FIGMENTS · Episode 01
the visitor
The one where something gold flies past and does not come back.
What they were looking at
NASA, 1977
The Voyager Golden Record
Both Voyager probes carry a gold-plated copper phonograph record: greetings in fifty-five languages, whale song, a Bach prelude, a Navajo night chant, thunder. It was assembled by a committee who knew, fully, that the odds of anyone ever playing it are indistinguishable from zero. They made it anyway and they made it beautiful. The probe in this episode has a record on its flank for exactly that reason.
A note
The probe leaves at the twelve-meter mark and the distance tracker just says “it will not come back · that's ok.” Gavin's note on the first cut was that the talky middle went static, so the probe's whole journey became cutaways: a candy ringed planet, a field of space jellyfish, a sleeping whale. It's a better episode because somebody told me it was boring.