It's the bravest satellite of all.

October 2, 2014 3:27 PM

"[M]y 5-year-old son goes to bed worried, sometimes in tears. He is worried about the Voyager Interstellar spacecraft, the fact that it is out there all by itself. He wants it to come home to be safe. What do we tell him?" Commander Hadfield responds.

The inverse is this xkcd, but I urge you not to click that, unless you are already sobbing and would like to continue. (Here's an alternate happy ending, thank god.)

posted by quadrilaterals (73 comments total)

Yeah, that xkcd is the comic equivalent of That Episode of Futurama That Shall Not Be Named, For Godssake.
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:33 PM on October 2, 2014 [25 favorites]

oh god I am tearing up at work.
posted by corb at 3:36 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

"Well timmy, voyager craft are intended to have much longer life spans so everything feels like less time for it. It will come back to earth safe and sound in about three hundred years, bond with a human, get 'married' to another human and live happily ever after." Then run the DVD.
posted by biffa at 3:37 PM on October 2, 2014 [6 favorites]

Chris Hadfield for King of Everything, please.

(and not JUST because I'm now 100% sure he'd be rooting for Pluto, too.)
posted by argonauta at 3:43 PM on October 2, 2014 [24 favorites]

Don't worry, there's a Brave Little Toaster that occasionally sends it a piece of toast.
posted by localroger at 3:43 PM on October 2, 2014 [10 favorites]

We tell Timmy it's just a machine, and machines have no feelings. Also this machine was built for space, that is its home.

Later, when he's older, he should be given L.Ron Hubbard's last good book, Battlefield Earth wherein the evil, gold-craving Psychlos discover a Voyager, trace its trajectory back to Earth, and conquer humanity.
posted by Rash at 3:44 PM on October 2, 2014 [6 favorites]

"He is worried about the Voyager Interstellar spacecraft..."

Whatever you do for the love of god DO NOT buy him a Shelby.
posted by tractorfeed at 3:44 PM on October 2, 2014 [12 favorites]

I love the Canadian tendency to speak matter-of-factly. "Well Timor, nobody lives forever. Live your life, explore what you can. There's awesome stuff out there, go check it oot."

Words to live by.

That xkcd comic always struck me as weird, explorers on that scale usually don't get to come home. And hot damn that Major Tom cover was epic.
posted by Sphinx at 3:53 PM on October 2, 2014 [18 favorites]

My five-year-old has sobbing breakdowns about machines getting hurt or lost ... it is so distressing when he sobs for an hour over a fictional train crashing or a digger being abandoned. He is only okay with the Mars Rover because there are multiple rovers and sattelites at Mars. I HIDE THE KNOWLEDGE OF VOYAGER FROM HIM.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:53 PM on October 2, 2014 [76 favorites]

Hadfield's tweets from ISS were terrific, too. He is a great ambassador for CSA and for space exploration. And now he's reassuring the world's crouton petters! Excellent.

Holy shit is this man the biggest attention whore on earth?

Hmm. Come into a thread about a popular Canadian astronaut, a guy who's accomplished even by already-exceptional astronaut standards, doing something nice for a kid, make a throwaway disparagement in the first five comments. Takes one to know one, I guess.
posted by gingerest at 4:04 PM on October 2, 2014 [30 favorites]

oh god Hadfield sounds like my dad. That Canadian accent, the cadence, the everything... so, so Canadian. Oh yeah, wait, he was born in the same area as me. I've finally been away long enough to be able hear how it sounds to outsiders. If he segued into a Mackenzie Brothers routine I wouldn't even blink.
posted by GuyZero at 4:04 PM on October 2, 2014 [7 favorites]

Eyebrows McGee: I HIDE THE KNOWLEDGE OF VOYAGER FROM HIM.

All it takes is some kid mouthing off about Tuvok on the playground or a neighbors kid name dropping Janeway and the cat is out of the bag.
posted by dr_dank at 4:07 PM on October 2, 2014 [45 favorites]

Now *I'm" worried about Voyager getting lost and lonely and I'm 41 and I'm not buying Hadfield's talk.

