The Dive, 1/1/25

Your monthly compilation of what's what on global politics, American society, and an assortment of odds and ends

Quote of the Month

"This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

"We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some—perhaps many—may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

"This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."

- Jimmy Carter, "Voyager Spacecraft Statement by the President," July 29, 1977

What I’m Reading:

1. Why Trump will make America a lonely, predatory power

Why you should read it: In The Atlantic, columnist David Frum argues that the second Trump presidency will see America turn away from its historic post-World War II as a defender of freedom and an open world to a predatory power that operates like a gangster more than anything else.

• “From the Marshall Plan of the 1940s to the Trans-Pacific Partnership of the 2010s, Americans sought to achieve security and prosperity for themselves by sharing security and prosperity with like-minded others. The United States became the center of a network of international cooperation—not only on trade and defense, but on environmental concerns, law enforcement, financial regulation, food and drug safety, and countless other issues… Donald Trump is the first U.S. president since 1945 to reject the worldview formed by the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the Cold War… Trump regularly disparages U.S. allies, and threatens to abandon them. ‘We’re being taken advantage of by every country all over the world, including our allies—and in many cases, our allies are worse than our so-called enemies,’ he said at a rally this November. But unlike the ‘America First’ movement before World War II, Trump’s ‘America First’ vision is not exactly isolationist. Trump’s version of ‘America First’ is predatory.”

• “Open trade and defensive alliances were already bumping into domestic resistance even before Trump first declared himself a candidate for the presidency… But Trump uniquely accelerated America’s retreat from world markets, and will continue to do so. His first-term revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement preserved existing access to U.S. markets for Canada and Mexico in return for raising higher barriers around all three North American economies. He has nominated Jamieson Greer, who he said ‘played a key role during my First Term in imposing Tariffs on China and others,’ as U.S. trade representative. The tariffs Trump desires, the protection money he seeks, and his undisguised affinity for Putin and other global predators will weaken America’s standing with traditional allies and new partners. How will the United States entice Asian and Pacific partners to support U.S. security policy against China if they are themselves treated as threats and rivals by the makers of U.S. trade policy?”

• Why it matters: “Every president puts a face on the abstraction that is the American nation, and gives words to the American creed. Few spoke more eloquently than Ronald Reagan, who famously compared the United States to a ‘shining city on a hill…’ Under Trump, America will act more proudly, yet have less to be proud of. Its leaders will pocket corrupt emoluments; the nation will cower behind tariff walls, demanding tribute instead of earning partnership. Some of its citizens will delude themselves that the country has become great again, while in reality it will have become more isolated and less secure.”

2. What Trump doesn’t get about tariffs

Why you should read it: Financial Times columnist Alan Beattie details what president-elect Trump doesn’t understand about trade and tariffs.

• “For Trump, import taxes are the philosopher’s stone that turns base metal into gold. They coerce trading partners into toeing US lines, close deficits (bilateral and overall) by keeping out cheap dumped imports, raise revenue, create jobs, revive manufacturing and generally make America great again, all in one go… Even before taking office Trump has threatened them twice: against Mexico and Canada if they don’t sort out immigration and the fentanyl trade, and against the Brics middle-income countries for their (almost non-existent) campaign for a currency to replace the US dollar.”

• “But in reality, even leaving aside that tariffs only affect goods rather than services, the US is a smaller player than its self-image seems to suggest. If Trump really does favour tariffs over other measures like export controls on technology and financial sanctions he will find them a clumsy and often ineffective way of asserting American power… Quite simply, the US just isn’t that big in global trade any more. With a diverse production profile, it has always been quite a self-sufficient economy, and the rise of the Asian consumer pushed the US share of worldwide goods imports down to just 15.9 per cent last year, less than Europe (taking the EU and UK together) and only 3 percentage points above China… With the exception of a few economies highly integrated with the US such as Mexico and Canada, most of those likely to face US tariff coercion could replace it as a final market with pain but without catastrophe. Evenett calculates that even if the US market were completely closed to a particular trading partner, by 2030 more than 100 of them, including Australia, China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India and Germany, would have recovered their lost exports elsewhere.”

