Atheistically Speaking Book Club discussion

This is the discussion thread for the second quarter of Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space:

6. The Triumph of Voyager
7. Among the Moons of Saturn
8. The First New Planet
9. An American Ship at the Frontiers of the Solar System
10. Sacred Black
11. Evening and Morning Star
12. The Ground Melts

6. The Triumph of Voyager
"JUST BEFORE VOYAGER 2 was to encounter the Uranus system, the mission design had specified a final maneuver, a brief firing of the on-board propulsion system to position the spacecraft correctly so it could thread its way on a preset path among the hurtling moons. But the course correction proved unnecessary. The spacecraft was already within 200 kilometers of its designed trajectory—after a journey along an arcing path 5 billion kilometers long. This is roughly the equivalent of throwing a pin through the eye of a needle 50 kilometers away, or firing your rifle in Washington and hitting the bull’s-eye in Dallas."

I love the descriptions of how much humanity can accomplish if we just put our mind to it. I wish we could be motivated by more noble things than competitions between nations.

7. Among the Moons of Saturn
This chapter was a lot like chapter 5 - "Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?" - but towards Titan. I don't think it was this chapter, but in one chapter he talked about how at the time we were just starting to find planets on other stars. Now our collection of earth-like, possibly habitable planets grows every day, and our definition of "possibly habitable" grows as well.

9. An American Ship at the Frontiers of the Solar System
"Space is nearly empty. There is virtually no chance that one of the Voyagers will ever enter another solar system—and this is true even if every star in the sky is accompanied by planets. The instructions on the record jackets, written in what we believe to be readily comprehensible scientific hieroglyphics, can be read, and the contents of the records understood, only if alien beings, somewhere in the remote future, find Voyager in the depths of interstellar space. Since both Voyagers will circle the center of the Milky Way Galaxy essentially forever, there is plenty of time for the records to be found—if there’s anyone out there to do the finding.
We cannot know how much of the records they would understand. Surely the greetings will be incomprehensible, but their intent may not be. (We thought it would be impolite not to say hello.) The hypothetical aliens are bound to be very different from us—independently evolved on another world. Are we really sure they could understand anything at all of our message? Every time I feel these concerns stirring, though, I reassure myself: Whatever the incomprehensibilities of the Voyager record, any alien ship that finds it will have another standard by which to judge us. Each Voyager is itself a message. In their exploratory intent, in the lofty ambition of their objectives, in their utter lack of intent to do harm, and in the brilliance of their design and performance, these robots speak eloquently for us."

I love the optimism behind the golden plates.

10. Sacred Black
"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works—that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."

This adds to what we were talking about in the other thread. It does not make life less valuable to know how it works or to know it wasn't made for us or even "made" to begin with.

This section was more descriptive of the planets in our solar system and the technological feats which increased our knowledge of them. It's not as philosophical as the first section. As much as I enjoy reading Sagan its glaring how dated this book is now. He refers to "future" events that have already taken place years ago.

As Jay, I noticed that the book appears more dated in these chapters. On the other hand I found it interesting to read Sagan's expectations of upcoming missions and knowing that so much of it has come about. Particularly, the descriptions he gave about what Titan would be like: how amazingly accurate the ideas back then were, based on just earthbound observation and the Voyager pass-by. THe prediction of hydrocarbon lakes being present. We've actually seen them now with the Huygens probe that landed(!) on Titan. Science is amazing

I really liked how realistic was when he wrote. He would write all these different ways to visit the planets and the potential moons. And quickly contrasted all the potential problems in doing so. He wrote the different physical, chemical limitations of doing so. The different ways we could terraform, but the limitations and realistic view was always there.

It was great to see how despite writing about the limitations Sagan was always hopeful that if we put our efforts in seeking out new worlds and continuing to look then our quest like our ancestors will continue our search for new worlds as well as life.