The Power of Science Fiction: A Conversation with Frank and David

Science fiction has long been a staple of human imagination, exploring the possibilities of the future and the unknown. But what happens when science fiction becomes more than just a product of our imaginations? What happens when it becomes a reflection of our own society's values and aspirations? In this article, we explore the connection between science fiction and real-life space exploration, as well as the significance of the golden record on Voyager 6.

The Science Fiction Connection to Space Exploration

Frank and David, two avid science fiction fans, discussed their interest in how science fiction is incorporating real-life space exploration. Frank noted that movies like "2001" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" have a close tie to science fiction, but also incorporate elements of reality. "I think that's what makes those films so interesting," said Frank. "They're not just about aliens coming to Earth, but also about the human condition." David agreed, saying that he prefers science fiction that explores complex intellectual and philosophical themes.

"I'm less interested in these sort of like aliens come to earth and we have to do battle with them again it just doesn't seem that interesting to me," said David. "I think that Star Trek films, for example, had a lot to unpack intellectually and so I tend to prefer that direction." Frank added that the Voyager 6 mission, which is exploring the galaxy and searching for signs of life, is an exciting development in space exploration.

A Voyage Through Time

The Voyager 6 mission has been traveling through space for decades, sending back information about its surroundings and conducting experiments. But what happens when a spacecraft like Voyager 6 encounters intelligent civilization? Frank and David discussed their thoughts on where they would send Voyager 6 if it were launched today. "I think we should send it to Europa," said Frank. "It's one of the most promising places in our solar system for finding life."

David agreed, saying that Europa's subsurface ocean makes it a prime target for searching for life. "We're launching new missions to search for planets with life on them," he noted. "I think we should be optimistic about finding evidence of advanced life in the near future." Frank added that Voyager 6 was not going anywhere in particular, but rather drifting through space like a cosmic nomad.

The Golden Record: A Message from Humanity

The Voyager 6 spacecraft carries a golden record with sounds and images of humanity. The record is a message to any extraterrestrial life form that might encounter the spacecraft. Frank discussed how this idea came about, and how it reflects our society's values and aspirations. "I think the record and the fake plaque in the film are really a reflection on humanity," said Frank.

"It's not just an artifact, but also a message to ourselves about who we are as humans." David added that recording and releasing the golden record was a way for us to share our culture with the universe. "It's a way of saying 'Hey, we're here, and this is what we're all about'," he said.

Rediscovering the Golden Record

David Peskov, a co-writer of the golden record release, discussed the release of the first vinyl version of the golden record. Fans can now listen to the sounds and images from the record on vinyl, which adds an extra layer of depth to our understanding of this cultural artifact. "It's a great way to rediscover or discover for the very first time what is on that record," said Peskov.

The golden record is more than just a relic of space exploration; it's a message from humanity about who we are and where we come from. As Frank noted, "the record and the artifact really had a massive effect on perhaps this movie even being made." The connection between science fiction and real-life space exploration, as well as the significance of the golden record, highlights the power of human imagination to explore the unknown and push the boundaries of our understanding.