I need to go find some croutons to pet now. They are my friends and will comfort me.
posted by dilettante at 4:08 PM on October 2, 2014 [31 favorites]

Wait, why did this clip move into a Best of Just For Laughs video? When did RadioLab become a cancon site?
posted by GuyZero at 4:09 PM on October 2, 2014

Tell him about the Monkeys who were shot into space; that'll take his mind off it.
posted by randomkeystrike at 4:17 PM on October 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

"[M]y 5-year-old son goes to bed worried, sometimes in tears. He is worried about the Voyager Interstellar spacecraft, the fact that it is out there all by itself. He wants it to come home to be safe. What do we tell him?"

This would make the GREATEST (a pretty good) Ask.me ever!
posted by QueerAngel28 at 4:17 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh God, it's another one of NASA's probes. Quick, throw it in the soup. </Hermes>
posted by boo_radley at 4:18 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

I really enjoyed his book, too. I know he says he has no interest in politics, but I'm hoping he'll change his mind before the next election. Though his lack of commentary lately suggest either he really, really has no interest or he's a Tory.
posted by jeather at 4:20 PM on October 2, 2014

Dammit, we need more Canadians! You guys get busy up there!
posted by jim in austin at 4:24 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hmm. Come into a thread about a popular Canadian astronaut, a guy who's accomplished even by already-exceptional astronaut standards, doing something nice for a kid

Did he really? I feel that that throwaway line "you probably won't travel as far as Voyager" is just going to encourage that child to leave the Solar System, just to prove Commander Hadfield wrong. "You're not the boss of me!" the child yells as he approaches light speed....
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:32 PM on October 2, 2014 [12 favorites]

Let's put every Canadian in space!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:32 PM on October 2, 2014 [9 favorites]

Wow, he's not just good at talking to kids, he's like Fred Rogers good.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:34 PM on October 2, 2014 [28 favorites]

that xkcd is the comic equivalent of That Episode of Futurama That Shall Not Be Named, For Godssake.

A fanfiction writer got so upset at that xkcd that they wrote a really quick xkcd/Doctor Who crossover fanfic where The Tenth Doctor picks the Rover up sometime during the Waters of Mars episode and so now Rover is on the TARDIS as part of the crew or something.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:38 PM on October 2, 2014 [23 favorites]

Where are they now?

Voyager is not alone.
posted by vrakatar at 4:46 PM on October 2, 2014

Oh boy, now I'm tearing up after listening to that. What a lovely response. So matter of fact and yet encouraging!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:48 PM on October 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

I may have 27 years on this kid, but I needed to hear this today, too. Thanks.
posted by davidjmcgee at 5:01 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

What do we tell him?

Show him Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:01 PM on October 2, 2014 [11 favorites]

oh no robot feelings
posted by poffin boffin at 5:09 PM on October 2, 2014 [6 favorites]

Don't let Timor find out about Laika. You'll never hear the end of it.

Or Lonely Potatoes, for that matter.
posted by janey47 at 5:17 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

Fortunately, the kid is too young for the Sex Geckos That Didn't Make It.
posted by JHarris at 5:22 PM on October 2, 2014 [6 favorites]

oh god laika we are just one month and one day away from the worst day of the year

sob
posted by poffin boffin at 5:22 PM on October 2, 2014 [7 favorites]

NO WHAT DID THE SEX GECKOS DIE WHAT

humanity must be destroyed
posted by poffin boffin at 5:23 PM on October 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos, you can't throw that out and not link!
posted by tavella at 5:24 PM on October 2, 2014

Oh, space monkeys. Now I'm sad again.

Despite Laika, the Soviet space dog program returned the vast majority of the subjects alive and in good condition with only a few mishaps. The US monkey and ape program just reads like a list of elaborate primate murders in comparison.

My favorite detail from an early suborbital test:

Bolik (Болик) ran away just days before his flight in September 1951. A replacement named ZIB (a Russian acronym for "Substitute for Missing Bolik", "Замена Исчезнувшему Болику" Zamena Ischeznuvshemu Boliku), who was an untrained street dog found running around the barracks, was quickly located and made a successful flight.

posted by figurant at 5:27 PM on October 2, 2014 [22 favorites]

Ha, I love that the kid is not buying Hatfield's first nice story. Kid is like "yeah, but I didn't ask if it's happy, I asked what happens if it needs fixing"... Good work on Hatfield to stick with it and bring it home from there.
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:30 PM on October 2, 2014 [5 favorites]

AO3 has some Space Vehicles fanfiction here, because Yuletide probably. I think the fic EmpressCallipygos is talking about is this one though, which I don't think is up on the Archive yet.
posted by yasaman at 5:35 PM on October 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

OH SHIT I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT THE SEX GECKOS AND NOW THEY'RE DEAD
posted by janey47 at 5:38 PM on October 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is kind of horrible because I'm crying and laughing at the same time. Every time I start to calm down, I think, "Oh well, they died doing what they loved" and I fall apart again.
posted by janey47 at 5:42 PM on October 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

Strappin' that dog to the INSIDE was probably more of an aerodynamic than an ethical concern
posted by rustcrumb at 5:42 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there a transcript because I can't get the video to load.

What is it with videos anyway

When did we decide the internet was going to be videos
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:47 PM on October 2, 2014 [36 favorites]

FYI, John Oliver did a musical tribute to the dead sex geckos, or as he lovingly called them, "the frozen fuck lizards."

(Here was his original call to arms to mount (heh) a rescue for the missing sex geckos.)
posted by argonauta at 5:48 PM on October 2, 2014 [14 favorites]

FYI, John Oliver did a musical tribute to the dead sex geckos, or as he called them, "the frozen fuck lizards."
posted by argonauta

Oh my fucking god this is the best thing on the internet EVAR
Thanks god most of the people have left the office because I am HOWLING
posted by janey47 at 5:57 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

When did we decide the internet was going to be videos

FOR SERIOUS down with this sort of thing
posted by poffin boffin at 6:06 PM on October 2, 2014 [8 favorites]

I feel like I ate an entire box of Feelz Cookies. I'm so full.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:07 PM on October 2, 2014

“It’s still too early to talk about the geckos’ cause of death.”

Is it just me or does that quote sound like the scientists are too broken up to talk about the deaths?
posted by saucysault at 6:16 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

Don't kid yourself Jimmy. If voyager ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!
posted by blue_beetle at 6:27 PM on October 2, 2014 [13 favorites]

Hey, kid.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:49 PM on October 2, 2014

I love that he says "machines...like to do what they're built for." When I was learning to fly, what got me over an initial fear was my instructor saying, "an airplane wants to fly." That clicked: The plane is a lot happier in the air than on the ground. Ever since, as both a pilot of small planes and passenger on commercial flights, I feel happiest at the moment of rotation and takeoff. The plane wants to fly.
posted by bassomatic at 6:55 PM on October 2, 2014 [16 favorites]

I thought the correct answer was that Voyager will become sentient when it enters a mysterious space cloud and then will return to the Earth and will kill everyone because we exterminated the whales... see, all's well that ends well, sweet dreams.
posted by ennui.bz at 7:01 PM on October 2, 2014

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Yes Timmy, machines can be happy or sad.
posted by 724A at 7:13 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

> I know he says he has no interest in politics, but I'm hoping he'll change his mind before the next election. Though his lack of commentary lately suggest either he really, really has no interest or he's a Tory.

Yeah, all my leftie friends are in love with Hadfield and think he's some secret progressive. He's charming and sweet and all, sure, and that Bowie cover chokes me up, big time, but dude is lifetime military, studied engineering at Royal Roads and then went and served with the US Navy for chrissake. I think the farthest left he is likely to lean is Red Tory.

