Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan [0]
—People
“Elegant and appealing … Jargon-free English buoyed by emotion and humor … Sagan’s optimistic vision … shines through every chapter.”
—Time
“A practical and poetic argument for expanded space travel and exploration … In typical Sagan fashion, [he] makes his case grandly and eloquently.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Enthralling … [Sagan was] a true believer in the wealth of the universe, and he may yet make apostles of us all.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Glowingly communicates current wonders and large issues ahead … No recent book has done better at making plain the subtle nature and the fascination of scientific investigation.”
—Scientific American
“[Pale Blue Dot] has the ambiance of a salon, where Galileo, Einstein, and others hold forth.”
—Air & Space
“Passionate, eloquent … [Sagan] fires our imagination and turns science into high drama.”
—Booklist
“Eloquent, impassioned … He builds a cogent argument that our species must venture into this vast realm and establish a space-faring civilization.”
—Kirkus Reviews
SOME OTHER BOOKS BY CARL SAGAN
Intelligent Life in the Universe
(with I. S. Shklovskii)
The Dragons of Eden
Broca’s Brain
Cosmos
Contact: A Novel
Comet
(with Ann Druyan)
A Path Where No Man Thought:
Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race
(with Richard Turco)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors:
A Search for Who We Are
(with Ann Druyan)
The Demon-Haunted World:
Science as a Candle in the Dark
Billions and Billions:
Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1994 by Carl Sagan
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1994
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-94010
eISBN: 978-0-307-80101-2
v3.1
FOR SAM,
another wanderer.
May your generation see
wonders undreamt.
SPACECRAFT EXPLORATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
NOTABLE EARLY ACHIEVEMENTS
SOVIET UNION/RUSSIA
1957 First artificial satellite of the Earth
(Sputnik 1)
1957 First animal in space
(Sputnik 2)
1959 First spacecraft to escape the Earth’s gravity
(Luna 1)
1959 First artificial planet of the Sun
(Luna 1)
1959 First spacecraft to impact another world
(Luna 2 to the Moon)
1959 First view of the far side of the moon
(Luna 3)
1961 First human in space
(Vostok 1)
1961 First human to orbit the Earth
(Vostok 1)
1961 First spacecraft to fly by other planets
(Venera 1 to Venus;
1962 Mars 1 to Mars)
1963 First woman in space
(Vostok 6)
1964 First multiperson space mission
(Voskhod 1)
1965 First space “walk”
(Voskhod 2)
1966 First spacecraft to enter the atmosphere of another planet
(Venera 3 to Venus)
1966 First spacecraft to orbit another world
(Luna 10 to the Moon)
1966 First successful soft landing on another world
(Luna 9 to the Moon)
1970 First robot mission to return α sample from another world
(Luna 16 to the Moon)
1970 First roving vehicle on another world
(Luna 17 to the Moon)
1971 First soft landing on another planet
(Mars 3 to Mars)
1972 First scientifically successful landing on another planet
(Venera 8 to Venus)
1980-1981 First approximately year-long manned spaceflight (comparable to Mars flight time)
(Soyuz 35)
1983 First full orbital radar mapping of another planet
(Venera 15 to Venus)
1985 First balloon station deployed in the atmosphere of another planet
(Vega 1 to Venus)
1986 First close cometary encounter
(Vega 1 to Halley’s Comet)
1986 First space station inhabited by rotating crews
(Mir)
UNITED STATES
1958 First scientific discovery in space