Anonymous asked: do u ever cry abt space rovers bc we sent them out there to d i e

Okay, I mean, on the one hand yes.

But on the other hand, like.  

Do you ever sit back on your hands and look up at the stars and think about how we put little pieces of ourselves in space rovers and sent them up there to explore.  

About how humanity could have named them anything and we called them Curiosity and Voyager and searching-words and traveling-things.  

About how we crave exploration and learning and newness so much that we taught them to do the same, to seek knowledge and answers all their lives–because that’s all we do, you know, we have our little batteries going boom in our chests and we learn and grow and travel as much as we can before our batteries run down.  

About how we put a Golden Record of information from Earth in a ship and sent it out, just on the random off chance that someone would find it, and people added greetings and kind words and “please come find us, because we’re alone in this endless black and you might be alone too and maybe we can be not-alone with each other,” and then we entrusted it to one of these things that we had made. 

About how space rovers are each a message in a bottle, the best and most curious part of humanity, the part of ourselves that we hope is at our core, the part of ourselves that we believe is the most worthy.

About how we filled them up with our souls.

Because sometimes I think about that, and then I really cry.