[HN Gopher] Voyager spacecraft begin to power down
___________________________________________________________________
Voyager spacecraft begin to power down
Author : Element_
Score : 410 points
Date : 2022-06-17 15:48 UTC (2 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."
| hulitu wrote:
| But which one is better ? Voyager is on since 1970, your car
| key since max 10 years.
| ChikkaChiChi wrote:
| We had remote key fobs in the nineties.
| Kye wrote:
| I think their comment was regarding battery life, not year
| of invention. A 90s key fob would be dead by now without a
| battery change even without use.
| thalassophobia wrote:
| Yeah, but my key doesn't have a nuclear generator strapped to
| it.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Pfft, I thought this was a forum for hackers.
| lambada wrote:
| And that exact anecdote is contained in the article. > In fact,
| the smartphone comparison is not quite right. "The Voyager
| computers have less memory than the key fob that opens your car
| door," Spilker says.
| 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-...
| Razengan wrote:
| I remember reading that the SIM card in your phone was
| equivalent [or superior] to a Commodore 64..
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Your SIM card is running full blown Java applications in a
| "secure enclave" like chip. Good luck getting a 6502 system
| to do that.
| verisimi wrote:
| ... and yet its travelled 12 billion miles from Earth
| elevaet wrote:
| The power of persistence!
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| and radioisotope thermoelectric generators...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric
| _ge...
| elevaet wrote:
| Touche!
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Could you power a house with a few dozen of these RTGs?
|
| Or are they just so obscenely expensive?
|
| If you could use these then you wouldn't really need
| batteries, which you do need if you go solar.
|
| Is it even possible for a mortal to buy a RTG?
| wcoenen wrote:
| The voyager probes had 450 watt of total electrical power
| at launch, supplied by 3 RTGs. The plutonium alone in one
| of those RTG units (4.5kg) would easily cost $10M.
|
| And it's the type of thing that is only used by
| government programs, very dangerous to handle, and which
| requires a whole specialized industry to produce. The
| accounting gets complicated. I wouldn't be surprised by a
| $100M cost per RTG unit.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Generally it'd be more efficient to build a nuclear power
| plant with the materials from the RTG, and power many
| houses.
| nix23 wrote:
| You can steal some from russian lighthouses....on your
| own risk.
| qubex wrote:
| Computing power is nothing without a high Delta-V rocket
| under your backside.
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| This blew my 12 year old mind when someone said this about
| that Furby toy back in the late 90s.
| t67521218990d wrote:
| A better way to phrase this would be "Look what they managed
| with only 70 kilobytes of memory. Now what have you done with
| all the terabytes you have available to you?"
| jjcon wrote:
| Interesting related tidbit - Most sophisticated computers would
| instantly fail when exposed to outerspace. The process of
| making them rad tolerant is expensive and complicated. Using
| simpler chips makes it easier and means there is less that can
| go wrong. This is why most space bound computers even today
| appear on the surface spec sheet to be out of date.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Here are details on the Voyager computers:
|
| https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/voyager-mission-
| annive...
| 4oo4 wrote:
| That never made sense to me until I really learned about bit
| flips, and how the smaller the process node, the more
| susceptible it is.
|
| They are at least up to PowerPC with the most recent Mars
| missions, probably not a terrible tradeoff of computing power
| vs. radiation vulnerability.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/02/nasa-mars-
| perseverance-...
| kam wrote:
| The Mars Helicopter Ingenuity actually has a 2014-era
| 2.2GHz ARM phone SoC, the Snapdragon 801 (same chip as the
| Galaxy S5 and OnePlus One)
|
| https://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov/Publications/files/Balaram_
| A...
| tengwar2 wrote:
| I've got to say that I am very doubtful of that. A key fob just
| generates one time passcodes, and offers the ability to set the
| seed to be used. I've implemented this sort of algorithm on
| SIMs (to be used for VPN authentication, not mobile
| authentication). You don't need 69kB for that. Even 1kB would
| be luxurious. So why would a car key fob have more than the
| 69kB on Voyager computers?
