Although you might not have been around to see it open in theaters, you are almost certainly familiar with a film released in May of 1977 starring three relative unknowns: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher. The summer of 1977 would be bracketed by amazing spacecraft, first fictional, then real. Just three months later, NASA launched two rockets two weeks apart. The first one, on August 20, contained the Voyager 2 space probe. The second departed Earth on September 5, carrying Voyager 1.

Their development and launch was timed to take advantage of a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, one that will not recur until 2152. Voyager’s mission was a “Grand Tour” of the solar system.

Space films and space exploration require big thinking (and big risks).

Mission Accomplished (But Far From Over)

The Voyager program accomplished its primary mission, completing fly-bys of Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1980, Uranus in 1986, and Neptune in 1989, but the two little probes were far from finished.

On Valentine’s Day, 1990, Voyager 1 took the iconic “Pale Blue Dot” photo from four billion miles away, in which Earth appears as a barely visible blue speck. It was almost to Pluto at the time, back when Pluto was still a planet.

Now, nearly forty-seven years after their launch in the summer of Star Wars, both Voyagers are still going. Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles from Earth now. It is the most distant human-made object in the universe.

Big Numbers

Any self-respecting geek knows that George Lucas made a mistake when he had Han Solo claim that the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. A parsec is a real thing, but it’s a unit of distance, not time (I’m sure Mr. Lucas loves being reminded of this). But my statement that Voyager 2 launched first, ahead of Voyager 1, was not a mistake. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around, though?

No. Although Voyager 2 got a two-week head start, the two spacecraft were launched on slightly different trajectories that meant Voyager 1 would quickly overtake Voyager 2 en route to their first targets, Jupiter and Saturn. It is Voyager 1 that is hurtling first into uncharted territory.

That said, Voyager 2 is no slow-poke, traveling currently at 34,000 miles per hour, but Voyager 1 is faster, now speeding along at just over 38,000 miles per hour.

Do those numbers really mean anything to you? Can you relate to them? Probably not.

Humans aren't great at really grasping large numbers. It's just not what the human mind evolved to do, and we can't really change it. But becoming more aware of these built-in quirks of our hard-wiring is essential. When we read numbers like 15 billion miles or 38,000 mph, we would do well to develop an automatic internal response: I have no idea what that number really means.

Let’s try it:

• Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles away: I have no idea what that really means.
• Elon Musk’s net worth is $210 billion: I have no idea what that really means.
• My laptop holds 2 terabytes of information (2 trillion bytes): I have no idea what that really means.

You get the point.

Don’t Count; Compare

Knowing this, how can we make sense of these values? The work-around is to remember that we are way better at comparing than counting. So let’s make some comparisons:

Voyager 1 can...

• Complete a twenty-six mile marathon in 2.5 seconds.
• Travel from New York to LA in just under 4 minutes, about the time it takes the fastest humans on earth to run a mile (who’s excited for the Paris Olympics?!)
• Move twenty times faster than a round from a sniper rifle.
• Circle the 2.5 mile oval at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in less than a quarter second.

It’s fast.

How Far Is Fifteen Billion Miles?

Whether a planet or just a really big rock, everyone cognitively knows that Pluto is a very long way away. But how can we know that viscerally? How can we grasp what it actually means? Again, let’s create some comparisons that we can hopefully relate to.

• As far away as Pluto is from Earth, Voyager 1 is now four times farther than that from Pluto.
• If Earth and Voyager 1 were on opposite goal lines of a 100 yard football field, the moon would be at the 0.05 inch line, a little more than a millimeter for those of you who use sensible units of measure.
• On our cosmic football field where 100 yards represents 15 billion miles, the moon, at about 385,000 miles distant, would be the thickness of a dime from Earth’s end zone.
• If your team advanced the ball to the moon, you would still have 99.9986 yards to go to reach the Voyager 1 touchdown.

Imagine yourself on that goal line. Look to the opposite end zone 100 yards away. Picture the moon, once impossibly distant, and realize at this scale it's an invisible dust mote one millimeter away.

The Edge of the Solar System

Voyager 1 left our solar system in May, 2012, becoming the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space. Twelve years later, Voyager 1 is now 22.5 light-hours from home, meaning round-trip communication with it–the time it takes to get a response after sending a command–is almost two days. I wonder if their software has a progress bar for that…

These numbers are all a little crazy, but really, we haven’t even started. When we talk about galaxies far, far away, we measure in light-years. Voyager 1 is not even a full light-day from home.

