In Star Trek, The Motion Picture, a destructive space entity travels back to earh to find its creator. In doing so it obiliterates every nonplanet thing in it path except (cue the music) the Starship Enterprise. The crew discovers that it's Voyager I which encountered an alien culture who then decided to fulfill its mission of reporting back to its creator.

Well, science fiction has a chance to turn into fact. Voyager I has left our solar system. It's replete with an 8-Track tape recorder and technology that we can find in our pocket. Originally this probe was designed for only a four year mission. Now 36 years later, it's still humming or rather flying along on its merry way at 38,000 MPH. That would be fun to travel that fast but I'd probably get a speeding ticket.

It needed some programming work so they had to find an old enginner who could write the code. He had to wait a bit to see if it worked because it takes over 17 hours to receive Voyager's signal. Imagine how many emails I get in that same time span.

NASA launched Voyager I in 1977, the same year as Star Wars was released. I was in my first year at Buff State and battled the winter story that covered Buffalo with ovre 120 inches of snow. That was fun although I don't remember the launch...do you?

It is amazing that we have sent a device beyond our solar system. I just wish it had more than an 8-track tape recorder. I wonder if they sent along a matchbook to wedge in the player if it starts to skip.