| [deleted]
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| That's ... probably correct on the facts, but won't a key fob
| be using something along the line of an ATtiny or an STM8S0?
| Those have pretty decent computing power as far as historical
| microcomputers go (about a TRS-80 or an Apple ][ or a somewhat
| downscaled AGC) and may even be clocked at 12 or 16 MHz, yet
| routinely have absolutely pitiful amounts of RAM (to be
| distinguished from program ROM), down to 256 _bytes_ in some
| cases. An 8-bitter with 2 or 4K of memory and one with 64K of
| memory afford _very_ different programming styles and
| environmental conveniences.
| 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
| bergenty wrote:
| I'm glad you can't decide. I want my kids or grandkids to be
| able to live on other planets.
| roflyear wrote:
| Why?
| kyriakos wrote:
| Colonisation of space is going to make us a more resilient
| species.
| roflyear wrote:
| Why do you care about this?
| kyriakos wrote:
| Isn't it the same as asking why do we pro create?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The problem with getting a gravity assist from Jupiter is that it
| causes Jupiter to slightly slow down. Now, you might imagine that
| Jupiter is very big, and the slowdown is infinitesimal. But these
| things add up, and as more and more craft get a boost from
| Jupiter, Jupiter will lose orbital velocity and spiral inward to
| get sucked into the sun.
|
| And then what?
| cdelsolar wrote:
| lol
| nine_k wrote:
| If Jupiter starts going significantly downwards by the time
| when it'll be just a fem million years until Sun goes
| supernova, we (whoever that will be) will have to hurry and
| flee anyway. It it involves crashing Jupiter into the Sun, and
| likely wreaking complete havoc in the inner planets' orbits, so
| be it; the system will become unusable anyway.
|
| But until starfaring is developed enough, we should be careful
| with any gigaton-scale spacecraft doing gravity assists!
| bergenty wrote:
| You answered your own question. I'm not going to do the math
| you you would probably need trillions of flybys before anything
| observable happens.
| virchau13 wrote:
| xkcd did a What-If on this: https://what-if.xkcd.com/146/
|
| TL;DR: It will not happen. You would need to throw on the order
| of a thousand Earth-masses to even get close to neutralizing
| Jupiter's orbit.
|
| All processes in this world are unsustainable, but only some
| matter.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Seems only one person got the joke :-)
| 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.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, we say industrial age as in past tense even though we
| have more industry than ever.
|
| We are doing more space launches than ever right now, it just
| doesn't define this time. The birth of the internet and rise
| of computing technology sent us into the information age.
| jhugo wrote:
| We still have Bronze, Iron, Industry, Machinery, Atomic
| technology, Space technology...
|
| The so-called "ages" are named for what is new within them,
| there's no implication that the technology is lost when the
| next supposed "age" starts.
|
| We're usually now referred to as being in the Information
| age, which puts the Space age in the past.
| 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.
| myself248 wrote:
| It seems pretty narrow to assume that because _you_ don't
| engage in this thinking, that _nobody_ does.
|
| Plenty of us do. The fact that we're not running the world is
| a detail.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Plenty of us do. The fact that we're not running the
| world is a detail.
|
| I think that "we're not running the world" was the GP's
| point. It _is_ an important detail in the context of the
| President saying these words, to remember that he is not
| one of us who do really engage in this type of thinking.
| 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...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > but they aren't doing more
|
| Criminy, aren't they doing great? I finally found a way
| to buy some shares of SpaceX. I don't even care if that
| investment does badly, I just want to share in a tiny bit
| of SpaceX.
|
| > dangerous
|
| ?? On the scale of things that terrify me, SpaceX doesn't
| move the needle.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Musk has acknowledged that he considers colonizing Mars a
| step to becoming extrasolar eventually, not that SpaceX
| plans to do that itself.
| mr_toad wrote:
| If Starship _isn't_ designed to go to Mars and back
| they've made some odd design choices.
