Weighing Urine Soaked Pornography
Having been a dork for this stuff as a kid, I’m amazed to have only just learned that when Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, Carl Sagan and Michael Ford were drunk and stoned, laughing their asses off that Voyager 1 was going a couple months after Voyager 2. Something about orbits and whatnot was why, but so fucking what?
This was passing for drunken druggie humor with these kinds of guys in those days. Hardy har har! Yuk it up, Einsteins.
And, now, see, these are the probes that are carrying not only incredibly important scientific instruments, but also those recordings and symbolic messages from Earth, just in case intelligent life elsewhere comes across them somewhere out there.
And, so: Sagan and Ford are all wasted, and the night before Voyager 1 goes up, they finagle their way to the launch bay and put a bunch of pornographic magazines into this small space in the interior of the probe, space meant to theoretically counter a variable vacuum in the heliosheath (complete conjecture, that variable). Then, before sealing it all back up, they urinate all over the pornographic magazines. Ford adjusted the fuel balance to counter the added weight. (What, you’re telling me they weighed urine soaked magazines and then did calculus?)
I mean, what the?
And, about a year ago, both Voyagers entered the heliosheath. What happens if it turns out that this late 70’s urine soaked pornography throws the whole deal out of balance and the thing implodes or whatever. Well, there’s a bunch of money wasted. What a couple of pricks. Assholes!
Fuck you, Sagan and Ford!