Off-World: A Podcast

If you're interested in more conversations like this, be sure to check out Off-World, a podcast that explores the intersection of science fiction and real-life space exploration. You can find Off-World on Test.com slash off-world, where we'll have more episodes in the near future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to offer old the show where we talk about all things space exploration and pop culture I'm Ariel Waldman and I'm norm Chan and this week Ariel you and your guests will be discussing and dissecting a film that's notable in a couple ways in science fiction because it's the first Star Trek film yeah so it's 1979 Star Trek the motion picture and it really has a plot that you know spoiler Allah is sort of centered around real life space exploration that was just around that time as well the Voyager space probe and so that's what we're sort of talking about today with dr. Frank Drake and David Peskov it's we're gonna jump right into space exploration and Voyager and the Golden Record and all these things and sort of how it relates to the movie Star Trek all right let's take a listen today I am with dr. Frank Drake the astronomer best known as the father of SETI the creator of the Drake Equation and the co-creator of the Voyager Golden Record and I'm also with David Pesce vus the research director at Institute for the future co-editor of blowing blowing and grammy award-winning co-producer of the first final release of the Voyager Golden Record thank you both so much for being on the show pleasure yeah always happy so Star Trek the motion picture 1979 so we all watch this film again recently for me it was actually my first time watching it but it's not like both of you had seen it before what are your general thoughts about the movie overall I liked that movie a lot it's actually in the background or some very important thoughts about space research and what we might find when we actually detect other civilizations and living things in space and also just the attitudes of the people in their level of education is a realistic one that's yeah you know I I saw that movie when it came out with an uncle who was a big Star Trek fan and I grew up watching reruns of the original Star Trek and I remember when I saw it in the theater you know when I was probably eight years old it it honestly abhorred the pants off me you know but but watching it especially after watching this you know the series but watching and now again I have an appreciation for it it's a weird film really and you can get the sense of like you know these really long shots of with classical music of the of the vessels it was very sort of 2001 inspired I think but also this whole mystical kind of side of things well I also had the same effects person Douglas Trumbull worked on 2001 so I could definitely see a lot of 2001 effects absolutely I just remember when I was a kid I just remembering that it had the weird bald woman in it she was still in it yeah well let's talk briefly a little bit about some of the work that both of you have done and it sort of ties into this movie Frank you had worked on the Voyager Golden Record and you know your work with the Drake Equation even though it was almost two decades before this movie even came out I feel like sort of informs that movie and inform sort of this its ethos in a sense can you talk a little bit about your work on the Voyager Golden Record and I was in charge of the picture sequence on the Voyager Golden Record and there we were we were very conscious of the fact that whoever actually captures this thing if they do will be very different from us and we must take that in account when we choose the pictures we show on the information we give because it could be very misleading or it could be unclear just what we're looking at it might even be unclear who the intelligent creatures are and who are the non intelligent creatures and so this was a very great challenge and we worked very hard to make sure there were no ambiguities and other things that might be very misleading and I think we did a pretty good job but it was in a way a lesson to us about what's peculiar about us that we must not be wedded to and what is fundamental in which we should show as as what our civilization is like yeah and David you sort of brought this back to the modern population in a sense well I mean I think well Frank first of all is is underplaying his involvement saying he worked on the pictures I mean the reality is that yes it was a team led by Carl Sagan who put the original Voyager record together but it was Frank's idea to send a phonograph record to space a great idea by the way I'm a amazing idea and and you know I I think that you know as you mentioned yes with Tim Daly and Lawrence as irad we put together a vinyl box set there it is to release the Voyager record to the public on on record for the very first time and you know we feel so fortunate to have had that opportunity and the success of the project ultimately is a testament to the work that Frank and Karl and Annie and John Danny dran and John Lamberg and Tim Ferriss and Linda Salzmann Sagan did that was the the committee who put this together as a as a message for any extraterrestrials that might encounter it now or in 300 years as in Star Trek or in a few billion years yeah well actually just touching again briefly on the extra-terrestrial part is our the Drake Equation could you for people who are not familiar with it could you briefly say what the Drake Equation is about the equation is in a way quantifying what we know about life in the universe and using the results of that quantification as an estimate of how many civilizations there are in space that we might detect it takes into account the picture we have of the histories of living things and intelligent things everywhere that the planetary system forms on one or two planets are suitable for life life develops there evolution takes place that's very important with an end result of created at least one intelligent civilization which is smart enough to capture the record and and deduce what just what the messages are on it now we