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I don't think anyone hates him as a _person_. He 's a Mr.
| Rogers-level humanitarian.
| 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?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| His biggest issue was that he was a manager, focused too
| much on processes and policy detail.
|
| A President usually sets the tone and direction of
| policy, but avoids personal accountability for the
| details for a variety of reasons.
| 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.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| He was also blamed for not bringing home the American
| prisoners that Iran kidnapped.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Carter the President was terrible. Carter the Man,
| however, is admirable and one of my favorite people. Yes,
| both can be simultaneously true.
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| An example of why Carter was a terrible President.
| Remember the looong gas lines? I sure do. For years, just
| getting gas was a miserable experience with arbitrarily
| long waits, up to hours.
|
| Reagan's first act was to sign an Executive Order
| eliminating all oil and gas price and allocation
| controls.
|
| The gas lines vanished literally overnight (and I'm not
| exaggerating) and never returned. Boy do I remember that.
|
| Carter could have done that. But he simply didn't
| understand economics.
|
| Sadly, Biden is considering having the government control
| fuel distribution again.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Do you indeed?
|
| It was during the Nixon administration that price
| controls and rationing of gasoline were introduced, in
| response to the OPEC oil shock of 1973 (crude oil prices
| had been set by government since 1971). You mention
| Reagan's executive order, but that was just closing the
| stable door after the horse had bolted; Carter began the
| phaseout of the Nixon-era price controls in 1979.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/06/archives/carter-to-
| end-pr...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Carter dinked around for 4 years failing to get it done,
| and Reagan does it in a few minutes with the stroke of a
| pen.
|
| All your article shows is Carter simply didn't understand
| the problem. Reagan did.
|
| Not mentioned is the DOE also controlled allocation of
| gasoline to filling stations. That was quite a disaster.
| Reagan ended all that nonsense with the same EO.
|
| Isn't it interesting that Biden is going down the same
| path? He'll fail just like Carter.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You placed all the blame for gas lines and price controls
| on Carter, when it was a policy imposed by Nixon and
| continued by Ford. Then you complain about Carter
| 'dinking around' because he opted to work with Congress
| and stick to the goal of trying to balance the federal
| budget. Many of the price controls had been dismantled by
| the time Reagan took office.
|
| I might observe that Carter's 'dinking around' also
| reduced the federal government's budget deficit, which
| increased sharply under the Reagan & Bush
| administrations, along with the national debt.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When you're the President, you own it and it's your
| fault.
|
| Let's go back to what happened - Carter didn't fix it in
| 4 years. Reagan did overnight as his first action. Reagan
| gets the credit.
|
| Read also Carter's policy proposals for energy. All
| terrible, just like Biden's.
| opo wrote:
| The 79 oil crisis and rationing was caused by the
| disruption of oil from the Iran, but the US suffered much
| more from the disruption of the oil from Iran than other
| countries that also relied on this oil. It would be wrong
| to ignore the role the government played in making this
| oil disruption significantly worse.
|
| From "TheU.S. Petroleum Crisis of 1979", PHILIP K.
| VERLEGER, JR.
|
| >...On February 28, 1979, DOE published the following
| notice in the Federal Register: "It is essential that
| refiners enter the spring driving season with adequate
| gasoline stocks to meet seasonal demand requirements. We
| recognize that gasoline stocks are currently at adequate
| levels for this time of year, which is usually a period
| of low demand. Recent industry data indicate that total
| stocks are now in excess of 265 million barrels, which is
| less than last year's record high levels during the same
| period but above the average levels of previous years.
| Our concern is that these stocks not be drawn down
| precipitously as soon as the impacts of the Iranian
| shortfall are felt by refiners. Refiners are urged to
| keep stocks high enough to meet expected demand during
| the 1979 summer driving season, even if it is necessary
| to restrict somewhat the amount of surplus gasoline that
| is made available to purchasers currently" The
| implementation of these instructions had the effect of
| restricting the volume of gasoline available to service
| stations to between 80 and 90 percent of 1978 levels.
