[HN Gopher] Voyager spacecraft begin to power down
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Voyager spacecraft begin to power down
Author : Element_
Score : 175 points
Date : 2022-06-17 15:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| secondcoming wrote:
| This article is from the future, July 2022
| lunchpack wrote:
| This is a pre-published article from the _July 2022_ magazine
| [deleted]
| whartung wrote:
| This is one of my favorite reasonably recent Voyager anecdote,
| from a recent special about the program.
|
| Paraphrasing, the person said "You carry more computing power in
| your pocket than what we have on Voyager. And by that, I don't
| mean your smart phone. I mean you car key fob."
| linsomniac wrote:
| The one I often think about is: Your USB-C charger is more
| powerful than the Apollo 11's computer.
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a30916315/usb-c-...
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| This blew my 12 year old mind when someone said this about
| that Furby toy back in the late 90s.
| [deleted]
| dry_soup wrote:
| If I could decide, I would happily scrap all human missions and
| launch one massive science robot with a huge visible light camera
| on it per year. Idlewords convinced me of this:
|
| https://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm
| TheChaplain wrote:
| I find the space-age to be super fascinating! The Venera program
| is one favourite, where they managed to put a lander on Venus
| more than 50 years ago and send back data.
|
| Just imagine the skills and knowledge with the technology at the
| time, to figure out how to land something safely in an unknown
| environment. Love it!
| pcrh wrote:
| Curious that you refer to the "space age" in the past tense.
| Though it might be because the enthusiasm for humans traveling
| between planets and stars has been somewhat tempered since the
| 1960's-1980's.
| JoshuaJB wrote:
| Very nice overview of the Voyager program.
|
| I love the words from the President included on the spacecraft:
| _"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."_
| mistermann wrote:
| > "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."
|
| This is a lovely saying, but it feels like fairly strong false
| advertising. "We hope X", interpreted literally, implies that
| people physically engage in such forms of thinking. I do not
| believe this is actually true at ground level, rather, I think
| this is more of a story that we like to tell ourselves about
| ourselves.
| kortilla wrote:
| SpaceX is actively working towards that goal.
| mistermann wrote:
| On a portion of it - I don't see any attention paid to
| discovering how to teach human beings how to be better at
| good will, which is part of the claim.
| Peritract wrote:
| SpaceX's own mission statement doesn't mention becoming
| part of a community of civilisations [1]. It mentions
| making humans multiplanetary, but that is a _very_
| different aim [2]. Further, it 's a good idea to be
| skeptical of corporate mission statements generally.
|
| SpaceX is doing exciting stuff in the field of rocketry;
| that's really happening and it's worth being excited about,
| but they aren't doing more. It's misguided and dangerous to
| treat them as utopian idealists.
|
| [1] https://www.spacex.com/mission/
|
| [2] https://www.gutenbergcanada.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-
| outofthesilent...
| hansjorg wrote:
| That's a nice sentiment. Suprisingly humble, coming from
| Reagan.
| boulos wrote:
| Except it was Carter...
| diogenes_of_ak wrote:
| People inexplicably hate Carter - not only was he a
| fantastic president... albeit unlucky but good, but also a
| genuinely amazing human.
| mc32 wrote:
| Carter is a really nice man. He was not a good president
| though. Granted much of the badness was out of his
| control, but such is life.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| I think his presidency is stained by the impossible
| geopolitical and economic environment of his era.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| How was he a bad president?
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Mainly record high inflation and the gas crisis (which
| was way worse than today's).
|
| Whether or not anyone could have stopped that doesn't
| matter, ppl attribute this to him.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Is it one side of the aisle that hates Carter? Because
| from what I've seen/read from the outside (Canada)
| looking in, I saw nothing but praise for his humility and
| humanity. I saw conflicting opinions on what he did or
| didn't do during his tenure, but only positive with
| regards to his person and character.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Maybe now, but Carter was handed a bag of poop that
| soured the public.
|
| His election was like Clinton and administration like
| Biden.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I'm not really sure, but I do remember my parents *hated*
| Carter. I remember distinctly sometime in the '90s
| thinking "Look at all the amazing things Carter has done
| with himself after being president. I always thought he
| was an asshole!"
