Making Sense of Things
A Love Letter
On Valentine’s Day 1990, a little ol’ spacecraft named Voyager 1 was clunking along, minding its own business, at 40,000 miles per hour. A decent clip. It had been traveling outbound from Earth for 13 years with no return ticket. It was 3.7 billion miles away. Just past Pluto, beyond the edges of our galaxy. Voyager 1 was meant to last five years and explore two planets and a handful of moons — along with its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2. But these overachievers were still going strong in 1990 and showed no signs of slowing down. A product of vast human ingenuity, these sturdy space tanks were just getting started on a very long road trip.
On that day, a bushy science rock star named Carl Sagan asked NASA to send a message to Voyager 1. He said, “Before it gets it too far away, let’s tell it to turn the camera around … and take a picture of us.” I’m guessing he said something to that effect, but probably smarter, enriched ten-fold by his haltingly sonorous voice, and mildly Brooklyn-inflected accent.
Here’s the thing about Sagan. As big as this idea was, he had an even bigger idea in mind. Before this particular Valentine’s Day Card was created, Carl Sagan had asked NASA to capture this image many times — and they said no. Not sciency enough, they said. But that day was different. Why? Due to NASA budget cuts, the technicians who devised and transmitted the commands were about to be laid off. So, Carl Sagan prevailed. Voyager 1 snapped 60 pictures and stored them, digitally, on a tape recorder. And over the next three months it radioed the data back to earth — some 640,000 pixels. When the image was mapped back together, it must have been astonishing. There, before their eyes, Carl Sagan and those technicians saw that speck of cerulean for the first time. It accounted for less than a pixel of the photo. Our bushy hero affectionately called the image “The Pale Blue Dot.”
I’m not going to remind you that I ♥️ Carl Sagan — it’s obvious at this point. I’m a dorky fangirl and have been since childhood. But, what Sagan knew – his bigger idea – was that we dummies needed this image to make sense of things. And god damn if we don’t need that right now, too.
Some of you may already know about the “Overview Effect.” It’s a popular topic among nerds. It’s the thing where — when you’re an astronaut — you get all verklempt when you’re in a space capsule looking down at the earth. Apparently this uber-demographic agrees that when you see the earth from above, you care more about it; this gives you a more humanistic perspective and makes you understand what’s at stake for us all. Blah blah blah. This is the kind of story that crops up regularly on NPR; I usually shut it right off, and I’d urge you to do the same.
The guy who made up the Overview Effect, Frank White, calls himself a Space Philosopher — which kind of makes me giggle. Space Philosopher is what we called our stoned professors at the University of Wisconsin. I personally think the Overview Effect makes for a great non-fiction book proposal, but not much else. For one thing, Frank White isn’t even an astronaut. Second, my personal (and unsubstantiated) theory is that astronauts think they’re more interesting than they are, and believe that people actually care about what they have to say (case in point: the weird and overrated Mark Kelly). And third, I have experienced the Overview Effect myself and I’m no astronaut. I don’t even like to fly. But I, too, have warm feelings when I see earth from above. (Usually because I’ve probably taken a xanax and am sipping a gin and tonic.) Sure, I feel verklempt when I’m looking down from 30,000 feet, but that’s because I’m usually in Space Philosopher mode — not because I have anything interesting to say.
Look, NASA says that the chances of an applicant becoming an astronaut are one in 14,278. So I don’t have much hope that the Overview Effect will reach critical mass, even if it could. But Carl Sagan did the more practical thing: he found a way to squeeze all of us onto that sturdy astro-explorer, where we could peer through billions of miles of interstellar darkness … and see ourselves.
“On the scale of worlds —to say nothing of stars or galaxies—humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.” - Carl Sagan
In 1990 when this image was beamed around the planet, Carl Sagan had already spent decades trying to make sense of things for all of us. He had marched in the streets calling for nuclear disarmament. He had testified before Congress about climate change. Sagan had even been chastised by the King of Assholes at that time, Ted Turner, for being a Socialist because he believed that our country spent money on “the wrong stuff.” We were on the wrong path, Sagan suggested. We needed to see ourselves, to scale, to understand that we are alone — with nowhere else to go. This photographic adjustment might help us make decisions with humility instead of hubris. With compassion instead of condemnation.
It was an audacious image which could have inspired as much love as fear. It had a powerful impact on me, that much is certain. But The Pale Blue Dot presents a litmus test. It can inspire the viewer to hold our planet as sacred … or freak out that we’re all stuck here together. Right now, I’m not sure which way I feel.
I started this Substack one year ago — a pixel of time in my own life — to try to make sense of things. I confess that my reasoning was entirely selfish; in my attempt to understand the Overview Effect as I see it, I have dragged many of you along. Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful. You guys have the patience of saints. But frankly, I wish I had something better to offer, like access to NASA scientists who take cool photos of the cosmos, or a way to infiltrate the airwaves with thought-provoking ideas. Who couldn’t use a powerful way to make sense of things out here in the interstellar darkness? Alas, I got nothing but this.
If I’m being honest (a terrible phrase used by my children that implies uncharacteristic honesty), there’s something else about Voyager 1 and 2 that soothes my soul these days ….
.… They’re still out there.
When my thoughts tumble through the shitstorm we’re in right now I don’t think about the Pale Blue Dot so much. Its Overview Effect doesn’t give me warm thoughts, it gives me vertigo. Instead, I think of those intrepid probes — which are now barreling beyond the confines of our galaxy 12 and 15 billion miles away, respectively. Even though Voyager 1 isn’t doing so well right now, for the past 47 years, they’ve been goin’ mobile; each outfitted with a Golden Record that contains sights and sounds from our planet. This was Sagan’s even bigger idea: if extraterrestrials — or even future versions of ourselves — encounter the Voyagers one day, they will learn a little bit about earth in 1977. When a peanut farmer was president. And if those intelligent beings can figure out the directions, they might play a track of Sagan’s six year-old son, Nick, saying hello in his little boy voice. They might listen to Beethoven, or Blind Willie Johnson, or Melanesian Panpipes. And they might — like I do — take comfort in the sound of a Chinese Ch’in called Running Water, one of the oldest songs ever written, that was created here on Earth and hurtled through space for one very specific purpose: to make sense of things.
Thanks for reading! xox