| This reduction was greater than the reduction in total
| gasoline supplies.
|
| >...In April 1979, DOE ordered the fifteen largest
| refiners to sell 7.8 million barrels of crude oil to
| smaller firms that were unable to obtain supplies on the
| world market at competitive prices. ...These transfers
| probably reduced the volume of gasoline produced in the
| second quarter because the refineries that purchased the
| crude oil had only a limited capacity to produce
| gasoline, while the refineries that sold it could have
| produced more. ...In addition to reducing the supply of
| gasoline, the buy/sell program appears to have affected
| the geographic distribution of crude oil and gasoline.
| This is because the primary recipients of the crude oil
| were refineries in the Midwest and the gulf coast areas,
| while the sellers were companies that were marketing
| throughout the nation.
|
| >......In April, DOE turned its attention to the low
| stock of distillate fuel oil ... Two impacts were
| observed on domestic markets. First, excessive stocks of
| heating oil were accumulated. Second, companies may have
| been influenced to increase gasoline stocks in
| anticipation of the mandator yield controls that DOE
| threatened to impose. These controls specified the
| percent of refiner output that had to be heating oil.
| Such controls were designed to curtail the output of
| gasoline. By building higher gasoline inventories,
| refiners could smooth out the month-to-month distribution
| of gasoline despite the controls.
|
| >...Price controls on gasoline may have also created an
| incentive to withhold gasoline from the market when the
| prices of crude oil were rising rapidly. ...In summary,
| the refiners had the capacity and the knowledge to take
| advantage of this opportunity. Ironically, the
| instructions from DOE to the companies were to do
| precisely what was most profitable.
|
| >...In addition to encouraging the buildup of stocks, DOE
| may have added to the shortages by creating an incentive
| to reduce the output of crude oil. Although it is
| difficult to estimate what domestic supplies of crude oil
| might have been in the absence of any restriction, a DOE
| announcement in November that control levels of the base
| period were to be reviewed may have constrained
| production in the first half of 1979.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is a much more substantive analysis, thanks.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Nobody ever seems to remember that the DOE also allocated
| gas to gas stations on a per-station basis. This was
| complete madness, as it did so based on the previous
| year's usage patterns. Of course, patterns never repeat
| themselves very accurately, and the result was gluts in
| Florida and shortages on the left coast.
|
| A gas station had to apply to the DOE to get gas, and
| write a paper justifying this. I know this because a
| friend bought a gas station. He couldn't get a DOE
| allocation because the gas station across the street
| filed an objection with the DOE that no gas was needed
| for the new owner. So his gas station sat with no gas for
| 6 months or so.
|
| That's Carter's energy policy. Well meaning, but
| completely wrong.
| WalterBright wrote:
| "The President [Carter] said that he would set gasoline
| consumption targets for each state and would order
| mandatory steps, assuming Congress allows him to do so,
| if the states fail to save as much gasoline as they are
| supposed to do. One such step, he added, might be the
| weekend closing of service stations."
|
| Gawd, what an awful proposal.
| ggm wrote:
| Without going full conspiracy, is there any chance this
| was a pre Koch brothers example of industry undermining
| government authority until it gets the government it
| wants?
| WalterBright wrote:
| If Carter was making bad decisions because Koch told him
| to, then that still makes Carter a bad President.
| ggm wrote:
| Firstly, The Koch brothers are fiercely republican and
| were not making decisions through Carter. Secondly, I
| said pre-Koch.
|
| Btw, the oil price controls were a Nixon initiative,
| continued by Ford. Carter did not invent them, he just
| didn't remove them.
|
| Reagan was the beneficiary of the collapse of the OPEC
| price war internationally.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Funny how the OPEC price war collapsed the day Reagan
| took office and repealed those damned price and
| allocation controls.
|
| Something Carter could have done at any time. But he
| didn't. Reagan did.
|
| > he just didn't remove them
|
| That's right, for 4 years he didn't. He gets the blame
| for it for those 4 years.
