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

by Stephen J. Pyne

  98 Reichhardt, “Gravity’s Overdrive,” pp. 76-77.

  99 I follow Tony Reichhardt, “Gravity’s Overdrive,” pp. 72-78; Kohlhase, ed. The Voyager Neptune Travel Guide, pp. 103-9. Quote from Minovitch Web site home page, www.gravityassist.com; accessed September 1, 2007.

  100 Richard L. Dowling et al., “The Origin of Gravity-Propelled Interplanetary Space Travel,” 41st Congress of the International Astronautical Federation (1990), IA A-90-630, p. 16.

  101 On the limitations of Minovitch’s methods, see Gary Flandro in Littman, Planets Beyond, p. 97.

  102 See Robert Merton, “Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 105, no. 5 (October 1971), pp. 470-86. Einstein’s general theory of relativity is an exception.

  103 Account from Morison, The Great Explorers, p. 400.

  104 I follow William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, pp. 117-20, 276-78.

  CHAPTER 14. ENCOUNTER: SATURN

  105 My account of the Voyagers’ encounter follows closely the excellent narrative in David Morrison, Voyages to Saturn, NASA SP-451 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1982). He describes the coincidence of the Great Conjunction on page 50.

  106 Ibid., pp. 50-56.

  107 Ibid., pp. 56-61.

  108 Ibid., pp. 62, 65.

  109 Ibid., pp. 67-68, 94.

  110 Quote from Bradford Smith, in Morrison, Voyages to Saturn, p. 69, and for Pioneer 11, from James Van Allen, in Wolverton, The Depths of Space, pp. 150, 154.

  111 Morrison, Voyages to Saturn, pp. 70-76.

  112 Details from ibid., pp. 78-85. Quotes: Bradford Smith, p. 84; Larry Soderblom and Morrison, p. 85.

  113 Stone quoted in Morrison, Voyages to Saturn, p. 86.

  114 Ibid., pp. 59, 67, 70-71.

  115 Ibid., pp. 89-90.

  116 Summary of findings from ibid., p. 93.

  117 The event was advertised as a “planetary festival” that would extend the three days before encounter and would include symphony orchestras, lectures, educational activities, and an invitational black-tie dinner at $150 per plate to which members of Congress would also be invited. This would be the last planetary encounter for years, but acceptance rates had “traditionally run low.” See Memo, Lynne Murphy to Terry Finn, July 15, 1981, NASA Historical Reference Collection, File 005580.

  118 Summary of session in Morrison, Voyages to Saturn, p. 94. The session was not transcribed or published, but was filmed for possible TV broadcast. The tape is available through JPL.

  119 Bruce Murray and Louis D. Friedman, “Our Founders: The Planetary Society Founders’ Statement,” www.planetary.org/about/founders, accessed December 23, 2007.

  120 For a synopsis, see William Sinclair, “The African Association of 1788,” African Affairs 1, no. 1 (1901): 145-50.

  121 Again I follow the chronology of events laid out in Morrison, Voyages to Saturn, pp. 96-135.

  122 Quote from ibid., p. 100.

  123 Ibid., pp. 117-21.

  124 Ibid., pp. 119-21.

  125 Quote from ibid., p. 123.

  126 Quoted in ibid., p. 127.

  127 Quotes from ibid., p. 133.

  128 My historical analysis is a mere gloss of George R. Stewart’s classic, Names on the Land: An Historical Account of Placenaming in the United States, 4th ed. (San Francisco: Lexikos, 1982); quotes from pp. 11-12. Columbus quote from J. M. Cohen, ed. and trans., The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 2.

  129 Stewart, Names on the Land, pp. 23, 315.

  130 Charge quoted from USGS Board on Geographic Names Web site: http://geonames.usgs.gov, accessed December 30, 2007.

  131 For the procedure, see “How Names Are Approved,” USGS Astrogeology Research Program, http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/approved.html, accessed December 31, 2007.

  132 “Sources of Planetary Names,” USGS Astrogeology Research Program: http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/jsp/append4.jsp, accessed December 30, 2007.

  133 This synopsis distills a wonderful, dialogue-rich passage in Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr., Imaging Saturn: The Voyager Flights to Saturn (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), pp. 99-103.

