October 16 is the anniversary of the blast-off of The First Family In Space. Do you remember what you were doing on October 16, 1997 when Professors John and Maureen Robinson and their family (daughters Judy & Penny and son Will) blasted off in their Jupiter II? They and their pilot, Major Donald West, lifted off from Cape Canaveral on a beautiful Friday morning, headed for Alpha Centauri.I'd like to think that they made it.
As the whole world knows, communication was lost approximately 24 hours after the Jupiter II left Earth's atmosphere. Nothing was ever heard of them again.
It is possible that their auto-communications system was damaged but their life-support and engines still functioned. They were all placed in cryogenic sleep, so it's terrible to think that they might have all gone to sleep and then never woke up. I pray they made it to Alpha Centauri or to some other hospitable planet and that they just couldn't contact us. I don't like thinking that they died out there somewhere.....lost in space.
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| Official publicity photo released by NASA in 1996 |
If only they had a Doctor of Interstellar Psychology, someone like Dr. Zachary Smith, along with them, the Robinsons might have a better chance. Unfortunately, Dr. Smith disappeared around the same time as the launch of the Jupiter 2.
ReplyDeleteHe hasn't turned up since, has he? I seem to recall there was talk that he defected, but I guess we'll never know....;-)
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