Time - Relativity - ET

Not sure where to put this one, so I guess I'll just plop it here for now...

When I was a kid (many moons ago) I used to collect US postage stamps. I picked up the hobby from Mom who has likely one of the finest US postal stamp collections in the World (next to maybe the US Government itself). Note: this fantastic collection is probably worthy of a thread all it's own, but I digress.

The time was the early to mid 1970's. I can remember looking through a publication Mom used to receive periodically (I want to say it was from Harris) which was all about stamps, in particular this publication listed what stamps were going to be issued in the coming months. I would pick out the stamps I wanted to get then eagerly await their issuance. At the time I was fascinated with space and space travel. Man had just recently walked on the Moon and traveling to distant stars seemed just around the corner back then.

Four particular issuances of stamps fell into my 'must have' category. These were the stamps commemorating the Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space missions of 1972, 73 and 77. At the time, these launches were full of wonder for me. What did these probes do? What would they find? How long would it be before we got to shake hands with ET's? So many questions. It was only a matter of "time" before we would be jetting around in space like Buck Rogers and Star Trek, and it would sure be nice to know in advance what was out there.

As the years flashed by the Pioneer and Voyager missions made many fantastic discoveries, we learned things about the planets in our solar system we never even dreamed possible. But at the time of their launches we quickly learned an even more valuable lesson, a lesson about 'time' itself. Despite all the excitement at the time of the launching of the Pioneer and later Voyager missions, we quickly discovered these missions were going to also involve a lot of waiting, a very long wait indeed.

In time we would see pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, but these came just about the time we all almost forgot about these missions. Life had been continuing on for all of us as these probes made their long journey. We all got older. Some of us went to college, some got married and had children, but all of us continued on our own journeys back here on Earth, the journey of life.

As I sit here and write this nearly 44 years have passed since the first Pioneer probe was launched. The Pioneer craft were shut down long ago, but the Voyager missions continue on. In fact, the Voyager probes are now the furthest man-made objects from Earth and they are effectively about to leave our solar system for interstellar space. In those same 44 years I went to college, had a career and experienced life.

------ End Part 1------

----Part II-----

Maybe I was foolish, but back in 1972/3 or 1979 when the Pioneer and Voyager probes left the confines of Earth I guess thought it would just be a few weeks before the wonders of the Universe were unlocked. I think many of us felt that way. I never would have dreamed nearly an entire lifetime would pass and we still wouldn't know even all the solar system's secrets, let alone the secrets of the Universe.

The Pioneer probes were shut down decades ago, and though they continue on their lonely mission they will only serve others (maybe), not us humans here on Earth. Voyager(s) still report back from time to time, but in just over 3 years they too will fall silent forever. Some say Voyager has left the "Solar System", but this is in fact not correct. They have passed the Terminal Shock, and they've exited the Heliopause, but they haven't left just yet. And, we'll be waiting a long time for that to happen, a very, very, long time. In fact, it will take another 30,000 years for Voyager to exit our "solar system". This represents not just a lifetime, but generations of lifetimes, 3,000 of them if the average lifespan of a human is 100 years (again, maybe).

When ET finally finds the Pioneer and Voyager craft they will be relics of a distant past. When he digs through the technological refuse pile to find the CD player to play the golden platters encoded with the information from Earth aboard Voyager, when he hears the child's voice say "Greetings, from the children of planet Earth", human kind itself may be a distant memory, a relic of the past.

As we look both backward and forward in our lives we see the relative nature of time. Our dreams are expansive, as the authors like Asimov and others have shown, but we are constrained by time. And even with all those magnificent technological advances since Pioneer and Voyager left Earth, mankind has still not even managed to journey to our next nearest 'planet', Mars. The stars? Will we even live that long, will mankind even exist?

I look up at the stars and wonder...

Time...relativity and ET.

I wonder.

". I never would have dreamed nearly an entire lifetime would pass and we still wouldn't know even all the solar system's secrets, let alone the secrets of the Universe."

I think that is how Einstein must of felt at the end of his life ....

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I'm no philatelist (stamp collector) but I would say they would be worth a lot so have them appraised and insured stat.

I still collect cards-football, tabletop game cards etc and you'd be surprised how much they are worth. An upper deck Michael Jordan gold signature card would get you fifty bucks easy and that was twenty years ago, there was a time a friend and I used to buy Becketts (price guides for cards) and compare cards, those were the days.

Sometimes there is monetary value and there is sentimental value, I bought a book that is now nearly thirty years old, and you'd have to pry it from my cold dead hands to get it, and even then i'd rise from the dead to keep that book.

Hobbies are great.

a reply to: Plotus

Yes, imagine the questions he must have had given his theories about the workings of the Universe around us.

It's almost mind blowing.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

Oh, my stamp collection was worth nothing really. I gave it to someone long ago.

Now my Mom's stamp collection, on the other hand, is likely priceless. Seriously. She has every US stamp ever minted, all mint (i.e. not posted) up to the last actual "stamp" (i.e. not the self adhesive ones). It is worth millions. She even has a number of mis-prints which are very rare. About the only US stamp she doesn't have is the famous "upside down Jenny" (only 100 are known to exist). She does have the 1918 original .24 cent Jenny (mint), but not the inverted mis-print. That one stamp alone is worth over $1m at auction (the inverted Jenny).

And just to give you an idea of this collection, she has "First Day Cover's" of every stamp after 1950, along with not only the single stamp, but also a sheet (or roll) of that stamp...in every denomination. Every stamp, in every denomination...all of them! It's a Smithsonian grade collection.

The forever stamp pretty much wiped out modern stamp collecting going forward.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Maybe I was foolish, but back in 1972/3 or 1979 when the Pioneer and Voyager probes left the confines of Earth I guess thought it would just be a few weeks before the wonders of the Universe were unlocked. I think many of us felt that way. I never would have dreamed nearly an entire lifetime would pass and we still wouldn't know even all the solar system's secrets, let alone the secrets of the Universe.

Get used to it. Humans will never get that far, as we were never meant to. God knows that the more man knows and understands, the more dominating, powerful, competitive, and destructive we become.

a reply to: Deetermined

Oh trust me, I'm used to it. I just thought it might be interesting to put things into perspective, hence the OP.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I find no justification for not having a base in the moon after all these years of space exploration. I'm not asking something too big, maybe and remote controlled observatory. There has to be an intentional delay. I'd say Moon first, then Mars.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Your opening post is a sincere poetic piece of work and I do find it eloquent and beautiful, especially when compared to much of the trash posted on here, which is at times unreadable for me as a non-native English speaker. I really rate it highly.

a reply to: surnamename57

Thank you.

That is why I posted it, for others to hopefully enjoy.

originally posted by: Plotus
". I never would have dreamed nearly an entire lifetime would pass and we still wouldn't know even all the solar system's secrets, let alone the secrets of the Universe."

I think that is how Einstein must of felt at the end of his life ....

I'm still waiting for my rocket car that was to be delivered by 2000. Damn that Fed X or UPS.

a reply to: Deetermined

I was happy to see your response here, as I agree that humans certainly will never..and have never..been very far.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Fantastic read. I reAlly enjoyed this