The USA ain't putting no commies in the sky, I guarantee.
posted by looli at 7:18 PM on October 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

Hell yeah. Thank you, Chris Hadfield.

Let us all find new things.
posted by grimjeer at 7:24 PM on October 2, 2014

EmpressCallipygos, you can't throw that out and not link!

Couldn't find it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:51 PM on October 2, 2014

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon: Is there a transcript because I can't get the video to load.

You have to allow Javascript from

• www.radiolab.org
• s0.2mdn.net (Note, in Script Safe this is marked "Unwanted" and therefore you have to "Allow" rather than "Temp" this one. Don't forget to clear it before you close the tab.)
• thumbnails.cbc.ca
• link.theplatform.com
• pdk.theplatform.com
• player.theplatform.com

ChurchHatesTucker: Hey, kid

*Marks down two new names in the Book of Grudges*
posted by ob1quixote at 7:55 PM on October 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

And then I got determined and did.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:55 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think I know of a new song for Chris Hadfield to cover.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:55 PM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I liked that little bit of astronaut perspective peeking through when Hadfield mentions "everybody else on the world". I suppose "the world" must indeed not feel so all-encompassing when you've been away from it for nearly half a year.
posted by NMcCoy at 8:18 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

The Chris Hadfield cover of Major Tom may well be the pinnacle of human civilization, the highest point we will reach as a species.

The fact that there are a few Chris Hadfields in the world is what motivates me to go out and be a part of the world some days.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:05 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

I feel that that throwaway line "you probably won't travel as far as Voyager" is just going to encourage that child to leave the Solar System, just to prove Commander Hadfield wrong.

"No, Jimmy, you will leave the Solar System one day, probably as a solar flare, in many billions of years when the Sun has become a white dwarf and the Earth has been engulfed in hot plasma. Eventually, though, all of your protons will decay as the universe approaches its ultimate heat-death."

"I hate you, Milkman Dan."
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:10 PM on October 2, 2014 [9 favorites]

oh god I am tearing up at work.

Yeah... but luckily nobody is in ye- oh hi Tom.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:36 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

he's like Fred Rogers good.

Up here we say Mr Dressup good, eh!

(But only because hadfield makes us get all nationalist and everything.)
posted by chapps at 11:30 PM on October 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

You shouldn't anthropomorphise machines like that.

They hate it when you do that.
posted by tim_in_oz at 12:15 AM on October 3, 2014 [11 favorites]

WTF Metafilter? This is the second thread this week which makes me feel I'm in a room full of puppies with my kicking boots on.
posted by fullerine at 12:21 AM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

I guess he'd be too young for the everything-will-eventually-die talk, and the Heraclitean idea that no man crosses the same river twice and so on.
posted by acb at 3:47 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

One of the stories I told in my first one man show, This Nonstop March Around The World, back in '91, was about the time I spent living in an abandoned industrial chicken house in the Beltsvillle Agricultural Research Center, an immense preserve of farms snuggled up to the Goddard Space Flight Center. It was 1987 and I was homeless, mostly by choice, because my mother always said I could just come home, but I was determined to refute my father's prediction that the real world would eat me alive, so, in between apartments I couldn't afford on my then four thousand dollar annual income, I loaded up my things, pointed my beat-up Datsun at Beltsville, and took up residence in a corner of the agriculture center.

The place was huge, but there was power, and water, and a line of grimy windows that would light up in a warm glow with the sunrise each morning, and there was a little stream nearby where I could bathe and paddle around lazily just for the heck of it. I had a hot plate and a tiny microwave, a foam chair that folded out into a bed, and the sense that I'd arrived at a redneck version of Serge's apartment from Diva, so things were good.

Even better, it was about two minutes on foot to the NASA optics ranging facility, and on certain nights, a cluster of little silver domes on the rolling hillside would open and laser beams would trace lines into the sky. When the weather was right and I was feeling wistful, I'd climb up the rusty ladder on the side of the industrial chicken house, spread a blanket on the roof next to one of the huge galvanized ventilator stacks, plug my Walkman into my ears, and lie there, looking up at the sky and watching the way the lasers would fire and flicker, occasionally doing a little stuttering sweep with steps determined by the quantized motions of a stepper motor and magnified by the immensity of distance, and I'd imagine conversations with our space probes. In time, I got up my nerve and got out my bolt cutters, making a little flap in the fence at the optics facility so I could get closer with my blanket, and I spent a lot of nights there.

This Nonstop March Around The World turned out to be too big and cumbersome to perform, so I spent the next ten years breaking out the individual stories and cutting my teeth as a guy on stage, caught in the spotlight, and "The Laser Farm Dialogues" was one of my favorites, because my insane habit of talking to space probes made more and more sense as I grew up and out and out of old beliefs. When my father died in '97, and after the initial catatonic depression faded to a dull sense of disconnection, I had the instinct of a cartoon lemming to return to the old industrial chicken house, where my hot plate and tiny microwave and foam chair that folds out into a bed remain to this day, and even though NASA long since repaired my hole in the fence and the domes stopped opening years ago, and when things seemed particularly bleak, I'd point my beat-up four door economy sedan at Beltsville, climb up the rusty ladder to the roof of the abandoned industrial chicken house, plug a minidisc player into my ears, and imagine a whole series of new conversations.

It's all nonsense, of course, and yet, I love the idea of the Pioneer probes, spin-stabilized to turn and turn and turn forever, as technological prayer wheels, along with the Voyagers and everything else we've got out there, all together as what could be humanity's last monument, if we don't get it right, or as our mechanical angels, always out there, watching out over us, relaying our dreams and anguish to someone, somewhere, who might hear and understand. I don't think of the probes as lonely, though—they have all the stars for company, and messages to deliver, and promises to keep, and light years to go before they sleep.

Down here in the gravity well, looking up from the bottom of this hole, we're the lost ones, counting on those fragile flyers we blew out into the void like the seeds from a dandelion, always looking out, and waiting.

If you run into my dad, or my grandmother, or Vygis, or Carlos, or Dyane out there, would you let them know I'm okay, please?

I know, I know, and yet, here we are.
posted by sonascope at 4:31 AM on October 3, 2014 [30 favorites]

I drive through the BARC on my way to work at Goddard. Now I want to look for your chicken house.
posted by Rob Rockets at 4:49 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here's a hint—it's on the same road as the three giant fake trees. Well, and the optics facility, obviously.

I envy you your job. My Explorer Post (1275) was Goddard-based and I loved everything about the place and dreamed of working there one day, but it turns out I'm a bit of a dullard, which is problematic for the rocket science biz.
posted by sonascope at 5:08 AM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is cool
posted by Flood at 5:55 AM on October 3, 2014

I feel that that throwaway line "you probably won't travel as far as Voyager" is just going to encourage that child to leave the Solar System, just to prove Commander Hadfield wrong. "You're not the boss of me!" the child yells as he approaches light speed....

OK, going to start telling my toddler that she can't leave Earth and can't travel faster than light.
posted by Anne Neville at 6:46 AM on October 3, 2014 [3 favorites]

That is a remarkably articulate five-year-old.
posted by jbickers at 6:56 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

One of the things I liked best about Cmdr Hadfield's book was he actually talks about the ways he wasn't a good father to his own kids at times. How he actually learned, or retrained as he'd put it.
posted by DigDoug at 9:26 AM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

I know he says he has no interest in politics, but I'm hoping he'll change his mind before the next election. Though his lack of commentary lately suggest either he really, really has no interest or he's a Tory.

Dull sublunary politicians' politics
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 8:19 PM on October 3, 2014

Although seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if he was a red Tory. Lots of people in that camp are so internally conflicted these days because they are too attached to party affiliation or unable to comprehend how thoroughly the federal parties have changed to accept that someone who was a red Tory in 1994 would probably be most at home today in Mulcair's NDP.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 8:23 PM on October 3, 2014