Flags in the documentary "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" 1980

Carl Sagan starred in a public television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.  It was first broadcast across the nation in 1980.  This thirteen part series explained in simple words the complexity of the universe through the gifted talking talents of Carl Sagan.  This series made Carl Sagan a house hold name and added little bit of rock star magic to the spirit of science.


Flags appear in several scenes, in an episode that explains genetic diversity the red banners of a Japanese Butterfly feudal clan are shown along a beach.

In another part the flag of the Netherlands Kingdom can be seen flying in the background.  Similar to the current flag of the Netherlands, the only difference is that red is replaced by orange.  Yet in an Eastern perspective red and orange is also conceptualized as the same colour.  However the distinction of orange and red is a modern shift made more apparent due to the immigration of Western Ideas.   Easy it is to point out the Western Influence on the East, yet harder it is to notice the Eastern influence on the West.

The US flag sublimely appears as an arm patch on a US astronaut working outside of his or her space vehicle.

This television series was epic on shaping the mind of many a American and non-American, causing them to enter into careers related to science.

The great synchronicity of this series is that it rode along the wake of galactic imagination as a torrent of excitement about space and the future was first stirred with Star Wars.  Cosmos was a second delicious rational whammy for those interested in sci-fi and science.  Both Star Wars and Cosmos had memorable themes that penetrated into the soul with a cosmic forte.  The composition of John Williams was timeless and parallel to generations yet to come and those before, while Vangelis was perpendicular giving away its position with scientific accuracy as a photographic anthem of the 1980s. 

In the big picture Cosmos is a scientific poem that sung upon the graces of objective and rational thinking, with a hidden undertone to respect mother earth or Gaea. 

Cosmos asked us not to take science and technology for granted, and to appreciate the magnificence of technology.  It has put us on the threshold of a great social and mind expanding era unlike anything seen before.  For much care and respect must be taken, for strange days are set before us unlike anything imagined before.