  134 Incident reported in Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 76. Quote on “no geology” from Bruce Murray, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 217. End quote from Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, p. 145.

  135 Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 121.

  136 On Voyager 1 photo: Ben Evans with David M. Harland, NASA’s, caption for color plate 1.

  137 Best account is Miner, Uranus, pp. 153-54.

  138 Ibid., pp. 141-43.

  139 Ibid., pp. 156-57. The critical official documents are found in JPL, “Voyager: Project Plan, Part 2: Voyager Uranus/Interstellar Mission,” PD 618-5, Part 2 (July 22, 1981), JPL Archives. The option had long been retained; see, for example, Decision Paper, AD/Deputy Administrator to S/Associate Administrator for Space Science, October 29, 1975, Selection of a Uranus Mission Option, in which “one spacecraft is launched on a trajectory that retains the Uranus targeting option.”

  140 The most useful document is JPL, “Voyager: Project Plan, Part 2”; quotes from p. 3-1. For a brief assessment of what the reduced staffing meant, see Ellis Miner, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 309.

  CHAPTER 15. CRUISE

  141 For background on the DSN, see Craig B. Waff, “The Road to the Deep Space Network,” IEEE Spectrum (April 1993): 50-57, and “The Struggle for the Outer Planets,” Astronomy 17, no. 9 (Sept. 1989): 33-52, and for a good general survey, Douglas J. Mudgway, Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network 1957-1997. NASA SP-2001-4227 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 2001). Also useful for contemporary status, Roger Ludwig and Jim Taylor, “Voyager Telecommunications,” JPL DESCANSO, Deep Space Communications and Navigation Systems, Design and Performance Summary Series (n.d.). On the role of Pioneer, see Wolverton, The Depths of Space, pp. 184-85.

  142 See Mudgway, Uplink-Downlink, pp. xliv-xlvi; Nicks, Far Travelers, pp. 157-58.

  143 JPL, The Voyager Uranus Travel Guide, p. 24.

  144 I follow Miner, Uranus, p. 178.

  145 Ibid., pp. 178-80. Quote on watch battery: Ben Evans with David M. Harland, NASA’s, p. 172.

  146 Miner, Uranus, pp. 180-81; Douglas J. Mudgway, Uplink-Downlink, pp. 193-96.

  147 Mudgway, Uplink-Downlink, p. 200.

  148 Ibid., p. 201.

  149 Ibid., pp. 202-3.

  150 Miner, Uranus, p. 182.

  151 Mudgway, Uplink-Downlink, p. 203.

  152 Miner, Uranus, pp. 177-86.

  153 Jay T. Bergstralh, ed., Uranus and Neptune: Proceedings of a Workshop Held in Pasadena, California, February 6-8, 1984, NASA Conference Publication 2330 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1984).

  154 I follow Miner, Uranus, p. 186. Quote from JPL, The Voyager Uranus Travel Guide, pp. 9, 6; on ring discovery, p. 17.

  155 Miner, Uranus, pp. 186-89. For a more accessible review, see JPL, Voyager Uranus Travel Guide, pp. 19-24, and for a copy of the master timeline, p. 77.

  156 Miner, Uranus, pp. 288-89.

  CHAPTER 16. ENCOUNTER: URANUS

  157 JPL, “Voyager. Project Plan: Part 2,” pp. 3-4, 5-6. See also Miner, Uranus, p. 195.

  158 Miner, Uranus, pp. 195-96.

  159 Ibid., p. 196.

  160 JPL, The Voyager Uranus Travel Guide, Voyager Project Document no. 618- 150 (Pasadena, Calif.: Caltech, 1985), p. 6. The projected record of what Voyager 2 might find is in The Voyager Uranus Travel Guide, pp. 79-94, and the actual record of results is in Miner, Uranus, pp. 190-93, 195-96.

  161 Miner, Uranus, pp. 297-98.

  162 Ibid., pp. 198-200, 203. For an interesting comparison, see how deeds matched expectations in JPL, Voyager Uranus Travel Guide, and JPL, “Voyager. Project Plan. Part 2: Voyager Uranus/Interstellar Mission.”