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Well, he DID face a 1980 primary challenge from Edward
| Kennedy, and barely won his own party's re-nomination
| with 51.1% of the popular vote as a sitting President. He
| was pretty well eviscerated by both the left and right a
| decade or two back, when he published a book labeling
| Israel's policy toward Palestine as "apartheid".
|
| Speaking as a left-leaning resident of Georgia, it seems
| obvious to me that Jimmy Carter is not all that well-
| loved by his own political party:
|
| * Part of this is because he made the mistake of bringing
| his own people when he went to Washington, instead of
| populating his administration with more federal insiders.
|
| * Part of it is because he lost, and no one likes a loser
| (I'd say that Carter's place in the Democratic Part is
| similar to that of George H.W. Bush, without the legacy
| of an heir going on to serve two terms).
|
| * And I believe that part of it is because, on the heels
| of the Civil Rights Act and the re-alignment it ushered
| in, Democrats were never all that genuinely enthusiastic
| about having a white Southern leader. It took 12 years of
| futility for them to embrace Bill Clinton (see point
| above, about how people more fondly remember Presidents
| who win re-election). And even Clinton's legacy has
| picked up a lot of tarnish over the past decade.
| sixothree wrote:
| Yes. Even to this day, high praise for Nixon and Reagan;
| and nothing but utter contempt for Carter. More telling
| of the people laying the condemnation than of the man
| himself.
| christophilus wrote:
| Not sure. I was raised by conservatives (albeit somewhat
| middle of the road) and they and most conservatives I've
| chatted with really admire Carter as a person; just
| thought he was an incompetent president.
|
| My childhood church group (all Republicans, I'd guess)
| used to build houses with Habitat. It's kinda hard to
| think poorly of Carter when he built something that does
| so much good.
|
| I wonder if the loud, vitriolic right wingers make it
| seem like the right thinks as a united, extreme block,
| when maybe there's a large, quiet group that is not well
| represented? Not sure. I may also just be in a bubble of
| reasonable centrists. My left wing and right wing friends
| are pretty centrist in my estimation.
| zizee wrote:
| > maybe there's a large, quiet group that is not well
| represented
|
| Often referred to as the "silent majority".
|
| > My left wing and right wing friends are pretty centrist
| in my estimation.
|
| I think this is many (?most?) people's experience, whilst
| media (social/traditional) are geared towards demonizing
| both "sides", to increase engagement. I say "sides",
| because most people's opinions skew left/right depending
| on the issue in question, rather than fitting perfectly
| into the stereotypical archetypes.
| MandieD wrote:
| As my very conservative, East Texan father says, Carter
| is too good a man to have been any good as president.
| [deleted]
| kortilla wrote:
| Genuinely amazing human sure, but terrible President. He
| didn't get anything done and nearly lost the nomination
| from his own party for a second term, which is rare.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| There's a good PBS documentary series on all the modern
| presidents and it's worth a watch if you haven't seen it
| already. The Carter episode dug into how he was
| technically well qualified and capable, but just did not
| have the connections and support of Congress at the time
| and that ultimately doomed his administration to failure.
| None of his ideas were able to get funding or support in
| Congress so his administration just flailed.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| The big problem. Policy is super interesting and fun and
| touches on so many diverse and stimulating areas.
| Politics though is awful and puts sociopaths at an
| advantage.
| pengaru wrote:
| In case you haven't noticed, a substantial portion of
| Americans favor assholes.
| johnohara wrote:
| Agree. The past 59 years have been particularly notable.
| smitty1e wrote:
| There are copious fine individuals one could name. This
| doesn't make them great Presidential material.
|
| Nor should we care. It is of far greater significance to
| be a good parent or a Gary Flandro than to be President.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It's not inexplicable, it was a manufactured consensus by
| the media.
|
| I was a Carter fan before it was cool, seems like more
| and more people are coming around and revisiting his
| legacy.