tried to make that last part easy by using pictures there's no statements in English or anything like that that does not work you have to use pictures and we're in fact assuming that they see things the way we do and we'll interpret those images as we do that may be wrong but that's all we could do and we can even to this day that's all we can do so the the equation simply takes our observational knowledge of the value of all the things how many stars are there how many planets in the system and what fraction might give rise to life etc and the end result is the number of civilizations out there that might be radiating some sign of their existence maybe radio waves maybe light flashes light things and in a way it tells us how difficult the task is the search and it is very difficult and makes us get realistic about how much we should invest in searching if we had if we expected to succeed in any way yeah so I mean going into the movie a little bit you know we see Voyager 6 is gone out into space it's been apparently absorbed and sort of sent through a black hole which sort of is like a wormhole it finds other machines another machine civilization of extraterrestrials and it sort of is sort of bonding with them it's actually bit nebulous in both depiction and in plot a little bit I found but you know this is the idea that there was a Voyager 6 of course there was only so far to date Voyager 1 and 2 were there ever any plans to do more than two voyagers no there were never any plans for more than two although we have sent many spacecraft since to the planets of the solar system to do just a better job and the Voyager did so you know that that line of space exploration is still alive and well I thought it was really interesting that they actually even called it Voyager 6 because it looked just like Voyager 1 into it just didn't have I didn't have the golden record on it it had this other plaque that was sort of this combination of it had your pulsar map there which shows our location in the in the galaxy and then it also had these maps of the various continents brayed at certain stages in Earth's history on it this was on the plaque in the movie yeah or Vijay Singh yeah there was a thing about that movie which was prescient and it's interesting in that what the people in the movie detect discover and interact with is not a living thing it's a computer yeah and at the time that seemed like a pretty outlandish idea but the as time has gone on we've come to realize more and more that that machines are the wave of the future for living things and in fact the first intelligent thing we may detect will be not living carbon unit as they call it but a mechanical or electronic computer yeah I mean to that point you know how do you think we would react if we discover if we discovered a space probe that was not from Earth you know how essentially if we discovered a golden record sent by some long-gone civilization David do you have a I mean how we would react I mean I think that's that's you know one of those sort of you know momentous events that you know it's it's very difficult to imagine what that could mean for culture or society I'd be excited to listen to it some great far-out music on that you know but I think that that you know one of the things that we have to remember is that the work that that you know SETI does and and you know in continuing this search is incredibly important because if we don't listen we're not gonna hear anything and you know I think that I've recently read that there's just such a small amount of what can't could be listened to or for for signal has actually been scanned I mean it's just infant ism 'el yeah yeah very very tiny amount people often say you've been searching for years and you haven't found anything why don't you give up you did but the answer is we have hardly looked which is what David was just saying we've looked at very few radio channels or light channels and looked at very few stars so we should not have succeeded but this thing we're dealing with is a big lottery so far we've bought about two tickets yeah we need a lot more you know the other thing I think it's worth talking about a little bit is this idea that you know there have been a lot of discussions Stephen Hawking talked about it others that you know that warning us against sending messages out and and you know alerting people where we are and I remember there was some complete misreporting of information about the pulsar map don't tell them where we're located and you know something that that a need ran said to me at you know when we were working on this project really stuck with me which was that you know it's really hard to imagine that a civilization that says advanced enough to be able to you know have the technology to travel the distance you know to earth would be so you know socially stunted as to want to come here destroy us you know it just seems unlikely I will say if they do want to come here and destroy us I at least hope I'm around to see that happen but yeah well I feel like Frank we've had discussions about this before and and I I don't know if this is still your answer but I feel like sometimes when we've discussed about aliens actually reaching us you've said well the big thing keeping them from doing that is actually just physics you know space is really big and even if you're travelling exactly at Lightspeed it'd be hard to reach us from a lot of locations yes we really don't comprehend in our imaginations or are thinking how vast space is it is enormous and if you're going to talk about going from one world to another you've got to go at some good fraction of the speed of light or it takes so long that everybody's dead when they get there and what good as that and it's also a very hazardous journey and so the space X actually as a quarantine which prevents us from interfering or damaging or hurting or anything with other civilizations so space itself is the prime directive essentially yeah and of course is that point is always lost in science fiction because you know you've got to meet the aliens and do stuff all within an order that's where they have wormholes