Historic Robotic Spacecraft Poster Series, Planetary Society Popular Probes Poll Options

[mgrodzki]

Hey everyone. I am trying to get a buzz going on the project and I think you all have just the right sleeves for me to tug on.

In short, I have been looking for nicely designed posters celebrating missions like Voyager, Cassini, etc but can never find anything really great enough to want to live and hang prominently in my home. After a few years I found plenty of great stuff on the planets, astronomy and Earth sciences… but nothing on planetary missions.

So I decided to just make my own. Mentioned the idea to Mat Kaplan at Planetary Radio and wanted to know what three missions he thought I should start with. Amazingly, he offered to crowd-source exactly that question. So, knowing Voyager would be in the top three (I hope) I went ahead and designed that one. But posters #2 and #3 are yet to be determined.

So PLEASE go and vote in the poll: http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/contests/poster/

ADMIN NOTE: This project is worth taking a look at. We support voting in this poll but please note that we are not compelling anyone to support the project financially. That's up to you.

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[mgrodzki]

Oddly enough TPS didn’t post the whole poll results. They only posted the top 3 (I guess because we are doing three posters).

Here are the top 20 results.

1. Voyager 507 votes (18.5%)
2. Cassini 432 votes (15.7%)
3. Curiosity 340 votes (12.4%)
4. The Mars Exploration Rovers 189 (6.9%)
5. Sputnik 169 (6.2%)
6. The Viking Program (Mars) 146 (5.3%)
7. New Horizons (Pluto) 136 (5.0%)
8. Rosetta (comet) 123 (4.5%)
9. Galileo (Jupiter) 121 (4.4%)
10. Venera (Venus) 67 (2.4%)
11. Pioneers 10 & 11 (Jupiter & Saturn) 66 (2.4%)
12. The Mariner Program (Mercury, Venus & Mars) 47 (1.7%)
13. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 40 (1.5%)
14. Hayabusa (asteroid) 39 (1.4%)
15. Mars Express 39 (1.4%)
16. Deep Impact / Epoxi (comet) 36 (1.3%)
17. Stardust (comet) 26 (0.9%)
18. Messenger (Mercury) 25 (0.9%)
19. Maven (Mars) 22 (0.8%)
20. Dawn (Vesta & Ceres) 22 (0.8%)

[mgrodzki]

Just completed poster #2 for Cassini. Thank god they selected this one. I really wanted one for Voyager and Cassini for myself.

TR

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[dvandorn]

Sadly, by the time I ran across this topic, the voting had closed. But any such listing that doesn't include the Soviet Luna probes or the American Ranger probes and especially the Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter programs is just plain ignoring the word "historic." IMHO.

-the other Doug (With my shield, not yet upon it)

[tedstryk]

Oddly enough TPS didn't post the whole poll results. They only posted the top 3 (I guess because we are doing three posters).
Here are the top 20 results.

I voted, but I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember what I voted for (probably because my opinion changes by the minute).

[mgrodzki]

I think those really early moon missions were left out in part because we knew they just wouldn’t garner more than one or two votes up against the likes of Voyager, Mars rovers and probes crashing into comets. I suppose it would have been a good act of historical correctness to include them — but for my purposes I was really looking for the top five and Surveyor just wasn’t going to get in there. I also asked TPS to add any they thought appropriate and they also managed to overlook those.

I am a huge fan of those early missions actually. I did a series of designs way back on many of them because I find them to be so fascinating. I mean — as a designer, I would LOVE the world to want a Venera or Lunakhod poster. But it just isn’t happening.