the history of exploration.

Also, the book is from 2010. Black and white photos instead of color is just ridiculous.

[Madelynp · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited about this book--the Voyager mission continues to give us tremendous data, and I was eager to learn about how the mission got its start, especially after reading other books about various NASA missions. When Pyne wrote about the Voyager mission, I found myself engaged, but he spent far too little of this book actually talking about the mission, and instead developed his thesis of Great Ages of Discovery. I found his excursions from the Voyager mission to be tiresome, with over-blown prose (just like this review!) and repetition that had me wondering if I was reading a series of essays instead of a narrative nonfiction. The afterward actually helped me to understand exactly why he wrote the book as he did, but that doesn't mean that I really liked it.

I'm not passing this one on to anybody else; it is going straight to the library to be recycled in their next book sale.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this history. There are some overstatements and mistakes. My father worked for the Titan program and it opened up a number of fun conversations about the Titan III-E, its history, and its usage for the Voyager.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

great history of the Voyager 1&2 spacecraft, the people that built, operated them and nursed them along.

[John Giroux · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to read about Voyager, not previous "ages of exploration" so about halfway through the book, I skipped over the sections that weren't about Voyager.

[Kari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information, overblown writing

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned a lot from this. Wish there was more on voyager though.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a regrettable book. Half of it was pretty good and the other half was unreadable.

The juxtaposition of the first two great ages of discovery with the third (culminating in the Voyager mission) is a logical comparison, but Pyne's attempt falls far short of enjoyable. The chief offense of our purportedly award-winning author is that he forces this loosely braided narrative down the reader's throat with no regard to it's success.

In each chapter he establishes a rough theme about discovery then erratically jumps from the (very good) technical discussion of the Voyager mission to some of the most lofty, pretentious and difficult to follow mish-mash of European history I have ever encountered. During the latter, he throws around obscure historical figures and events with absolutely no chronology, qualification or explanation, speaking as if he's delivering a lecture to a conference of history professors. Then he uses an obnoxious number of $20 words just to showcase his vocabulary, which truly detracts from the story on just about every page of the book.

Making matters worse, the segue between the space and historical narratives almost always included some form of the classic high school book report hand-off "There were similarities as well as differences," which was just absolutely terrible.

To be sure, the parts of the book that were about the twin Voyager spacecrafts making their way through and beyond the solar system were interesting, well-tempered and well-written. Clearly his lack of expertise regarding the Voyager mission made his reportage infinitely more enjoyable because he couldn't demonstrate his exhaustive (and exhausting) knowledge of arcana.

I think Voyager was actually two books hacked to bits and reassembled as some sort of academic exercise. To remedy this I decided about half-way through to only read the parts about the Voyager mission and I'm confident that I lost little in the process.

If you DO want to read a solid book about the great ages of discovery, I highly recommend The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes. He's not a douche.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

The twin Voyager missions to the outer planets and then out of the solar system have been two of my favorites. A space probe that is over 20 billion kilometers away, where a signal takes over 12 hours travel from Earth to Voyager or reverse, the probes are still sending data to us - how cool is that! They're made so many significant discoveries and explored places that may not be explored for decades, if ever.

When I saw a book about the Voyager mission, I had to read it. But did I get the wrong book? Portuguese explorers? Antarctica? South America? I thought this was supposed to be about the exploration of the outer solar system.

I would give it 4 stars if I had wanted to learn all kinds of obscure facts about early exploration of our planet. The occasional diversion to exploration of Jupiter and Saturn could be easily ignored. However, planetary and interstellar exploration is what I wanted to read about. The many paragraphs, and in some cases, whole chapters, devoted to the hazards of discovering a new land on Earth was not what I was looking for.

There were a few good facts about the Voyager mission but everything else was too much noise. The few low-resolution pictures included didn't help. The dramatic and exalted language was kind of annoying.

Good thing I borrowed this book from the library, otherwise I would be looking for a refund.

[Paul Lunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephen Pyne's "Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery" is a book that actually means well but gets off target by discussing things that aren't really relevant to the main focus of the book. The book is the story of the Great Tour of the solar system that was taken by Voyager 1 & 2 from 1977-1989 which visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune. Pyne's detailed analysis of the project is fine along with the interludes per se which cover the dead spots in the story as the probes travel from planet to planet. We also see the problems involved with funding & also meet the dangers the probes have as the traverse the solar system. The book goes astray by focusing a bit too much on the previous ages of exploration from the 15th-17th centuries & the 19th & 20th. The anecdotes are essentially used as filler & probably would've been better served as part of the intro or epilogue rather than their placement. What is though relevant though is that these 2 probes are still out there transmitting data back to Earth & will do so for another few years before finally going silent. An average tribute to one of NASA's most successful space probe pairings which opened our eyes up to the mysteries of the outer solar system.

[Henry Watts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ugh, ok this book is sort of awesome and sooooo sluggish, some what miss leading and it is also very academic. I felt like some tweed jacketed jerk was trying to explain something to me while we were both drunk at a bar. Bottom line, there's no reason to go out of your way to make your book a chore to read, it's like you're good at the guitar but you make shitty music.

