Had they forgone the close Titan approach at Saturn with Voyager 1, it would have been possible for that craft to have visited Pluto.
I've had mixed feelings about that decision over the years. The idea at Titan was there would be breaks in the cloud deck and Voyager could view the surface. It turns out, there are never breaks in the clouds there and to see the surface takes radar or a special infrared filter on the camera, neither of which Voyager had. So the close flyby didn't yield too much information, but it was enough to influence the design of Cassini, so there is that. Also, Voyager has pixels 16 times larger than New Horizons, so we wouldn't have had very good pictures until almost the day of the flyby at Pluto. It is possible Voyager might not have revealed one or more of the tiny moons.
Tough call either way.
I've had mixed feelings about that decision over the years. The idea at Titan was there would be breaks in the cloud deck and Voyager could view the surface. It turns out, there are never breaks in the clouds there and to see the surface takes radar or a special infrared filter on the camera, neither of which Voyager had. So the close flyby didn't yield too much information, but it was enough to influence the design of Cassini, so there is that. Also, Voyager has pixels 16 times larger than New Horizons, so we wouldn't have had very good pictures until almost the day of the flyby at Pluto. It is possible Voyager might not have revealed one or more of the tiny moons.
Tough call either way.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