| [deleted]
| srvmshr wrote:
| > _Flandro calculated that the repeated gravity assists, as they
| are called, would cut the flight time between Earth and Neptune
| from 30 years to 12. There was just one catch: the alignment
| happened only once every 176 years. To reach the planets while
| the lineup lasted, a spacecraft would have to be launched by the
| mid-1970s._
|
| How many of such startling discoveries get noticed by
| bureaucracy/administration nowadays? Back then, it seems ideas
| percolated to execution stage pretty fast. I wonder if a part-
| time working grad student's serendipitous finds will be taken
| seriously to action in today's environment.
| samstave wrote:
| antihero wrote:
| The amount of companies I've worked in where they'd just be
| like can we push back on the solar system a bit
| samstave wrote:
| SOL-utions...
| [deleted]
| tomohawk wrote:
| > if the models were correct, should have pushed the heliopause
| farther out than 120 AU. "It was unexpected by all the
| theorists," Krimigis says. "I think the modeling, in terms of the
| findings of the Voyagers, has been found wanting."
|
| Uncalibrated and/or unfalsifiable computer models should never be
| trusted.
| litoE wrote:
| I remember having lunch at the JPL cafeteria and watching a TV
| monitor showing pictures of Jupiter being beamed down by Voyager.
| Exciting times.
| enriquto wrote:
| Notice that today you can download all the raw data sent by the
| voyagers and create your own mosaics and false color composites
| (each image was taken with a separate multispectral filter).
| This is a very beautiful and inspiring project for tech
| students.
|
| https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/science/data-access/
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's the half life of the RTG that is limiting them, right?
| Because they're way too far to use any kind of solar power.
|
| Ps I always thought that record was a bit funny. I mean it's a
| good method of initiating communication. Just strapping it to a
| can of poison is kind of a mixed message. "Hey buddies we're
| peaceful humans, ps here's a can of instadeath" :) Though I
| suppose little radioactivity would be left by the time it ever
| reached an alien civilization.
| knorker wrote:
| Meh. Plutonium is safe below criticality.
| DylanSp wrote:
| Yep. The farthest any solar-powered craft has gotten is Juno
| out at Jupiter, with much newer technology (and the solar
| panels are still pretty large).
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, if they can't deal with a little shielded can of death
| they're not likely to have made it to space anyway. For anyone
| spacefaring, it's about as hard to deal with or unexpected as a
| can of gas gas in an old car.
| TrueDuality wrote:
| Rest now sweet explorers. You've given us more knowledge than we
| asked for and inspired untold numbers. Even in your final dreams
| you give us beautiful gifts and prove to the universe that we
| exist.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| When was the launch date? It's been out there for almost my
| whole life. Maybe it will turn up in the 23rd century in female
| form with a shaved head and calling herself Vega.
| ingsoc79 wrote:
| ...or suffer a more pedestrian fate of getting vaporized by
| bored Klingons.
| funstuff007 wrote:
| Just as I was tempted to give SciAm another shot, I see they have
| this headline on the homepage:
|
| How Culturally Significant Mammals Tell the Story of Social
| Ascension for Black Americans Nyeema C. Harris | Opinion
|
| Honestly, what the heck is going on there? It's not science,
| that's for sure.
| dfee wrote:
| epgui wrote:
| That's called an "opinion piece", it is editorial content.
| Scientific American is a popular science publication. Most
| people read it for the scientific journalism, not for the
| opinion pieces.
|
| Editorial content is always going to be hit or miss.
| jftuga wrote:
| When will Voyager 1 become 1 light-day distance away?[1]
|
| * 1 LD from Earth = November 18, 2026 -- 1,614 days from today
|
| * 1 LD from Sun = Feb 03, 2027 -- 1,691 days from today
|
| https://www.quora.com/When-will-Voyager-1-become-1-light-day...
| bullen wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| StrangeLoop talk: "Uptime 15,364 days - The Computers of
| Voyager" by Aaron Cummings
| rektide wrote:
| > _But if an engineer had a choice to put in a part that was 10
| percent more expensive but wasn 't something that was needed for
| a four-year mission, they just went ahead and did that. And they
| wouldn't necessarily tell management._
|
| Engineers doing good things even though everyone else doesnt want
| to care & just wants something cheap. Heartbreaking long tale of
| humanity, that opting to do good things is so hard to get buy in
| on.
