Voyager

You probably have more computing power in your pocket than what NASA's venerable Voyager spacecraft are carrying to the edge of the solar system. They have working memories a million times smaller than your home computer. They record their scientific data on 8-track tape machines. And they communicate with their aging human inventors back home with a 23-watt whisper. Even so, the twin explorers, now 33 years into their mission, continue to explore new territory as far as 11 billion miles from Earth.

They left Baltimore on Friday by cruise ship and came back Tuesday by charter jet. The passengers from the Grandeur of the Seas arrived safely and with sea stories to last a lifetime. A fire near the stern of the 917-foot Royal Caribbean International ship early Monday morning forced it to make an emergency detour to Freeport, Bahamas, and cut short the vacations of 2,224 passengers. It's the latest in a string of mishaps that have besmirched the reputation of the cruise industry.

I am a hearty seafaring type of individual, so recently I spent a week faring around the sea aboard the largest cruise ship in the world that has not yet hit an iceberg. It is called the Voyager, and it weighs 140,000 tons, which is approximately the amount I ate in desserts alone. The Voyager sails out of Miami every week carrying 3,200 passengers determined to relax or die trying. The ship has (I am not making any of this up) an ice-skating rink, a large theater, a shopping mall, a rock-climbing wall and a nine-hole miniature golf course.

Hurricane Sandy forced Carnival Cruise Lines to cancel just two of its many ocean voyages this week, including a seven-day trip to the Bahamas on the Carnival Pride that was to depart this past Sunday from the port of Baltimore. The cruise line is giving refunds to all passengers, but has decided not to let the 2,124-passenger ship merely sit empty in the Chesapeake Bay. Carnival is now offering a two-day cruise out to sea and back from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. Rates start at $129 per person for interior rooms, based on double occupancy.

UPN continues getting the jump on the competition, with premieres of two of its more popular returning series."The Sentinel" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54) -- What happens when a guy with heightened senses of perception, a guy with eyes seemingly in back of, on top of and all around his head, fails? That's the issue tonight, as Ellison (Richard Burgi) uses his "sentinel" abilities to track down his captain, who's stranded in a Peruvian jungle. UPN."Star Trek: Voyager" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54)

NASA's Voyager I spacecraft, launched in 1977, has become the first spacecraft to cross into the outermost regions of the solar system before entering interstellar space. Voyager I's instruments measured new radio waves and an increase in the strength of beams of energized particles, which nearly reversed direction, on Dec. 17 as the spacecraft was about 8.72 billion miles from the sun, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. The evidence shows the spacecraft has crossed into a new region of the solar system before the sun's influence begins to fade and interstellar space begins, said Edward Stone of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Talk about wiping the slate clean.The United Paramount Network has canceled all its shows except "Star Trek: Voyager."Gone, and soon to be forgotten, are the sitcoms "Pig Sty" and "Platypus Man" and the dramas "Marker" and "Legend."UPN is a two-night-a-week network that premiered in January. UPN will try again in the fall with three new hour-long dramas. They are:* "Nowhere Man," about a documentary photographer, played by Bruce Greenwood, who must rediscover his identity after his disappears overnight.

Jean Eichelberger Ivey's "Voyager" takes a listener on a boring, somewhat bumpy ride.In a program note, the composer promisingly describes this piece for cello and orchestra as taking "its name from those unmanned satellites which have journeyed to the outermost reaches of our solar system . . ."But hearing the piece last night -- its premiere by cellist Mihaly Virizlay, conductor David Zinman and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Friedberg Hall -- made one think of the unendurable slides friends bring back from trips.

Make no mistake. Kate Mulgrew is the captain, a worthy successor in the line of steel-jawed space explorers for the United Federation of Planets. In tonight's premiere of "Star Trek: Voyager," she takes firm and fascinating command of the launch vehicle for the new United Paramount Network.In a movie-length debut episode (8 p.m. on WNUV, Channel 54, and WDCA, Channel 20), Ms. Mulgrew barks orders, strides through exploding bulkheads and frets about her pregnant dog back home. As Capt. Kathryn Janeway, she easily dominates every scene she has and should make Paramount thankful that Genevieve Bujold, originally signed for the role, walked off the set after a few days.

"The stars are with the voyager, Wherever he may sail; The moon is constant to her time, But follow, sun will never fail. . . . And so the night is never dark, And day is brighter day . . . ""The Stars Are WithThe Voyager" With those words echoing in their minds, Atholton High School's 26th graduation class received their diplomas at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia last night and set out as voyagers ready to explore the world."There's so much we've accomplished, but there's so much more to accomplish," Stacey Marie Williams, senior class president, said in opening remarks.

