I have a bit of a voyeuristic fascination with the relationships and personal drama of the people behind these types of famous and consequential efforts. In th

I have a bit of a voyeuristic fascination with the relationships and personal drama of the people behind these types of famous and consequential efforts. In the article Tim Ferris mentions that Ann Druyan was his fiancee at the time. I suppose it's common knowledge that she was also Carl Sagan's third (and final) wife. NASA's Voyager, the Love Story [1] reveals that their affair grew out of and became an integral part of the project: Just how do you stumble upon a woman in love and record her brain waves for an interstellar message? It helps when the young woman is herself a member of the recording team: Ann Druyan. On June 1, 1977, Carl and I shared a wonderfully important phone call," she recalls. Without the aid of a date or even a romantic moment alone, the two had fallen in love during the mad rush to complete the Golden Record. "We decided to get married. It was a Eureka! moment for both of us—the idea that we could find the perfect match. It was a discovery that has been reaffirmed in countless ways since." "My feelings as a 27 year old woman, madly fallen in love, they're on that record,” says Druyan. "It's forever. It'll be true 100 million years from now. For me Voyager is a kind of joy so powerful, it robs you of your fear of death." According to her recent interview with LA Times they were a bit more circumspect about their Eureka moment than the NASA article would suggest: During this period, she and Sagan, who was then married to his second wife, also realized they were "madly in love." Reluctant to jeopardize the mission, the pair waited until Voyager 1 had successfully launched before breaking the news to their significant others. I feel this adds an extra dimension to this matter-of-fact statement from Ferris's article: We disbanded soon after I delivered the metal master to Los Angeles, making ours a proud example of a federal project that evaporated once its mission was accomplished. [1] https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/28apr_voyager2 https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/2... [2] http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-ann-druyan-cosmos-20140607-story.html http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-ann-druyan-...