| m34 wrote:
| I was on the receiving end of numerous support cases caused by
| what has to be on the sub-dollar cent savings (per single sku)
| region when multiple mainboard manufacturers chose to use
| capacitors with slightly worse tolerances all of a sudden (~25
| years ago).
|
| So if the whole process of spec'ing and validating the quality
| of sourced materials was within their action space, ofc they'd
| choose (potential) fault-tolerance over price, as it was
| mission critical.
|
| So there might be a reason why we refer to it today as space
| race and not race to the bottom.
| chasd00 wrote:
| not understanding and following requirements isn't something
| engineers should be doing IMO
| marssaxman wrote:
| Understanding requirements so _well_ that you give the
| customer what they actually do want, even though they don 't
| yet know they want it, sounds like really great engineering.
| FastMonkey wrote:
| There is balance in all things. Engineers shouldn't be
| ignored, but we are also not omniscient.
|
| As an engineer myself, having worked on product and having
| been a client of engineers working on products for me, I
| can tell you that engineers that think they have an inside
| track on what the client "really" wants are often wrong.
| The feeling is similar to that false confidence you get in
| any field when you have learned just the absolute basics,
| and I have felt it myself. That's why you don't just go and
| spend 10% of the clients budget without talking to them
| first. If clients are saying they don't want a feature,
| it's quite probable that the person you're dealing with
| actually knows what they want, and what they want is not
| what you've come up with.
|
| A lot of projects that filter their way through HN die
| because the engineers are solving the problem for
| themselves and not talking to users. That is also the
| pattern you see with a lot of "what I wish I had known when
| I started my project" posts on here. Avoiding a
| conversation with the client because you're afraid they
| won't approve the feature you want to add is not really
| great engineering.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > not understanding and following requirements isn't
| something engineers should be doing IMO
|
| I disagree, engineers are not robots. Good engineers may
| second guess and get technically involved in adjusting badly
| written instructions or mangled schematics, and do so all the
| time. And no, the "process" for querying and changing
| requirements is not always practical. Of course good
| engineers should document and report all deviations from the
| recspec and talk to the quality manager. Spotting that a
| capacitor or diode voltage is under-rated and swapping the
| part number, no problem. Upgrading a part if it makes no
| other difference seems okay too. I've been very grateful to
| fab or pick and place engineers who corrected a silly mistake
| I made instead of just sending me back a board that obviously
| wouldn't work. But those kind of people who take initiatives
| are rare to find these days,
| tejtm wrote:
| Deciding that the Engineers don't understand is not something
| a bureaucracy should be doing, period.
| bad416f1f5a2 wrote:
| Squeezing in "a little extra" is a time-honored tradition in
| engineering.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Engineer: "Gracious lord and Pharaoh, if we mix this volcanic
| ash into the mortar, your Pyramid could last for thousands of
| years."
|
| Pharaoh: "But that would be too expensive right? Don't waste
| the treasury's money. Ordinary mortar is fine."
|
| Engineer: (goes off and mixes volcanic ash into the mortar,
| despite the cost)
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Great article. Learned something new. The satellites were larger
| than I thought.
|
| Coincidentally, randomly the other day, I thought how much more
| advanced our computing would be today as a species if we worked
| within the constraints of the computing of available at the time
| of Voyager or even the 90s.
|
| I think we would favor information and communication vs. cruft
| and entertainment. Working within constrained computing
| environments forces us to make tough decisions about what is
| important or pushes us to innovate and be creative with what we
| have to work with.
| pvg wrote:
| Our 'computing' is many orders magnitude more 'advanced' than
| what was available at the time. There's no technology that's
| advanced faster in the history of technology, a completely
| unprecedented rate of innovation even in the industrial era. It
| would be very odd indeed if it somehow became more advanced by
| not advancing it.
| rozab wrote:
| This is a good overview of the Voyager program, but did they just
| slap that headline on it to try and make it news? I was expecting
| some sort of announcement. But there isn't even any definite
| plans to shut down any instruments in the near future.
| perlgeek wrote:
| The title is also very weird, considering that Voyager 1 and 2
| have been shutting down instruments since 1990 and 1991,
| respectively:
| https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/science/thirty-year-pla...
| Aardwolf wrote:
| The Voyager crafts generate a never ending supply of news
| articles about leaving the solar system or shutting down,
| because there plenty of different moments that are considered
| "leaving the solar system" or shutting down, and there are
| multiple Voyager crafts as well...
