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One feels a terrible disappointment Sagan didn't live to see the future mission projects he talks about in the book get finished and most of them succeeded IIRC. By happenstance the 2024 Solar System BBC series mostly uses animation but has some real photos and videos to document a lot of happened since the book was published.

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The last time I read Cosmos I hit the part about the Cassini-Huygens mission where he wondered what we might find under the atmosphere of Titan, and was able to immediately just find out.

I imagine a lot of people who work on space missions do not outlive their work - which feels sad but also ... inspiring?

I think Carl Sagan would overall just kind of be deeply sad about how it is turning out.

“In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.”

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