Hasn't Pioneer 10 already reached the edge of the solar system (or at least Pluto's eliptic)? I've always kind of perked up when I spotted an item in the news on that partiular probe. I suppose it comes from Cristopher Glenn doing segments on it for the "In the news" segemnts they ran on Saturday mornings between cartoons. They stuff on Skylab too. I even recall when he discussed the Israeli's building settlements on the west bank. Even at the ripe old age of nine, I thought it looked like the makings of a gooey mess. I'd have used the term "tar baby" had i known it at the time.

Great post! Are you able to share any of the information from Mr. Shostak's reply email?

No, the "Giant Squid of Tau Ceti" ARE Blogs.

I wished I would have saved the emails, but I didnt. It was probably 5 years ago, and several email accounts ago. I was surprised to find that he was very helpful and he answered all of my questions.

In answer to your question, skateboarding, swimming and reading scifi.

We are of a similar age so you had to have been touched by 2001 prior to 1977.

By the time 2001 had arrived on the calender, SETI was little more than a pain in the tail on systems I was overseeing. New Age MoonBats somehow thought it was their moral imperative to help mature mankind by contacting the wiser counsels of the universe thus violating the state policy against installing software that tied up resources (including the fire wall).

With a rocket scientist dad, I grew up eagerly anticipating the next delivery of Aviation Week and Scientific American. Mix some Verne, Campbell, Heinlein, Clark, Asimov, et al into the mix and the result was a quiet wish that contact would happen (for the better) on my watch.
Now I'm simply hoping we don't have a bit of the darker fiction first before we find out just how big space really is first hand - if at all.
Might be a darker perspective on how big things are but its all baby steps.
- Settle down the moonbats
- Whack the bad folk
- Build faster stuff
- Whack the moonbats
- Settle the bad folk
- Build really faster stuff
- Get away from the moonbats and bad folk....

Where was I August 20, 1977?

I know exactly where I was.

I was in an ARIA, tail number 329 at about 31,000' and feeling great relief when we heard Voyager II finally lauched. Soon afterwards as the antenna operator I got to track Voyager II from AOS (acquisition of signal) until handoff to a sister ARIA. And we were part of history.

Prior to the lauch, we had to sit and wait in Perth after the launch of Voyager I was canx while Voyager II went through an accelerated preparation for launch.
Every other day we flew about 5 hours boring holes in the sky and confirming our equipment was up and ready for the lauch.

I appreciated those days - but not enough. Thanks for bringing the memories back.

But now for the real reason I wanted to comment on your posting ...

You said, " Space is big. Really, really big... "
I was surprised you did not state the corollary so many seem unaware of ...
Space is empty. Really, really empty...

Almost everyone is unaware of just how empty space is. They are used to the elementary through high school displays of our solar system that makes it seem almost crowded.

There are a number of websites that help illustrate how empty the solar system is by building a solar system when starting with something of size most of us are familiar with to replace the sun. Then the surprises come.

For instance at Build A Solar System if the sun is 10 inches in diameter (roughly the size of a basketball), then the earth is approximatley 9/100ths of an inch in diameter and 89 feet away.

In between the earth and the sun (our basketball) are Mercury (3.5/100ths inch diameter and 34 feet away) and Venus - my favorite morning star - (8.7/100ths inch diamter and 64 feet away).

So picture it this way: Set a basketball on the goal line of a football field then 11 yards out place the rollerball from a medium ink pen (0.7mm) follwed by 8.5 shot size pellet 21 yards out followed by 8.0 shot size pellet (our very own earth) at just under 30 yards out!

Of course you would have the largest planet, Jupiter, 1 inch in diameter 155 yards out. Then you have Pluto on the outer edge of our solar system (almost the size of a BB here) 1,280 football fields out from the original goal line.

So what inhabits our hypothetical solar system that is 2,380 football fields in diamter?

SUN - Basketball - size/10" - center
Mercury - med ballpoint - size/0.035" - 34' to center
Venus - 8.5 pellet shot - size/0.87" - 64' to center
Earth - 8.0 pellet shot - size/0.92" - 89' to center
Mars - med ballpoint - size/0.049" - 136' to center
Jupiter - spinning quarter - size/1.00" - 465' to center
Saturn - spinning U.S. nickel - size/0.84" - 854' to center
Uranus - cooked green pea - size/0.034" - 1,718' to center
Neptune - cooked green pea - size/0.033" - 2,694' to center.
Pluto - BB pellet - size/0.016" - 3,540' to center

So if we think of our solar system not as the disc we usually consider, but a sphere we have a sphere 1.33 miles across with a basketball at the center, two medium ballpoint pen balls, two peas, 3 pellets of varying size, a spinning quarter, and a spinning nickel.

Two words: Almost empty..

Again - thanks for the article.

RileyD, nwJ
"Only the humble are sane."

I have to wonder about Pioneer, too.

I recall reading a couple years back and being ticked off that NASA, in its typical brilliance, decided to pull the plug on its communications with the (still operating) Pioneer spacecraft. It wasn't just a matter of information (I'm sure the craft's primitive instruments didn't tell us a lot, esp. as they would be aimed at planetary info, not for "out there"), it's a matter of simple *history*.