  163 Miner, Uranus, pp. 201-202, 207; quote from p. 202.

  164 Ibid., pp. 210-78. For the best quasi-popular summary, see the special issue of Science 233 (July 4
, 1986): 39-107; E. D. Miner and E. C. Stone, “Voyager at Uranus,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 41 (1988): 49-62.

  165 Miner, Uranus, pp. 282-84; names on pp. 282-83; descriptions from pp. 285-319, and quote from p. 319. For fuller technical account, see also published articles, especially the special issue of Science.

  166 Von Braun story in Wolverton, The Depths of Space, p. 127.

  167 James Van Allen, “Space Science, Space Technology, and the Space Station,” Scientific American 254 (January 1986): 32-39, and “Myths and Realities of Space Flight,” Science 232 (May 30, 1986): 1075-76.

  168 JPL efforts to avoid conflict and Beggs’s response reported by Charles Kohlhase in Voyager Tales, p. 96.

  169 Miner, Uranus, pp. 207-8.

  170 Murray, Journey into Space, p. 235. The contest among competing space interests has a long trail of literature. An interesting survey of public opinion is Roger D. Launius, “Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of US Human Spaceflight,” Space Policy 19 (2003): 163-75. For particulars cited in text, see the following: for Apollo’s oversize profile, see Etzioni, The Moon-Doggle, pp. 13-14; for Skylab competition, see Morrison and Samz, Voyage to Jupiter, p. 101; Kraemer, Beyond the Moon, pp. xvi-xviii.

  171 Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 265-67.

  172 Robert D. Ballard, The Eternal Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 227.

  173 See Nicks, Far Travelers, esp. pp. 190, 245-48, 250; quote from p. 245.

  174 Statistics from Newby, The Rand McNally World Atlas of Exploration, p. 135.

  175 Quote from Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 111.

  176 Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, pp. 606, 613, 642.

  177 Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 254.

  178 The story is told with fascinating detail and empathy in Connolly and Anderson, First Contact. For a rawer version, see Leahy and Crain, The Land That Time Forgot.

  179 Columbus quote from Morison, The Great Explorers, p. 403. Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, pp. 59, 64-65.

  180 Diaz, Conquest, pp. 60-61.

  181 Quotes from Jeal, Stanley, pp. 358-59.

  182 For an interesting survey, see James G. Bellingham and Kanna Rajan, “Robotics in Remote and Hostile Environments,” Science 318 (Nov. 16, 2007): 1098-1102.

  183 Stone quote in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 57. Nicks quote from Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 32.

  184 Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 125; Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 32; Murray, quoted in Swift, Voyager Tales, pp. 210-11.

  185 Miner, Uranus, pp. 202-3.

  186 Ibid., pp. 206-7.

  CHAPTER 17. CRUISE

  187 On sources of Neptune information at the time, see Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 1-62.

  188 My sources for this phase of the journey are Miner and Wessen, Neptune , with Miner quote from p. 147, and “better spacecraft” quote, p. 157; Kohlhase, ed., The Voyager Neptune Travel Guide; and Evans with Harland, NASA’s. On staffing: see Ellis Miner, p. 309, and Charles Kohlhase, p.89, in Swift, Voyager Tales.

  189 Quote from Miner and Wessen, Neptune, p. 147. The phrase refers to a Larry McMurtry novel of that name, released as a Hollywood movie in 1971.

  190 Jay T. Bergstralh, ed., Uranus and Neptune. On staffing: see Ellis Miner, p. 309, and Charles Kohlhase, p. 89, in Swift, Voyager Tales. Quotes from Evans with Harland, NASA’s, pp. 204, 206, and Kohlhase, Voyager Neptune, pp. 123-29, 136 (this book is probably the best single source). Transmission numbers from Miner and Wessen, Neptune, p. 147.

  191 Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 147-49; Kohlhase, Voyager Neptune, pp. 78-80; Evans with Harland, NASA’s, pp. 202-4.

  192 Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 158-60.

  193 Evans with Harland, NASA’s, pp. 204-6. Best summary is in Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 158-66.

