The robotic program isn’t about robots. It’s a profoundly human activity that we’re just sending pieces of ourselves out there to do these jobs.

 

Pretty soon you’re using the eyes of the spacecraft as your eyes, and you get very attached to your heroic spacecraft which survives numerous death-defying experiences.

 

If you listen to people who’ve been involved in these explorations over the years, they say, “Oh that was the year we went by Enceladus, that’s the year we went to Neptune, / very, very much a personal thing.” The differences between being here or being there start/ blurring.

 

To be so familiar / with such alien worlds shows how far we’ve traveled, thanks to Galileo, both the man and the robot. And the voyage continues.

 

I’d love to visit Io if I could. It’s one of my favorite places in the solar system. You would always have Jupiter hanging in the background, huge and multi-colored and constantly changing. It would be a pretty amazing place to see.

 

For a trip to study the weather of Jupiter, I’ll get down in the atmosphere where the lightning is being formed, /then I just look out of the window and enjoy the flashes. 

 

Europa a kind of has it all. I’d love to be able to poke around(闲逛) down there in Europa’s ocean. Might there really be life down there? It’s probably not something unknown in my lifetime. But we’ll set the stage for the next generation of explorers to find out.