and even yeah and you know hyperdrives but yeah I mean I even think about it did you know Voyager 1 is what 13 billion miles away or close to it now I'm in creature 2 it's just just about maybe starting to cross towards going to interstellar space and I mean that's taken 40 years and it's a tremendous distance but it's still incredibly close to where we are when you think about us in terms of you know the next star yeah well talking about the the movie it's interesting so the movie came out in 1979 so very shortly after the Voyager probes were launched you know and I it's something that I was curious about specifically for you Frank since you were really living you know during this whole experience did you get a sense that the Voyager probes were culturally significant to people outside of the scientific community and so that's why it got incorporated into this movie or was this movie sort of an outlier and most people didn't really value the voyagers I think the people couldn't value the voyagers because none of the message content was in the movie none of the pictures and all that the record itself I think it does convey a great deal about us and just the act of putting it together makes us think about what's important about us and what's special and what's good and what's bad and so even though it may never be seen by other creatures it's a very educational for our own selves yeah I think the idea that it says you know yes it's a gift from humanity to the cosmos but it's also a gift to humanity oh yeah you know or in that sense as a you know futurist it makes me think about you know long-term future artifacts this makes us think about our learnt long-term future and and you know what humanity is capable of and you know what's important to us because part of this whole story is that the Voyager record will probably outlive all of humanity in fact our civilization because the Sun will swallow up the earth be about the same time as the Voyager maybe captured somewhere so it becomes the only evidence that we ever existed and once you have that in your mind you think oh I've got to be very careful what I put on it to make it as thorough and correct picture of our civilisation in history as possible said and who was the producer of the original record and who was my advisor in grad school I remember him telling me and he wrote it in the liner notes for our project that the voyagers are really you know they're on a journey through space but they're also on a journey through time and I think that's that's quite moving if you if you really and they're survivors yeah yeah so on the journey through time so both of you have had such a very intimate relationship with knowing everything that's on this record and well being you know part of creating it if if there was a modern day release of it meaning something that looked at any changes at all in humanity from the last several decades since its release would there be anything that you would add to it that it doesn't already have on it you know I think it obviously you both have done a fantastic job with working on frank with you originally on it but is there anything that you would add if you had a chance to do a voyager 3 golden record undoubtedly that it could be more comprehensive so for instance there are some aspects of our civilization that are not present at all for instance in the pictorial presentation of life on earth there's no dentist there's no lawyer that that part of our lives are still a secret and there are many things like that and actually when I think about what would have happened if we had not a vinyl disc but a CD to send with a CD you can send the whole Encyclopedia Britannica it would be in either a nightmare or a blessing a blessing because she needn't do no work at all just send the Encyclopedia or a blessing now that's a blessing a nightmare because you had the opportunity to put literally thousands or millions of images on there and the work there would have to be done to pick out of the thousand ideal messages is just unthinkable but I agree with that but I do think that you know I don't think that when I hear people complaining you know oh well you know the Voyager record was missing this and it didn't include that to me it's it doesn't feel like it was meant to be you know and I didn't create it but the story of life on Earth more of a story of life on Earth and in that way it's kind of like a piece of conceptual art really you know I and also the question of I think just even the very fact that it's a it's a copper phonograph record is significant because yes you could put a CD on there it's much more complicated to explain how to play a CD yeah and also we don't know how long a CD can last for but you know this is a pure physical you know media it'll like it'll it'll stand the test of time literally yeah I mean so something that I was also interested in was the fact that again this this movie had such a close tie it's science fiction but it has such a close tie to things that are actually taking place David do you feel like sci-fi today is more or less sort of incorporating of real-life space exploration just subjectively I mean you know subjectively I think that you know movies I prefer as far as science fiction goes movies like 2001 which is one of my favorite movies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind which I think is an incredible extraterrestrial you know film I'm less interested in these sort of like aliens come to earth and we have to do battle with them again it just doesn't seem that interesting to me even if it is exciting but I think that that Star Trek film I think some other films from that era Close Encounters even 2001 which was long before had a lot to unpack intellectually and and so you know I mean I I tend to prefer that direction and in filmmaking rather than you know to see simple plots that are just really vehicles to feed you advance special effects and explosions just cowboys and Indians and astronaut suits so my final question for both of you so in the film you know we see v6 Voyager 6 it's you know gone through a black hole and came out the other side and