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| _They are the first human-made objects to do so, a distinction
| they will hold for at least another few decades._
|
| Uhh...won't they still be the first?
| 333c wrote:
| Not once we invent time travel in a few decades.
| _0ffh wrote:
| We told you, no spoilers! Stop messing with this time line,
| or we'll have to start over _again_!
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Should we give them another chance to avoid the dark
| timeline and reset them to pre-Harambe?
| hourago wrote:
| > They have traveled farther and lasted longer than any other
| spacecraft in history. And they have crossed into interstellar
| space, according to our best understanding of the boundary
| between the sun's sphere of influence and the rest of the
| galaxy. They are the first human-made objects to do so, a
| distinction they will hold for at least another few decades.
|
| They will be the ones that have traveled the farthest until
| faster objects catch up and surpass them. It may take time
| until we send anything faster, and it's going to need time to
| catch up, so it will take decades.
| wyldfire wrote:
| But when they do catch up and surpass them, they won't unseat
| the first ones at being first.
| hourago wrote:
| I know what you mean. What I say is that "distinction" is a
| substitute for "have traveled farther and lasted longer"
| not "the first human-made".
| in_cahoots wrote:
| But that's not what first means! You're either first or
| you have traveled farther, combining them into one clause
| doesn't make sense.
|
| If I'm the first person to be the fastest runner, then
| nobody else can be first. It just doesn't make any sense.
| Someone can be faster, but they'll never be first.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| The full quote with context makes it pretty clear that the
| author is talking about crossing into interstellar
| space/leaving the solar system. It certainly could have been
| better worded though and should be fixed.
|
| "And they have crossed into interstellar space, according to
| our best understanding of the boundary between the sun's sphere
| of influence and the rest of the galaxy. They are the first
| human-made objects to do so, a distinction they will hold for
| at least another few decades."
| mokus wrote:
| It doesn't matter what it's about though - if they were first
| at something then barring time travel they will always be the
| first, no matter how many more do it.
| lkrubner wrote:
| "according to our best understanding of the boundary" --
| they are the first to cross the boundary unless our
| understanding of the boundary changes, and then there is
| the small possibility that something faster can reach the
| "real" boundary faster.
| [deleted]
| divbzero wrote:
| Two bits of history I learned from the article:
|
| 1. The last human to touch the spacecraft was a physicist
| inspecting two detectors -- probably part of the low-energy
| telescope system (LET).
|
| _Although many scientists have worked on the Voyagers over the
| decades, Cummings can make a unique claim. "I was the last person
| to touch the spacecraft before they launched," he says. Cummings
| was responsible for two detectors designed to measure the flux of
| electrons and other charged particles when the Voyagers
| encountered the giant planets. Particles would pass through a
| small "window" in each detector that consisted of aluminum foil
| just three microns thick. Cummings worried that technicians
| working on the spacecraft might have accidentally dented or poked
| holes in the windows. "So they needed to be inspected right
| before launch," he says. "Indeed, I found that one of them was a
| little bit loose."_
|
| 2. Carl Sagan not only commented on the "Pale Blue Dot" but also
| persuaded NASA to take the photograph in the first place.
|
| _Sagan urged NASA officials to have Voyager 1 transmit one last
| series of images. So, on Valentine 's Day in 1990, the probe
| aimed its cameras back toward the inner solar system and took 60
| final shots. The most haunting of them all, made famous by Sagan
| as the "Pale Blue Dot," captured Earth from a distance of 3.8
| billion miles. It remains the most distant portrait of our planet
| ever taken. Veiled by wan sunlight that reflected off the
| camera's optics, Earth is barely visible in the image. It doesn't
| occupy even a full pixel._
|
| _Sagan, who died in 1996, "worked really hard to convince NASA
| that it was worth looking back at ourselves," Spilker says, "and
| seeing just how tiny that pale blue dot was."_
| [deleted]
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