• Why it matters: “The world trade system showed extraordinary flexibility and resilience after Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods during his first term. Quite apart from the loopholes negotiated by US companies such as Apple, production and distribution networks proved good at slinking around blocks on exports… Tariffs may have an intuitive appeal, but the evidence suggests they are a weaker superpower than Trump supposes.”

3. Why isolationism begets international belligerence

Why you should read it: For Liberal Currents, Matthew Downhour makes the case that anti-trade political coalitions at home almost always pursue to belligerent foreign policies abroad.

• “In the United States and elsewhere, internal coalitions that denigrate foreign trade have often been the most bellicose. Their coalitions have the least to lose from war, and swearing off free trade makes seizing resources through force seem more attractive. This unfortunately means that the incoming ‘America First’ coalition is likely to put the United States in greater, not less, risk of conflict… Inward-looking [domestic] coalitions economically desire to build up an autarkic economy that in turn favors local, static elites. This is especially attractive to those that have gained their status and wealth through local dominance of internationally non-competitive economic sectors. Because a modern economy requires a variety of resources, however, this disavowal of free trade means ‘inward-looking’ coalitions are perhaps misnamed, as they in fact seek opportunities to gain natural resources and perhaps even markets outside the borders of the metropole, primarily through imperialism or settler colonialism.”

• “The ideal of self-contained autarky does not mean, as one might suppose, a less interventionist view on the world. Instead, eroding the norms of free trade obligates an advanced economy to have direct access to whatever resources it might need, or else a way to ensure the countries it buys from are perpetually in friendly hands. America’s own history can be something of a guide here—the same presidents (McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft) who presided over the high tariffs of the Gilded Age also committed the United States to annexing Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, and creating a virtual empire out of most of Latin America. Coalitions that are generally inward-looking are not above having their eyes wander avariciously to foreign soil. Far from facilitating a peaceful transition to ‘America first"‘ isolationism, a United States traveling this path is likely to be less averse to bellicosity and more willing to risk war, having weakened any internal commercial or civil society coalition that might push back against it.”

• Why it matters: “For decades, experts have seen the US as a "status quo" power—while it may have intervened in other countries’ specific affairs, it was dedicated to overall preservation of the world order it had helped create during and after the Cold War. This order emphasized peace between great powers and international institutions dedicated to maintaining increasing economic links between states to give all of them a stake in trade and a growing global economy. However, these were policies pursued largely by an internationalist coalition, one branch or another of which held sway in Washington during both Republican and Democratic presidencies. The years of this internationalist coalition dominating American politics—and thus embracing trade and peace at least with major economies—may be coming to an end. This could mean entering a new era where the economic forces that had resisted military adventurism and brinkmanship are much weaker and the political-economy forces that encourage it have taken the lead.”

4. How Obama and Merkel screwed up

Why you should read it: Reviewing former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s new memoir and her American book tour with former president Barack Obama, Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman provides a scathing retrospective on the records of both leaders.

• “From 2008 to 2016, Merkel and Obama were the two most powerful politicians in the western world. They got on well — which is not surprising, since they were similar characters. They were both outsiders: the first female chancellor of Germany and the first Black president of the US… Both Merkel and Obama are self-assured, highly educated, intellectual and cautious by temperament. These are qualities that endeared them to cautious, educated liberals. (I plead guilty.) But, in retrospect, their careful rationalism made them ill-equipped to deal with ruthless strongman leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.”

• “…it is increasingly clear that decisions taken by the two leaders — or often the decisions not taken by them — had a damaging, if delayed, impact on global stability. We are now witnessing major wars in Europe and the Middle East and sharply rising tensions in east Asia. Some of today’s problems date to mistakes made in a crucial period from 2012 to 2016… Merkel did not like or trust Putin. But she did appease him. The mistakes made by the former chancellor — particularly after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and attack on the Donbas in 2014 — were picked apart in many reviews of her book… Rather than pushing back against the mistakes made by the German chancellor, Obama compounded them. In his second term, he made three critical foreign policy blunders. Collectively, they sent out a message of weakness that contributed to the mess we are in today.”

• Why it matters: “Merkel has a PhD in quantum chemistry. Obama was a law professor. Their training told them to weigh the evidence and to avoid rash decisions. Unfortunately, international politics is less like a law school seminar or a laboratory than a playground in a tough area. Playground bullies tend to get nastier and more aggressive, until somebody finally stands up to them.”

5. Why America is looking to rebuild its commercial shipbuilding industry

Why you should read it: Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Michales profiles efforts in Congress and in the outgoing Biden administration to rebuild America’s moribund commercial shipbuilding industry.

• “Not long ago, America led the world in sea freight. At the end of World War II, the U.S. commercial marine fleet accounted for about half of the world’s cargo-shipping capacity. An American entrepreneur in the 1950s pioneered the shipping container, which revolutionized international commerce… U.S. commercial ships today account for less than 1% of the world fleet. U.S. ports are racked by strikes and battles over the type of automation that has supercharged expansion of container terminals across the globe. The Navy struggles to find commercial vessels to support its far-flung operations.”

• “Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro has advocated a focus on ‘maritime statecraft,’ stressing commercial shipping’s importance to the Navy in tasks including refueling ships and carrying vital military supplies… And he has championed expanding the U.S. Merchant Marine, a corps of commercial sailors who can assist the Navy in wartime and whose ranks have plunged over recent decades. Government and industry officials estimate the U.S. now has fewer than 10,000 merchant mariners, compared with roughly 50,000 in 1960… That start, Navy and industry officials hope, is a piece of legislation recently introduced by Sens. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) and Todd Young (R., Ind.) and two House members, the Shipbuilding and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security for America Act. If passed, it would be the first major piece of maritime legislation since 1936.”

• Why it matters: “China’s rise as a military rival to the U.S. prompted a push to modernize and expand the Navy… Commercial shipping’s importance to national security gained renewed attention during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the U.S. and allies faced shortages of necessities as basic as surgical masks. Alarm grew in Western capitals about China’s domination of the sea-freight business, ports and obscure specialties such as tracking cargo data… At [World War II’s] end, the U.S. had roughly 4,500 commercial cargo ships and 75,000 merchant mariners. Those numbers shrank as ships grew in size and efficiency while international competition increased. Decisions by the Reagan administration in the 1980s to end subsidies for shipping and shipbuilding, in part to focus shipyards on a Navy expansion, accelerated the domestic industry’s decline.”

6. Why cryptocurrency remains a scam with no real use… besides crime

Why you should read it: Former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman reiterates that there’s no real use for cryptocurrency other than facilitating criminal schemes.

• “But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories… One of the (many) odd things about cryptocurrency is that it has somehow managed to maintain an image as something futuristic when it’s actually ancient in tech years: Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, which still accounts for more than half of the total crypto market cap, is 15 years old. Over this entire period, monetary economists and banking veterans have asked, what’s this for? What legitimate use cases are there for cryptocurrency that can’t be served more easily without the blockchain rigamarole?”

• “I’ve been in many meetings where this question has been raised, and have never heard a coherent answer. In fact, crypto has made essentially no inroads on conventional money’s role as a means of payment — which is why crypto guys are so angry about being debanked: you can’t do business without an account at one of those banks Bitcoin was supposed to replace. Even the crypto industry’s own employees won’t accept payment in crypto, which is why the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, where they deposited funds for payroll, was an existential crisis demanding, yes, a government bailout… One answer you sometimes hear, especially from financial executives who want to say something positive about crypto, is that Bitcoin in particular may be turning into the digital equivalent of gold. After all, gold doesn’t really function as money — try buying a car with gold bars — and its industrial and dental uses, while real, don’t remotely justify its value. It’s just an asset that people consider valuable because others consider it valuable, and it has maintained that status even though gold coins went out of use as a means of payment generations ago.”

• Why it matters: “But there’s a third possible explanation of crypto’s rise. Maybe asking ‘what are the legitimate use cases for this stuff’ is the wrong question. What about the illegitimate uses, ranging from tax evasion to blackmail to money laundering? Maybe crypto isn’t digital gold, but digital Benjamins — the $100 bills that play a huge role in illegal activity around the world… Presumably not everyone in crypto is participating, even unknowingly, in criminal activity. But the use of crypto for money laundering appears to be rising rapidly. And if I were running a bank, I’d be reluctant to host a bank account belonging to someone who might be involved in unsavory activities.”

7. How a second Trump presidency forced the center-left to come to its senses

Why you should read it: The Atlantic columnist Jonathan Chait contends that re-elevation of Donald Trump to the presidency has brought the American left’s decade-long romance with illiberal identity politics to an end.

• “A decade ago, cultural norms in elite American institutions took a sharply illiberal turn. Professors would get disciplined, journalists fired, ordinary people harassed by social-media mobs, over some decontextualized phrase or weaponized misunderstanding… The illiberal norms that took hold a decade ago have gone by many terms, including political correctness, callout culture, cancel culture, and wokeness—each of which has been co-opted by the right as an all-purpose epithet for liberalism, forcing left-of-center critics of the trend to search for a new, uncontaminated phrase. The norms combined an almost infinitely expansive definition of what constituted racism or sexism—any accusation of bigotry was considered almost definitionally correct—with a hyperbolic understanding of the harm created by encountering offensive ideas or terms… The censorious elements of the new culture could be hard to acknowledge at a time when many of the same energies were being directed at deserving targets—most notably, police mistreatment of Black Americans (#handsupdontshoot) and sexual harassment and assault of women in the workplace (#MeToo). Partly for that reason, or out of a general discomfort with criticizing their allies, some progressives insisted either that nothing new was afoot in the culture and that reactionaries were manufacturing a moral panic out of thin air, or alternatively that there was something new, but it merely involved overdue accountability (or ‘consequence culture’) for racist and sexist behavior… These tactics ignored the possibility that any charge of racism might be erroneous, or that it might be possible to overreact to its scale, and had no limiting principle.”

• “The mania peaked in 2020. By this point, Twitter’s influence had reached a level where large swaths of reporting in major newspapers were simply accounts of what Twitter was talking about. When the coronavirus pandemic struck, social media almost totally eclipsed real life—especially for liberals, who were much likelier than conservatives to stick with social distancing…The aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel further chipped away at the foundations of left-wing illiberalism by showing how easily its premises could be co-opted by the other side. Many Jews who had previously supported the left’s approach to racial issues began to apprehend that their allies considered them oppressors, rather than the oppressed. Meanwhile, the response from supporters of Israel turned the cancel-culture debate on its head. In the face of anti-Israel protests, congressional Republicans hauled several university presidents into hearings, where they were berated and urged to adopt sweeping policies not only against anti-Semitic conduct, but against any speech that made Jewish students feel threatened. Suddenly, the rhetoric of safety and harm that had been used by the left was being deployed against it, and principled free-speech defenders were sticking up for the right of protesters to chant ‘Death to Israel.’ This put even more strain on the already unraveling consensus that allegations of racial discrimination must be treated with total deference… In the end, progressive illiberalism may have died because the arguments against it simply won out. Although a handful of post-liberal thinkers on the left made an earnest case against the value of free-speech norms, deflections were much more common. It was just the antics of college undergraduates. When it began happening regularly in workplaces, the real problem was at-will employment. And, above all, why focus on problems with the left when Republicans are worse? None of these evasions supplied any concrete defense for sustaining dramatic, widely unpopular culture change. Eventually, reason prevailed.”

• Why it matters: “Once political correctness had expanded to the point where it could affect candidates for office at a national scale, it would inevitably begin to self-destruct. A small group of committed activists can dominate a larger organization by intimidating a majority of its members into silence, but that tactic doesn’t work when people can vote by secret ballot… What will come after the era of political correctness within the left is, hopefully, a serious effort to engage with political reality. While the illiberal left is in retreat, the illiberal right is about to attain the height of its powers—and, alarmingly, some of the institutions that once gave in too easily to left-wing mobs are now racing to appease the MAGA movement. A new era of open discourse in progressive America cannot begin soon enough.”

8. How Democrats got the politics of immigration wrong

Why you should read it: Also in The Atlantic, Rogé Karma writes about how left-wing activists pushed Democrats to take positions on immigration that had little to no actual support among actual Latino voters.

• “For more than a decade, Democrats have struck an implicit electoral bargain: Even if liberal immigration stances alienated some working-class white voters, those policies were essential to holding together the party’s multiracial coalition. That bargain now appears to have been based on a false understanding of the motivations of Latino voters… Part of the story is the rise of progressive immigration-advocacy nonprofits within the Democratic coalition. These groups convinced party leaders that shifting to the left on immigration would win Latino support. Their influence can be seen in the focus of Hillary Clinton’s campaign on immigration and diversity in 2016, the party’s near-universal embrace of border decriminalization in 2020, and the Biden administration’s hesitance to crack down on the border until late in his presidency.”

• “The notion that Latinos are single-issue immigration voters became something like conventional wisdom thanks to the 2012 presidential election. Barack Obama had won more than two-thirds of the Latino vote four years prior, only to see his approval ratings plummet with these voters over the first few years of his presidency. Then, in the summer of 2012, he signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order promising legal protections for Dreamers—undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the country as children. This, the story goes, galvanized Latino voters just as Obama’s opponent, Mitt Romney, was busy alienating them with calls for ‘self-deportation.’ Obama went on to win more than 70 percent of the Latino vote that fall, and this was widely attributed to DACA… This perception provided an opening for immigration-advocacy organizations. Following the 2012 election, [polling firm] Latino Decisions continued to churn out polls on their behalf showing that—contrary to a large body of public-opinion research—immigration was actually the top issue for Latino voters, and that Latinos had far more liberal views on immigration policy than the rest of the electorate… But Democrats had spent the better part of a decade listening to those [immigration activist] groups—and to Barreto’s polling done on their behalf. With just over 100 days to campaign, the vice president couldn’t distance herself from the policies of the administration she had helped run. In one post-election survey, Blueprint, a Democrat-aligned firm, found that the second most important reason that voters (including Latinos) offered for not voting for Harris was ‘too many immigrants illegally crossed the border under the Biden-Harris administration.’ (The top issue, by a single-point margin, was inflation.) Another Blueprint survey found that 77 percent of swing voters who chose Trump believed that Harris would decriminalize border-crossing—perhaps because she had endorsed that position during the 2020 campaign. ‘Both the Biden and Harris campaigns eventually realized that they had been sold a bag of goods by these immigration groups,’ [political strategist Mike] Madrid tells me. ‘But it was too late. You can’t reverse years of bad policy and messaging in a few months.’”

• Why it matters: “The Democratic Party’s embrace of these groups was based on a mistake that in hindsight appears simple: conflating the views of the highly educated, progressive Latinos who run and staff these organizations, and who care passionately about immigration-policy reform, with the views of Latino voters, who overwhelmingly do not. Avoiding that mistake might very well have made the difference in 2016 and 2024. It could therefore rank among the costliest blunders the Democratic Party has ever made… The job of politicians and parties is to understand what their constituents want, and to say no when those desires don’t match up with activists’ demands. Over the past decade, Democratic leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between the two categories. They seem to have assumed that the best way to represent Latino voters would be to defer to the groups who purported to speak for those voters. The problem is that the highly educated progressives who run and staff those groups, many of whom are themselves Latino, nonetheless have a very different set of beliefs and preferences than the average Latino voter.”

9. Behold the Jimmy Carter renaissance!

Why you should read it: Talking Points Memo reporter Kate Riga explores how Jimmy Carter’s presidency, once considered a failure, has been reassessed much more positively over the past decade or so.

• “For years, the conventional wisdom has held: Carter was a bad president, but an exemplary ex-president… in the last decade, a churn of work — biographies, documentaries, books — has been produced aimed at reevaluating the Carter presidency… Some found Carter to be prescient, almost prophetic, in his concern about climate change and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some found him to be ahead of his time in his diversification of the federal judiciary and preservation of wide swaths of Alaskan wilderness. Some found him to be distinctly unsung, with little attention given to his brokering of peace with the Camp David Accords and emphasis on global human rights… A serious, intelligent, faithful, deeply honest man who spurned political expediency and burned through hundreds of pages of memos a day, he preached self-restraint, stewardship and commonality to an electorate that cast him off four years later for the glib excesses of Ronald Reagan.”

• “It’s impossible to talk about Carter’s current appeal without mentioning Trump… Where Trump lied, by one count, over 30,000 times by the end of his presidency, Carter was honest to the point of self-inflicted political pain. Trump commissioned ludicrously glowing health reports and took a still-mysterious trip to the hospital; Carter disclosed when he had hemorrhoids.Trump was a scandal magnet, and faced a bevy of lawsuits stemming from his business deals, alleged sexual assaults and attempts to overthrow the 2020 election. One of the headlines from the Carter administration involves a placidly rowing Carter running afoul of an aggressive swamp rabbit. Trump refused to reveal his taxes; Carter started the practice of presidents releasing entire tax returns, and put his assets in a trust… Removed from but intrinsically connected to Trump is the sentiment that permeates swaths of the country and allowed him to rise: intensive individualism, disdain for compassion as weakness, a grievance manifested in an us vs. them mentality. Again, Carter is a foil to the Trump ethos.”

• Why it matters: “Jimmy Carter revivalists argue that his legislative accomplishments reveal a prolific presidency, and his failures the foresight of a president worried about problems that would continue to haunt the country decades later… His piecemeal approach [to energy and environmental policy], cloaked in distinctly unsexy bills like the 1978 Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act, planted the seeds for a changing national energy system in the face of climate change. Carter had started underlining passages in scientific journals about what is now the most existential crisis of our time as early as 1971… Some of the reevaluation may also stem from more logistical realities. The Carter Presidential Library has declassified many more documents now, and Carter agreed to sit for interviews with his two most recent biographers, something he was generally opposed to in the years prior… There are many factors contributing to the Jimmy Carter renaissance, and they all work in concert to burnish the legacy of a man once dismissed as a one-term failure.”

Odds and Ends

Who’s a good boy? Humans began giving dogs treats 12,000 years ago, according to new evidence uncovered by archaeologists…

How a timber framer from Grand Marais, Minnesota helped rebuild Notre Dame cathedral in Paris…

The farcical story of when Australia went to war with emus—and lost…

How members of the British Antarctic Survey spent their Christmas…

Why dinosaur poop can help paleontologists explain just how the terrible lizards came to dominate the planet…

What I’m Listening To and Watching

• Black Doves, a spy thriller starring Keira Knightley (the Pirates of the Caribbean series, among others) as a mole married to a senior British politician and Ben Whishaw (Q from the recent James Bond films and the voice of Paddington bear) as a troubled hit man.

• The fifth season of Miss Scarlet, the PBS series about a female private detective (Kate Phillips of Peaky Blinders fame in the title role) plying her trade in late Victorian London.

• Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary, an entry in Bill Simmons’ Music Box series for HBO, explores a genre of extremely smooth music featuring the likes of Steely Dan, Kenny Loggins, and Michael McDonald that went largely unrecognized until an obscure comedic web video series coined it in the mid-2000s.

• An episode of Dan Snow’s History Hit podcast on the Cod Wars between Iceland and the UK from the 1950s to the 1970s that’s much more interesting than it has any right to be.

• Two songs titled “New Year's Day” by U2 and Taylor Swift.

Image of the Month

Voyager 1 launches aboard a Titan IIIE rocket from Cape Canaveral on September 5, 1977. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC