Two amazing things happened at our house Tuesday morning, and oddly, both concerned space travel. For those out there in reader land, the first will interest the science geek in all of you. And what of the second incident? It’s truly unbelievable, but since I was standing right next to The Wife when it happened, I have a witness.
Although it’s taken nine years, and traveled over 3 billion miles, the New Horizons spacecraft has finally reached the smallest planet in our solar system – Pluto.
Yes, I know, Pluto lost planetary status some years back because of its small size. The tiny blue speck in the night sky is now referred to as a dwarf world by the scientific community, but not by me.
Colonel Baker, my tenth-grade science teacher at Briarwood High School Home of the Mighty Buccaneers, said it was a planet. So be it. Who am I to disobey a colonel? Besides, on his final exam I called it a moon and got it wrong. But to be safe, I’ll keep calling Pluto a planet just in case Col. Baker is out there reading this column. As I remember, he gets really blue in the face if you don’t.
Hurtling through space at over 14 miles a second, New Horizons took clear pictures revealing the planet Pluto to be blue with a giant white heart and snow-capped mountains around its equator. To quote Little One’s bedtime story, “Pluto is the furthest from the sun, cold and blue. Guess if you were that far away from the sun, you’d be blue too.”
It seems like science-fiction that such a feat could even be performed: taking clear pictures while traveling 14 miles a second – not Col. Baker’s face turning blue. How the spaceship accomplished such a thing is truly amazing. I barely breathe and my pictures come out all blurry.
After watching the news broadcast about Pluto and the New Horizon, I asked The Wife, “Wonder if they’ll see Robby the Robot out there?” That’s when IT happened.
The Wife asked me who Robby the Robot was. She had never heard of him! At first I thought she was joking and started to laugh. Surely everybody alive knows who is. But she wasn’t. See, told ya it was unbelievable.
How anyone doesn’t know of the seven-foot-six, 300-pound robot star of “Forbidden Planet” is … well, unbelievable. Way back in 1956, the movie starring the mechanical wonder made its debut with ground-breaking special effects for the time. The rest is science-fiction history.
Since then, the movie (based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” no less), and Robby have been credited with being the inspiration for two great television series “Star Trek” and “Lost in Space,” which also featured a life-size mechanical robot.
After The Wife left for work, I searched the computer and found a movie trailer about “Forbidden Planet” and sent it to her. When she got home, she said we just had to rent the movie. I was surprised because she doesn’t care much for science fiction, so I asked her why she wanted to watch the movie.
She replied, “You didn’t tell me Robby the Robot was a designer. He can make dresses decorated with diamonds, emeralds, and star sapphires. With a dress designing robot, the movie can’t be all bad.”
[Rick Ryckeley, who lives in Senoia, served as a firefighter for more than two decades and has been a weekly columnist since 2001. His email is storiesbyrick@gmail.com. His books are available at www.RickRyckeley.com.]