Like a few thousand other vacationers one Saturday this summer, my wife Novia and I pulled into the crowded parking lot at the end of the boardwalk in Ocean City , looking forward to an afternoon of sun, sand and souvenirs. Unlike anyone else there, though, we were completing a meandering 520-mile journey that began a few days earlier in the mountains of Western Maryland - a journey in our a fully electric car, a 2012 Nissan Leaf. That's right, we drove all the way across the state on nothing but electrons.

Sixty years ago this week, the world's attention was riveted on one man's dream as the liner United States, designed by William Francis Gibbs, steamed eastward across the Atlantic on its maiden voyage. Known as "The Big U," the liner sailed from New York's Ambrose Light to Bishop's Rock, off the English coast, the official Blue Riband course, in three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes, establishing a record that remains unbroken for a trans-Atlantic crossing. Gibbs, who was known during his lifetime as America's greatest naval designer, was consumed with the design and building of the United States, the fastest, most powerful and luxurious superliner ever built, which became his enduring legacy.

— Michelle DiMenna digs into a salad and flips through a novel on the balcony above her college dorm room. It's the kind of leisure time a college freshman usually takes for granted — oblivious to the grinding days of work and family responsibilities that lie ahead. Not DiMenna. "I mean, look at this," the Baltimore native says, sweeping her hand across the vista in front of her. It is lovely, a scene of classic homes, gently lapping water and autumn-tinged trees that you could sell on a postcard.

Kate N. Boone, a businesswoman and avid sailor, died Aug. 16 of breast cancer at Women & Infants Hospice in Providence, R.I. The former Riderwood and Annapolis resident was 47. Kate Nash was born in Baltimore and raised in Riderwood. She was a 1982 graduate of Garrison Forest School and made her debut that year at the Bachelors Cotillon. She later attended New England College in Henniker, N.H. Mrs. Boone was a crew member aboard the original Pride of Baltimore's maiden voyage in 1979 to Bermuda, New York and Nova Scotia.

A recent column on the wreck of the steamer Clara Nevada, which went to the bottom in 1898 while returning from the Alaska gold fields with the loss of all hands and a cargo of gold dust worth $13.6 million today, brought interesting reader feedback. The story of the Clara Nevada was brought to life by Steven C. Levi, an Anchorage-based freelance and technical writer, in his recent book, "The Clara Nevada: Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska's Inside Passage. " The lust for riches set off gold fever, as thousands packed suitcases and whatever they could carry on their backs and headed West for Seattle and Portland, gateway to the Klondike.

You probably have more computing power in your pocket than what NASA's venerable Voyager spacecraft are carrying to the edge of the solar system. They have working memories a million times smaller than your home computer. They record their scientific data on 8-track tape machines. And they communicate with their aging human inventors back home with a 23-watt whisper. Even so, the twin explorers, now 33 years into their mission, continue to explore new territory as far as 11 billion miles from Earth.

Apple's iPhone generated the biggest buzz in the mobile market last year, but that doesn't mean other phone makers and wireless carriers have been standing still. Consider Verizon's LG Voyager. True, Verizon doesn't position Voyager as a direct iPhone challenger - even though it bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple's slickest gadget. Voyager does offer more bells and whistles than any other phone I've seen - including a full-scale Web browser. The problem is that Voyager may be judged more by what it doesn't do, than by what it does.

The maiden outing of the star ship Voyager can be seen again tonight, while World War II memories continue to unreel with a documentary on the life of a fighter pilot and a cable screening of a penetrating Hitler profile.* "Star Trek: Voyager" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54) -- The latest series in the expanding "Star Trek" universe launched a new network in January -- and is the only Paramount show that will survive to the fall season. This is the movie-length premiere, "Caretaker," in which Kate Mulgrew signed on as the first female star ship captain to command a show.

In 1977, NASA flung a message in a bottle toward the stars. After a 10 billion-mile journey that traversed the paths of Jupiter and Saturn, the hardy little Voyager I spacecraft approached the edge of the solar system last week, poised to carry humanity's greetings to the universe beyond. During its 33-year flight, Voyager I and its sister ship, Voyager II, captured the imagination of millions of Earthlings with the first detailed pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, along with stunning images of their mysterious moons and intricate rings.