The Farthest Page #5

electronics and the computers.

And that's got these arms and

these appendages that stick out.

It has these feet

that connected it to the rocket

and then a really long arm

with a magnetic field sensor

on it over here

and another arm over there

with this plutonium power supply

to give it its electricity.

You can't keep that too close

to the spacecraft

because it will radiate the spacecraft.

And another arm with this device

that had the cameras

and other instruments on it

that could point around,

kind of like the eyes,

and the big antenna was the ears.

STONE:

We had eleven scientific instruments

peeking out to see what's out there.

BELL:

When everything is fully extended

to its greatest dimensions,

it's comparable in size

to sort of a small school bus.

A strange-looking being for our planet,

but perfectly happy in space.

[Beethoven's 5th]

[Beethoven's 5th]

[music continues]

[Tchenhoukoumen percussion, Senegal]

NARRATOR:

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

was one of twenty-seven pieces of music

chosen for the Golden Record.

FERRIS:
I became the producer

of only one record in my career,

and only two copies of it were made,

and they were both hurled off the earth,

so I don't know if that's

a credential or not.

[needle sliding off record]

[Izlel je Delyo Hajdutin

(Golden Record)]

The launch window for Voyager was set.

and they sure as hell weren't

going to wait for the record.

[Fairie Round--David Munrow]

LOMBERG:

We had six weeks to do it,

that's what always draws

the biggest gasp,

that you had to figure out a way

to explain the world to aliens,

and by the way it has to be

finished in six weeks.

[Melancholy Blues--Louis Armstrong]

FERRIS:
We had two goals

in making the Voyager record,

we wanted the music to represent

many different cultures around the world

and not just the culture of the society

that had built and launched

the spacecraft.

[Ugam--Azerbaijan bagpipes]

The other criterion was we

wanted it to be a good record.

[Mozart--Queen of the Night--Eda Moser]

LOMBERG:

It's a very idiosyncratic message.

It doesn't seem like something

made by a committee.

It's too quirky.

[Mozart--Queen of the Night--Eda Moser]

[Cranes in Their Nest,

Japan (Shakuhachi)]

FERRIS:

If you listen to the Voyager record,

it would be remarkable if you

didn't hear some pieces of music

that were quite unlike anything

you had heard before.

The Japanese shakuhachi piece

or the sixteen-year-old

pygmy girl singing

what's called an initiation song,

a kind of puberty song,

in the Ituri forest of Africa

is just unbelievably beautiful.

[Pygmy girl initiation song]

There was a certain amount

of hunting up rare records

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes