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From: eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Voyager on to Uranus.
Message-ID: <1076@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 18:25:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.1076
Posted: Fri Aug  9 18:25:38 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 07:37:18 EDT
References: <282@hrpd3.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 32

> 
> I have a question .....
> 	If something the size of a voyager, presumably not radiating
> much radio energy, were to enter our solar system from an alien
> culture, is the possibility of us detecting it more than miniscule ?

	Since we are not actively looking for things like this and
	the solar system is so large, we would probably not see it.
	This does not mean that it would burn up into the sun unnoticed.
	It depends on lots of things like how fast and where it flew thru.

> I just wonder it would burn up in the sun unnoticed. If this happens,
> it would make all Carl Sagan's artistic work of a man and a woman
> rather pointless, and just a waste of NASA's budget.
> 
> 			Ken Cochran    vax135!hr1ar!ken

The art work was not the major cost of the mission.  The point of the mission
was the exploration of the outer planets.  The art work was an after fact,
and was not all NASA money.  Value is pretty relative: you might think the
entire mission to the outer planets is pointless.  Maybe all of man's
works: cities and such, are pointless?  Perhaps we should go back to caves?

The intent was to have a message which could be detected and deciphered by
a civilization more advanced than ours.  Any civilization advanced enough to
find the record should be advanced enough to construct a crude player.
Locate a copy of Murmurs from Earth by Sagan.

--eugene miya
  NASA Ames Research Center
  {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,decwrl,allegra}!ames!aurora!eugene
  emiya@ames-vmsb