that you know encountered a machine intelligent civilization my final question for both of you is if we as a society got to the point where we were launching on Voyager 6 so we launched 3 4 or 5 and now we're launching a Voyager 6 where would you want it to go so advanced future Voyager 6 I think right now we're launching a number of new missions which are going to search for planets with life on them and that will probably in the next to few decades should lead us to knowing of planets where there could very well be creatures like us and that's where we should send them so it's too soon but that's the way the game should be played yeah maybe the maybe to Europa yeah you know but I mean one thing to remember about voyagers is that they weren't they're not going anywhere in particular at this point they're just drifting you know in orbit you know among the stars you know so that's where you would want them to sort of continue going for Voyager 6 well no I mean I think if we had more information about where there was something likely to be happening if the goal of the Voyager mission was to seek out life as opposed to you know image the planets and you know it depends on what the what the aim is yeah we should go to go to any planet that has strong evidence of advanced life quickly quickly yeah I think that's a good and with a smile well thank you both so much for being on the show thank you I'm always honored to be sitting next to Frank oh I thought that was really awesome Ariel it's really clear that both Frank and David are huge science fiction fans and have this direct connection to something in a seminal science-fiction film starts with a motion picture yeah I really think that you know Frank's work on the golden record and and actually getting all of these pictures and all these cultural items onto this Voyager space probe really had a massive effect on perhaps this movie even being made because Voyager has this very human characteristic that you sort of see throughout the Star Trek motion picture movie and I think that came from a lot of the work that went into actually creating this golden record and making it representative of humanity and that's exactly yeah the sentiment that both of them Express and recording and something that is echoed in the movie is that the record and the fake plaque that's in the film it's really a reflection on humanity as much as it is this outward-facing artifact if the message you want to send to any extraterrestrials yeah absolutely and actually speaking of artifacts so we talked to David Peskov it's during our discussion and he did this release of the first vinyl version of the golden record so people can actually still get that today if you go to Osmo records com the artifact if you are looking at the YouTube stream looks like this and it's a great way to rediscover or discover for the very first time what is on that record and why it so culturally significant I want to thank both our guests for joining this week as well as you out there for listening and if you just like listening to the audio version we do have off-world as a podcast now you can find it at test comm slash off-world where we'll have more episodes in the near future once again thanks for listening youwelcome back to offer old the show where we talk about all things space exploration and pop culture I'm Ariel Waldman and I'm norm Chan and this week Ariel you and your guests will be discussing and dissecting a film that's notable in a couple ways in science fiction because it's the first Star Trek film yeah so it's 1979 Star Trek the motion picture and it really has a plot that you know spoiler Allah is sort of centered around real life space exploration that was just around that time as well the Voyager space probe and so that's what we're sort of talking about today with dr. Frank Drake and David Peskov it's we're gonna jump right into space exploration and Voyager and the Golden Record and all these things and sort of how it relates to the movie Star Trek all right let's take a listen today I am with dr. Frank Drake the astronomer best known as the father of SETI the creator of the Drake Equation and the co-creator of the Voyager Golden Record and I'm also with David Pesce vus the research director at Institute for the future co-editor of blowing blowing and grammy award-winning co-producer of the first final release of the Voyager Golden Record thank you both so much for being on the show pleasure yeah always happy so Star Trek the motion picture 1979 so we all watch this film again recently for me it was actually my first time watching it but it's not like both of you had seen it before what are your general thoughts about the movie overall I liked that movie a lot it's actually in the background or some very important thoughts about space research and what we might find when we actually detect other civilizations and living things in space and also just the attitudes of the people in their level of education is a realistic one that's yeah you know I I saw that movie when it came out with an uncle who was a big Star Trek fan and I grew up watching reruns of the original Star Trek and I remember when I saw it in the theater you know when I was probably eight years old it it honestly abhorred the pants off me you know but but watching it especially after watching this you know the series but watching and now again I have an appreciation for it it's a weird film really and you can get the sense of like you know these really long shots of with classical music of the of the vessels it was very sort of 2001 inspired I think but also this whole mystical kind of side of things well I also had the same effects person Douglas Trumbull worked on 2001 so I could definitely see a lot of 2001 effects absolutely I just remember when I was a kid I just remembering that it had the weird bald woman in it she was still in it yeah well let's talk briefly a little bit about some of the work that both of you have done and it sort of ties into this movie Frank you had worked on the Voyager Golden Record and you know your work with the Drake Equation even though it was almost two decades