  194 Kohlhase, Voyager Neptune, p. 72.

  195 Best account is in Evans with Harland, NASA’s, p. 206. Eight years reference and quote: from Kohlhase, Voyager Neptune, p. 68. Miner and Wessen, Neptune, p. 167; Evans with Harland, NASA’s, p. 206.

  196 See Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 154-56. See also Kohlhase, Voyager Neptune, pp. 73-74, 89.

  197 Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 155-56.

  198 Best summary in Kohlhase, Voyager Neptune, pp. 77-78.

  199 For partial listing of stresses, Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, p. 141.

  200 Quoted by Charles Kohlhase, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 88. Miner quote from Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 311.

  201 On Humboldt, see Helmut de Terra, Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt 1769-1859 (New York: Octagon Books, 1979); on the Institut d’Egypte, see Nina Burleigh, Mirage (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); on the Challenger expedition, see Richard Corfield, The Silent Landscape: The Scientific Voyage of the HMS Challenger (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2003).

  202 There are many accounts available; a good popular version that grants special attention to Steller is Corey Ford, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books, 1966).

  203 Numbers from Eric Linklater, The Voyage of the Challenger (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p. 270, and quotes from p. 24. For a good comparison with modern oceanographic discoveries, see Corfield, The Silent Landscape, op. cit.

  204 The plaque briefly flashed onto the screen before the spacecraft blasts off appears to identify it as one of the Pioneers.

  205 The story of oceanic research has become a growth industry. I found particularly helpful as a compendium of recent discoveries Tony Koslow, The Silent Deep: The Discovery, Ecology, and Conservation of the Deep Sea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). For a detailed examination of one career as it evolved through the broader field, see Henry Menard, The Ocean of Truth: A Personal History of Global Tectonics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), and for the larger research context, Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Oceanographers and the Cold War: Disciples of Marine Science (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).

  206 See Ballard, The Eternal Darkness, p. 5.

  207 The Challenger story has been oft-told. Koslow, Silent Deep, op. cit, provides a useful sketch. For accounts both more thorough and more popular, see, respectively, Corfield, The Silent Landscape, and Linklater, The Voyage of the Challenger.

  208 Ballard, The Eternal Darkness, pp. 225-31, and in “The Explorers,” The Universe Beneath the Sea (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Oxford Television Co., 1999).

  CHAPTER 18. ENCOUNTER: NEPTUNE

  209 My account closely follows Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 174-76. For the official documentation, see JPL, “Voyager. Project Plan: Part 3: Voyager Neptune/Interstellar Mission. Revision A,” JPL Archives 44, no. 48.

  210 Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 174-76; Kohlhase quote and estimates from Kohlhase, ed., Voyager Neptune Travel Guide, p. 89.

  211 While most encounters were given in local time at JPL, this one was recorded officially in UTC (coordinated universal time), which results in 3:56 UTC on August 25, or 11:56 EDT August 24. The usual date for the encounter is thus listed as August 25, 1989. See E. C. Stone and E. D. Miner, “The Voyager 2 Encounter with the Neptunian System,” Science 246 (December 15, 1989): 1418.

  212 I follow Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 176-81.

  213 Ibid., p. 181.

  214 Ibid.

  215 Ibid., pp. 181-82.

  216 Information and paraphrases from Miner and Wessen, Neptune, pp. 255-61.

  217 Source: ibid., p. 259.

  218 Wilson, I.G.Y, pp. 162-63.

  219 Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us, rev. ed. (New York: New American Library, 1961), pp. 196, 123.

  220 Wilson, I.G.Y, p. 245. For an overview of exploring marine geology, see H. William Menard, “Very Like a Spear,” in Cecil Schneer, ed., Two Hundred Years of Geology in America: Proceedings of the New Hampshire Bicentenni
al Conference on the History of Geology (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1979), p. 21. Menard published a fuller, book-length personal survey of the revolution with The Ocean of Truth: A Personal History of Global Tectonics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986).

  221 Wilson, I.G.Y, p. 190.

  222 Useful summary of field in Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 146-53; Kuiper identification on p. 147. On the USAF series, see G. P. Kuiper, ed., The Solar System, 4 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953-62). Also: Harold C. Urey, The Planets: Their Origin and Development (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952).