two percent of the record should be micropitted by the time the spacecraft reaches a distance of one light year.  This corresponds to about 4,000 tiny impacts before it leaves the cloud of cometary debris. Thereafter, in interstellar space, the abundance of micrometeorites should be much less, and the outward face of the record will degrade at the very slow rate of about 0.02 percent of its area for every 50 light years traveled. An additional two percent of damage will not occur until the spacecraft had traveled an additional 5,000 light years, which is one-sixth of the distance between the sun and the center of the Galaxy.  It will take the Voyager spacecraft about a hundred million years to traverse such a distance

What do we really want from philosophy and religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort?… Reassuring fables? … Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish.

“We are the custodians of life’s meaning… If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”