before this movie even came out I feel like sort of informs that movie and inform sort of this its ethos in a sense can you talk a little bit about your work on the Voyager Golden Record and I was in charge of the picture sequence on the Voyager Golden Record and there we were we were very conscious of the fact that whoever actually captures this thing if they do will be very different from us and we must take that in account when we choose the pictures we show on the information we give because it could be very misleading or it could be unclear just what we're looking at it might even be unclear who the intelligent creatures are and who are the non intelligent creatures and so this was a very great challenge and we worked very hard to make sure there were no ambiguities and other things that might be very misleading and I think we did a pretty good job but it was in a way a lesson to us about what's peculiar about us that we must not be wedded to and what is fundamental in which we should show as as what our civilization is like yeah and David you sort of brought this back to the modern population in a sense well I mean I think well Frank first of all is is underplaying his involvement saying he worked on the pictures I mean the reality is that yes it was a team led by Carl Sagan who put the original Voyager record together but it was Frank's idea to send a phonograph record to space a great idea by the way I'm a amazing idea and and you know I I think that you know as you mentioned yes with Tim Daly and Lawrence as irad we put together a vinyl box set there it is to release the Voyager record to the public on on record for the very first time and you know we feel so fortunate to have had that opportunity and the success of the project ultimately is a testament to the work that Frank and Karl and Annie and John Danny dran and John Lamberg and Tim Ferriss and Linda Salzmann Sagan did that was the the committee who put this together as a as a message for any extraterrestrials that might encounter it now or in 300 years as in Star Trek or in a few billion years yeah well actually just touching again briefly on the extra-terrestrial part is our the Drake Equation could you for people who are not familiar with it could you briefly say what the Drake Equation is about the equation is in a way quantifying what we know about life in the universe and using the results of that quantification as an estimate of how many civilizations there are in space that we might detect it takes into account the picture we have of the histories of living things and intelligent things everywhere that the planetary system forms on one or two planets are suitable for life life develops there evolution takes place that's very important with an end result of created at least one intelligent civilization which is smart enough to capture the record and and deduce what just what the messages are on it now we tried to make that last part easy by using pictures there's no statements in English or anything like that that does not work you have to use pictures and we're in fact assuming that they see things the way we do and we'll interpret those images as we do that may be wrong but that's all we could do and we can even to this day that's all we can do so the the equation simply takes our observational knowledge of the value of all the things how many stars are there how many planets in the system and what fraction might give rise to life etc and the end result is the number of civilizations out there that might be radiating some sign of their existence maybe radio waves maybe light flashes light things and in a way it tells us how difficult the task is the search and it is very difficult and makes us get realistic about how much we should invest in searching if we had if we expected to succeed in any way yeah so I mean going into the movie a little bit you know we see Voyager 6 is gone out into space it's been apparently absorbed and sort of sent through a black hole which sort of is like a wormhole it finds other machines another machine civilization of extraterrestrials and it sort of is sort of bonding with them it's actually bit nebulous in both depiction and in plot a little bit I found but you know this is the idea that there was a Voyager 6 of course there was only so far to date Voyager 1 and 2 were there ever any plans to do more than two voyagers no there were never any plans for more than two although we have sent many spacecraft since to the planets of the solar system to do just a better job and the Voyager did so you know that that line of space exploration is still alive and well I thought it was really interesting that they actually even called it Voyager 6 because it looked just like Voyager 1 into it just didn't have I didn't have the golden record on it it had this other plaque that was sort of this combination of it had your pulsar map there which shows our location in the in the galaxy and then it also had these maps of the various continents brayed at certain stages in Earth's history on it this was on the plaque in the movie yeah or Vijay Singh yeah there was a thing about that movie which was prescient and it's interesting in that what the people in the movie detect discover and interact with is not a living thing it's a computer yeah and at the time that seemed like a pretty outlandish idea but the as time has gone on we've come to realize more and more that that machines are the wave of the future for living things and in fact the first intelligent thing we may detect will be not living carbon unit as they call it but a mechanical or electronic computer yeah I mean to that point you know how do you think we would react if we discover if we discovered a space probe that was not from Earth you know how essentially if we discovered a golden record sent by some long-gone civilization David do you have a I mean how we would react I mean I think that's that's you know one of those sort of you know momentous events that you know it's it's very difficult to imagine what that could mean for culture or society I'd be excited to listen to it some great far-out music on that you know but I think that