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View Winners → A Renaissance of Awe
Monrovia Weekly Dec 23, 2015
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The largest antenna at Goldstone, the Deep Space Communications Complex outside of Barstow. – Courtesy Photo
By Susan Motander
Awe is an amazing sensation. I was lucky; my father was a firm believer in cultivating that sense of awe. He would wake us up to watch rocket launches from Cape Canaveral (that shows my age). Our family vacations were to such awe-inspiring locations as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Grand Tetons and the like. He shared his appreciation of these things with us and we felt his awe.
I remember listening to the lunar landing in July of 1969. Unlike the rest of the nation I was not glued to my television set watching the landing. I was in a bus full of young people on our way back from an outing to Yosemite. We listened to Armstrong’s “one small step” line and his description of the fine dust on the surface of the moon. I firmly believe that hearing it was more dramatic than viewing it. The photo stream I later saw was grainy, but our imaginations were incredibly sharp. In that moment I think we were all in awe of what was occurring.
That sensation has been sorely lacking in recent years. I constantly hear people calling things awesome when they are not. I doubt that any new video game is awesome. I doubt anyone is truly in awe of the current crop of television shows, and yet I hear such described as awesome. I am sick of the general population denigrating and diminishing the value of awe and misusing the word awesome.
Last week I was privileged to tour Goldstone, the Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow and within Fort Irwin. The tour group was comprised of members of MADIA, the group that supports hi-tech industry in this area, and several members of the Monrovia Chamber of Commerce.
Our visit including viewing the massive antennas that gather communications from Voyager, the Mars Rovers, and other deep space craft. Anything beyond the moon is considered “deep space.” How “deep” space is becomes mind boggling when you realize that communication with Voyager takes 30 hours, and that that spacecraft is over 15 billion miles from earth. It is outside our solar system.
When messages reach earth from Voyager the power is only one billionth of a billionth of a watt. As Sonny Giroux of Harris, the company that works with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory supporting and maintaining the complex at Goldstone explained, focusing in on that ephemeral wisp of sound is like aiming a golf drive here and making a hole in one in Washington, D. C. And they are able to do that and to amplify that wisp into intelligible data. That is awesome.
Standing beneath the largest antenna at Goldstone one feels tiny. The structure supporting the dish is 24 stories high. The dish of the antenna is 70 meters across. That is ¾ of a football field in diameter. Plopped in the center of the Rose Bowl it would cover more than from the 15 to the 15 yard lines and would drape over rows and rows of seats on the sides. It is massive and indeed, it is awesome.
And so I want to thank MADIA, and Harris, but most especially Sonny Giroux, our other tour guide, Leslie Cunkelman, and Scott Riley who coordinated the adventure. Thank you for the opportunity to be awed by something. Thank you for a truly awesome experience.
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