Reaching for the Stars

As we have established, Voyager 1 is modockin' *. In the time you have been reading, it could have zipped from the Statue of Liberty to the Hollywood sign. Yet, even at that blistering pace, it took 35 years to reach the edge of our solar system.

But let’s say we were taking a trip to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. The kids in the back seat are getting restless after almost five decades and are starting to ask every parent’s favorite question:

Are we there yet?

Nope, not there yet.

Ughhhh, how much longer?!

How would you answer? Would you turn to the back seat and estimate another decade? Another century? Surely not another thousand years?

Sorry kids. Proxima Centauri is 4.25 light-years from Earth. That’s 25 trillion miles, and that is the closest star. Even at ten miles per second, you have 75,000 years to go, not including bathroom stops. 

On a cosmic scale, however, even reaching Proxima Centauri wouldn’t amount to leaving the driveway. Our oldest radio transmissions have now radiated 100 light-years from earth, but that distance is, on a galactic scale, about like Earth when viewed from Pluto: a speck. The Milky Way alone is 87,000 light-years across. It contains between 100 and 400 billion stars, and at least as many planets.

Intergalactic Planetary

Still have your sights set on a galaxy far, far away? The nearest one is Messier 31, aka Andromeda, and it is 2.5 million light-years away. If you set the cruise control at 38,000 mph to keep up with Voyager, you’ll arrive in about 44 billion years (i.e., 30 billion years longer than the estimated age of the universe).

These numbers are unfathomable. Now consider that the observable universe is 93 billion light years in diameter and contains something like 2 trillion galaxies. I'm not sure how to make that relatable.

Where Has This Grand Tour Taken Us?

Whew.

Presumably this little tour made you think for a few minutes about something other than the number of unread emails in your inbox (which hopefully seems quite small now, by comparison). But how is this useful?

I would argue that there we could take many lessons from the Voyager program, from the strategic thinking of aligning the mission with once-in-a-lifetime aligning of the planets, to the importance of planning and execution, to the resilience required to overcome obstacles and solve hard problems.

For now, I will offer three takeaways that I hope are broadly applicable to your work, life, and leadership roles.

One: Get Curious, and Stretch Your Mind

We all know not to jump straight into a hard workout without warming up and stretching our muscles and tendons. That burning tension in your hamstrings can be uncomfortable, but it keeps us flexible, improves our mobility, and helps us perform better. We know it’s good for us.

Life, work, and leadership demand that we grapple with big ideas and lots of complexity. Stretching our minds beyond their day-to-day comfort zones helps prepare us for those real-life demands.

And as for curiosity? That’s what got a space probe 15 billion miles away from Earth in the first place. What’s out there? What is possible? What could we achieve? How might that work?

Two: Get Comfortable With Paradox

Leadership requires us to become comfortable holding two opposing ideas in our minds at once. (Hint: leadership is not the only place that capacity is helpful).

We are simultaneously completely insignificant, as starkly illustrated by the Pale Blue Dot image, and also cosmically significant at the same time. Yes, we are mere specks in the universe, but we are self-aware specks who, unlike most specks, have the ability to create knowledge and shape other parts of that same universe. The universe is mostly nothing. Even specks are special.

Three: Find Some Fun

Writing this newsletter was easy, because I love this stuff. I like thinking about the wonders of the natural world and the mind-boggling scale and complexity of our solar system, galaxy, and the cosmos. I woke up excited to think and write about it this week. This was fun for me.

It’s not always that way, and that’s okay. It is unrealistic to think that work should always be fun and energizing. But if your work–the way you likely spend half your waking hours on this pale blue dot–is never fun, exciting, and energizing, that’s a problem. Not only is it not a sustainable way to accomplish anything important, it’s no way to spend your life.

So, go outside tonight and look up. Stretch your mind. Embrace our paradoxical existence. Have some fun while you're at it.  And if you would like someone to help you achieve the big ideas that might result, we're here to help.

Until next time,

Greg

* I realize that the term modockin' might be unfamiliar to many of you. It was unfamiliar to my high school chemistry teacher, Dan Wunderlich, too, when he first heard it. But he liked it, and so he shared it with us and made frequent use of it in his teaching. Like so many things about Mr. Wunderlich, I remember it still. Most of us have "that" teacher, the one who inspired us, who got us excited about learning, who saw something in us that we might not have seen for ourselves. For me, Dan Wunderlich was that teacher. I learned last week that he died on April 10 this year. Rest in peace, Mr. Wunderlich. You touched many, many lives, including mine.