that you know one of the things that we have to remember is that the work that that you know SETI does and and you know in continuing this search is incredibly important because if we don't listen we're not gonna hear anything and you know I think that I've recently read that there's just such a small amount of what can't could be listened to or for for signal has actually been scanned I mean it's just infant ism 'el yeah yeah very very tiny amount people often say you've been searching for years and you haven't found anything why don't you give up you did but the answer is we have hardly looked which is what David was just saying we've looked at very few radio channels or light channels and looked at very few stars so we should not have succeeded but this thing we're dealing with is a big lottery so far we've bought about two tickets yeah we need a lot more you know the other thing I think it's worth talking about a little bit is this idea that you know there have been a lot of discussions Stephen Hawking talked about it others that you know that warning us against sending messages out and and you know alerting people where we are and I remember there was some complete misreporting of information about the pulsar map don't tell them where we're located and you know something that that a need ran said to me at you know when we were working on this project really stuck with me which was that you know it's really hard to imagine that a civilization that says advanced enough to be able to you know have the technology to travel the distance you know to earth would be so you know socially stunted as to want to come here destroy us you know it just seems unlikely I will say if they do want to come here and destroy us I at least hope I'm around to see that happen but yeah well I feel like Frank we've had discussions about this before and and I I don't know if this is still your answer but I feel like sometimes when we've discussed about aliens actually reaching us you've said well the big thing keeping them from doing that is actually just physics you know space is really big and even if you're travelling exactly at Lightspeed it'd be hard to reach us from a lot of locations yes we really don't comprehend in our imaginations or are thinking how vast space is it is enormous and if you're going to talk about going from one world to another you've got to go at some good fraction of the speed of light or it takes so long that everybody's dead when they get there and what good as that and it's also a very hazardous journey and so the space X actually as a quarantine which prevents us from interfering or damaging or hurting or anything with other civilizations so space itself is the prime directive essentially yeah and of course is that point is always lost in science fiction because you know you've got to meet the aliens and do stuff all within an order that's where they have wormholes and even yeah and you know hyperdrives but yeah I mean I even think about it did you know Voyager 1 is what 13 billion miles away or close to it now I'm in creature 2 it's just just about maybe starting to cross towards going to interstellar space and I mean that's taken 40 years and it's a tremendous distance but it's still incredibly close to where we are when you think about us in terms of you know the next star yeah well talking about the the movie it's interesting so the movie came out in 1979 so very shortly after the Voyager probes were launched you know and I it's something that I was curious about specifically for you Frank since you were really living you know during this whole experience did you get a sense that the Voyager probes were culturally significant to people outside of the scientific community and so that's why it got incorporated into this movie or was this movie sort of an outlier and most people didn't really value the voyagers I think the people couldn't value the voyagers because none of the message content was in the movie none of the pictures and all that the record itself I think it does convey a great deal about us and just the act of putting it together makes us think about what's important about us and what's special and what's good and what's bad and so even though it may never be seen by other creatures it's a very educational for our own selves yeah I think the idea that it says you know yes it's a gift from humanity to the cosmos but it's also a gift to humanity oh yeah you know or in that sense as a you know futurist it makes me think about you know long-term future artifacts this makes us think about our learnt long-term future and and you know what humanity is capable of and you know what's important to us because part of this whole story is that the Voyager record will probably outlive all of humanity in fact our civilization because the Sun will swallow up the earth be about the same time as the Voyager maybe captured somewhere so it becomes the only evidence that we ever existed and once you have that in your mind you think oh I've got to be very careful what I put on it to make it as thorough and correct picture of our civilisation in history as possible said and who was the producer of the original record and who was my advisor in grad school I remember him telling me and he wrote it in the liner notes for our project that the voyagers are really you know they're on a journey through space but they're also on a journey through time and I think that's that's quite moving if you if you really and they're survivors yeah yeah so on the journey through time so both of you have had such a very intimate relationship with knowing everything that's on this record and well being you know part of creating it if if there was a modern day release of it meaning something that looked at any changes at all in humanity from the last several decades since its release would there be anything that you would add to it that it doesn't already have on it you know I think it obviously you both have done a fantastic job with working on frank with you originally on it but is there anything that you would add if you had a chance to do a voyager 3 golden record undoubtedly that it could be more comprehensive so for instance there are some aspects of our civilization that are not present at all for instance in the pictorial presentation of life on earth there's no dentist there's no lawyer that that part of our lives are still a secret and there are many things like that and actually when I think about what would have happened if we had not a vinyl disc but a CD to send with a CD you can send the whole Encyclopedia Britannica it would be in either a nightmare or a blessing a blessing because she needn't do no work at all just send the Encyclopedia or a blessing now that's a blessing a nightmare because you had the opportunity to put literally thousands or millions of images on there and the work there would have to be done to pick out of the thousand ideal messages is just unthinkable but I agree with that but I do think that you know I don't think that when I hear people complaining you know oh well you know the Voyager record was missing this and it didn't include that to me it's it doesn't feel like it was meant to be you know and I didn't create it but the story of life on Earth more of a story of life on Earth and in that way it's kind of like a piece of conceptual art really you know I and also the question of I think just even the very fact that it's a it's a copper phonograph record is significant because yes you could put a CD on there it's much more complicated to explain how to play a CD yeah and also we don't know how long a CD can last for but you know this is a pure physical you know media it'll like it'll it'll stand the test of time literally yeah I mean so something that I was also interested in was the fact that again this this movie had such a close tie it's science fiction but it has such a close tie to things that are actually taking place David do you feel like sci-fi today is more or less sort of incorporating of real-life space exploration just subjectively I mean you know subjectively I think that you know movies I prefer as far as science fiction goes movies like 2001 which is one of my favorite movies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind which I think is an incredible extraterrestrial you know film I'm less interested in these sort of like aliens come to earth and we have to do battle with them again it just doesn't seem that interesting to me even if it is exciting but I think that that Star Trek film I think some other films from that era Close Encounters even 2001 which was long before had a lot to unpack intellectually and and so you know I mean I I tend to prefer that direction and in filmmaking rather than you know to see simple plots that are just really vehicles to feed you advance special effects and explosions just cowboys and Indians and astronaut suits so my final question for both of you so in the film you know we see v6 Voyager 6 it's you know gone through a black hole and came out the other side and that you know encountered a machine intelligent civilization my final question for both of you is if we as a society got to the point where we were launching on Voyager 6 so we launched 3 4 or 5 and now we're launching a Voyager 6 where would you want it to go so advanced future Voyager 6 I think right now we're launching a number of new missions which are going to search for planets with life on them and that will probably in the next to few decades should lead us to knowing of planets where there could very well be creatures like us and that's where we should send them so it's too soon but that's the way the game should be played yeah maybe the maybe to Europa yeah you know but I mean one thing to remember about voyagers is that they weren't they're not going anywhere in particular at this point they're just drifting you know in orbit you know among the stars you know so that's where you would want them to sort of continue going for Voyager 6 well no I mean I think if we had more information about where there was something likely to be happening if the goal of the Voyager mission was to seek out life as opposed to you know image the planets and you know it depends on what the what the aim is yeah we should go to go to any planet that has strong evidence of advanced life quickly quickly yeah I think that's a good and with a smile well thank you both so much for being on the show thank you I'm always honored to be sitting next to Frank oh I thought that was really awesome Ariel it's really clear that both Frank and David are huge science fiction fans and have this direct connection to something in a seminal science-fiction film starts with a motion picture yeah I really think that you know Frank's work on the golden record and and actually getting all of these pictures and all these cultural items onto this Voyager space probe really had a massive effect on perhaps this movie even being made because Voyager has this very human characteristic that you sort of see throughout the Star Trek motion picture movie and I think that came from a lot of the work that went into actually creating this golden record and making it representative of humanity and that's exactly yeah the sentiment that both of them Express and recording and something that is echoed in the movie is that the record and the fake plaque that's in the film it's really a reflection on humanity as much as it is this outward-facing artifact if the message you want to send to any extraterrestrials yeah absolutely and actually speaking of artifacts so we talked to David Peskov it's during our discussion and he did this release of the first vinyl version of the golden record so people can actually still get that today if you go to Osmo records com the artifact if you are looking at the YouTube stream looks like this and it's a great way to rediscover or discover for the very first time what is on that record and why it so culturally significant I want to thank both our guests for joining this week as well as you out there for listening and if you just like listening to the audio version we do have off-world as a podcast now you can find it at test comm slash off-world where we'll have more episodes in the near future once again thanks for listening you\n"