Now that I'm done with that this book is good. It's no fun to read and not really all that much about the Voyager space probes as a stuffy book using them as sort of an analogy for the 3 great periods of discovery on earth. This fucker is full of facts but light on space facts booo

Still, I feel smarter for reading it so thanks.

[Susanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pyne didn't seem very interested in the history of the Voyager program himself. He continuously drew very labored parallels between the age of space exploration and the two earlier ages of exploration he identified: the age of geographic exploration in the 1500s and 1600s and the age of ecologic exploration in the 1700s and 1800s. He spent the bulk of the book (that I managed to read) on the earlier ages, making me 1) want to skip pages to get to the space program, and 2)think that he should have been writing about the earlier ages of exploration, since that was obviously where his interest lay.

[Ushan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to read a book about the Voyager spacecraft: why they carried the scientific instruments they did; how they were different from later NASA probes such as Deep Space 1, Galileo and Cassini-Huygens. This is not this book; about half of it is devoted to comparing the probes to the voyages of Magellan, Cook and other explorers of the Age of Discovery, and much of the rest is filled with purple prose (because the Voyagers crossed the orbit of Mars without passing close to the planet, they "bypassed the world that most mesmerized the space partisans" and so on and on) and has glaring mistakes ("Apollo 16 and 17 were canceled"... oops).

[David R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pyne's concept is to weave together an account of the actual Voyager missions (1977-?) with thoughts and discussion of three "Ages" of exploration. It's an appealing idea, but it doesn't come off in this particular treatment. The "First Age" and "Second Age" material often seems contrived (one example being a long winded discussion of islands that was presumably inspired by Voyager's measurements of Jupiter's moons) and regularly disrupts the flow of the Voyager storyline. The awkward final chapters only sputter along and tend toward bloviation. Regrettably not recommended.

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book tries too hard. There's an attempt to make parallels between the First and Second Ages of terrestrial exploration and the Voyager "grand tour", which is not a BAD idea per se, but in its execution it falls short. I found myself bored by the florid language and belabored metaphors and wishing that he would just get on with telling us about all the cool stuff Voyager found during its Saturn fly-by. Very misleading blurb, cover image, and title.

The space stuff IS good, which is why the book gets two stars. Otherwise this would be an easy 1-star.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be a different book than what it turned out to be. It is more inclined to put the Voyager space mission into the larger context of the earlier Ages of Exploration identified by Pyne, rather than a nuts and bolts account of the mission itself and what it may provide in the future.

The narrative throughout is grandiose and oversold, to the point that I began to feel exasperated by the constant reminders of the 'greatness' of mankind's attempts to explore and know about the space (literally) around him.

[Joey · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Voyager" was enjoyable enough. I think it would have worked better as a straight history of the Voyager program. As it was, I felt that the bouncing back and forth from the narrative of the Voyagers' development and flight to explorers of the past was jarring and discombobulating. The links Pyne drew between the different ages of discovery felt labored and contrived. I just thought the book tried to do and be too much.

[Bob Gustafson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. It tells all about the Voyager mission and it puts it in its historical context. One measure of how good a book is, is how many things are highlighted in the notes and in the bibliography. In my case it has lead to enough reading for another year. Another measure is how often a reader goes to Google or to Wikipedia to find out more. I did that nearly every day. The only reason it doesn't get five stars is that the author overdid historical context.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Possibly one of the worst science books I've read. A history of NASA's Voyager mission to the outer planets is intertwined with pages of turgid academic clap-trap attempting to put the mission in the same context as expeditions by Columbus, Magellan and others. I ended up skipping those sections and I'm pretty sure I tossed this book in the trash when I finished.

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read one of Pyne's books earlier this year and loathed it. By bought this one, not realizing he'd written it as well, and was immediately disgusted by the dull and overreaching narration he once again employed to take what should have been a topic that stood on its own merits and turned it into something that could barely be tolerated. Avoid this author at all costs.

[Scott]

Anyone interested in America's Space Exploration Program should read this. It provides an interesting history of the unmanned Voyagers 1 and 2, which were launched in the 1970s to explore the planets beyond Mars and their moons.

[E.J. Cullen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite the title, this book is much more about man's historical quest for discovery than it is about Voyager. Save yourself 400 meandering pages of time and read the short, succinct poem 'Ulysses' by Tennyson, or just the final line: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a fan of space/planetary exploration, science in general, the Cold War/Space Race, or lookign for a good historical read pick this one up. Its only shortcoming, definitely deficient on photography, less than 10 images in the book.

[Phillipe Cantin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though I like the references to the history of exploration, there is so many in this book that Voyager, Technology and Space are almost taking the second place.

If you like both the great explorers and space exploration you'll probably love this book.

[Chuck Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amazing machine of pure science, but unfortunately not an easy book to read. I appreciate Pyne's need to associate the flight of this tiny spacecraft to the adventurous human explorers of the past, but it made for a choppy read.

[Bob Steen · Rating 2 out of 5]

gave up after about 200 pages - it was due back at the library, and the autor was much too pretentious, comparing Voyager to so many other explorations of the past 600 years.

[Ashley]

Rec'd in TIME Magazine.