A nearly full moon above. A layer of clouds below. The Earth looks tucked in, cozy.
Goodnight Moon.
Goodnight Earth.
On nights like this, it looks like we’re flying over an extraterrestrial landscape rather than the third planet.
Titan, to be exact.
The largest moon of Saturn. It’s twice the size of our little moon. Poor moon.
Titan is covered in clouds and has an icy surface with seas below.
Earthlings landed a craft there in the early 2000s, named after the man who discovered it in the 1600s. He could hardly have imagined that one day we’d land something there, I bet. Much less that they’d name it after him!
Take that, Galileo!
Well, he has a probe, too.
Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter a few decades earlier and got the race started.
I wonder if the European men took their wigs off when they looked through their telescopes?
In any case, we’re going back to Titan in 2028, but it’ll take nearly a decade to get there. This time, rather than landing, we’re sending a helicopter.
One of the things about the first landing that was published was that it landed at about the speed of a ball dropped on Earth from three feet. It left a four-inch dent. It bounced a bit and slid 12 inches. It wobbled five times and then chilled for 30 minutes until it died. They knew it would die. They didn’t know if it would land on land, ice, or water, but they knew it wouldn’t survive long! (Wikipedia).
I love the idea that information as banal as that is cherished data from another world.
In any case, Earth looks like Titan right now.
Sometimes I pretend I’m flying in a spaceship.
I’m a grown man doing grown-man things, but sometimes, just sometimes, I’m the kid in the pretend box that he turned into a rocket ship.
I love this! Beautifully written, as always. Thank you for sharing.