In college my math professor told me a story - because of all the knowledge that exists, the last Smartest Person in the World was a Spanish explorer at the end of the 1700s, whose name I could not in my research specifically identify as many people claim the title in that same era. I am not the smartest person in the world.
I want to help these dreamers by sharing some of the ways I think, which has enabled me to do the things I do, and that all started with that Pale Blue Dot. Now that I’m trying to do this myself I wonder if there are kids who will one day look up to me, or adults who wonder if they could also set out and achieve their life goals. As a kid I looked up to many individuals who also started space companies or agencies.
Now that I am starting, as a general term, a space company, I find myself on an uncharted trajectory. This image does not make me think “Look how small and vulnerable we all seem,” but instead “Look how close we are to the start of our journey, and how much more there is to achieve.” These emotions could be fear and anxiety, which would be perfectly understandable considering how fragile our home looks from such a distance, but for me they have become feelings of purpose and direction. I always have strong emotions when I look at this image, read Carl Sagan’s accompanying statement, and take a moment to appreciate just what it represents. On the right side of the image suspended in a beam of sunlight is a single white pixel that is the Earth, seen from a distance farther than the orbit of Pluto at 4 billion miles. This image, known as Pale Blue Dot, was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14th, 1990, at Carl Sagan’s suggestion.
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