| Barracoon wrote:
| I'm trying to square how only [15% of oil price controls]
| (https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/29/us/president-
| abolishes-la...) remained when Reagan single handedly
| saved the day. Seems like Carter spent 4 years doing the
| hard work and Reagan was able to capitalize on the last
| bit, which as the article states, Carter would have
| accomplished by spring.
| WalterBright wrote:
| But Carter did not do it. You don't get credit for things
| you didn't do. There was no need for delay, as Reagan
| amply demonstrated.
|
| Remember, Reagan did it on his _first_ day in office.
| Carter could have done it the day before.
|
| If you lived through that transition (I did) it was
| _wonderful_ to have the gas lines disappear _overnight_
| and never return. Thank you, Reagan!
| 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!"
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Carter is a fine human being. So was Hoover.
|
| Johnson was a sociopath, who gave us Medicare, Medicaid,
| desegregation, and "standardization of computer
| communication."
| 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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?
|
| They are all voting for Trump and the Trumpists. How
| moderate are they?
| christophilus wrote:
| The folks I know were mixed on that. Some held their nose
| and voted for him, some voted independent, and some went
| Democrat the last go round. I went independent.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Not to dismiss your experiences, but we are talking about
| the claimed "large quiet group". It doesn't seem so large
| if Republicans are strongly supporting Trump and
| Trumpists.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Please stop.
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > did not have the connections and support of Congress
|
| This applies to almost every job. You need soft skills to
| be successful.
| digisign wrote:
| Also naively didn't clean house of the "Nixon men," and
| paid for it dearly later. Nice guys do finish last at
| that level, and especially in that era.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| It wasn't naive so much as it was a genuine attempt at
| healing, forgiveness, and moving past the turmoil. But
| the corruption won.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah
|
| Cancel culture is dangerous, but being tolerant of some
| behaviours (which of course are much more specific and
| contextual in this case) was also his downfall
| 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Politics though is awful and puts sociopaths at an
| advantage.
|
| That's what the sociopaths want you to think. Look at the
| most successful people politically, who got the most done
| - Lincoln, FDR, MLK, etc. They weren't sociopaths. The
| recent sociopath at the top of the ticket underperformed
| their own party.
| javajosh wrote:
| If you're in US Congress, your vote is incredibly
| valuable. Yet we want our representatives to vote for
| what is best for our nation. These two objectives are in
| obvious conflict. This conflict doesn't trouble me (it
| has always been so) but rather the loss of awareness that
| this conflict exists and must constantly be mitigated is
| what troubles me. Congress is now full of people who are
| overtly self-interested, and their constituents love it.
| This is evidence of a major structural breakdown of
| American society, and it's not clear what caused it or
| what might heal it.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| There's a good argument to be made about the 1970
| Legislative Reorganization Act as being one of the first
| places to look. Up until then, Congress voted on a secret
| ballot, and the congressional votes were not made public
| - so lobbying had a much higher hurdle to clear (since
| the lobbyists could not guarantee a return on their
| investment by verifying that the Congressperson kept
| their end of the bargain).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4kvUxQIJlA
| 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.
| thedougd wrote:
| Carter taught me that there are four ways to pronounce
| pecan.
| 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]
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| This guy makes his own space documentaries on YouTube -- very
| deep dive into the Voyager program:
|
| https://youtu.be/M62kajY-ln0
| 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]
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| Amazing writing. And what a feat.
| 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.
| sytelus wrote:
| What is astonishing is how little these space crafts have
| travelled. They go at 38k mph and it would have still taken them
| 40,000 years to reach nearest star to the earth! The fastest
| space craft so far is Parker Solar Probe which was about 10X
| faster but even that would have taken 4000 years to get to
| nearest star. There are huge problems increasing speed beyond
| this because even a tiny particle can seriously damage the space
| craft at higher speed. The expanse of space is truly mind
| blowing. If physical requires that for a body to move from point
| X to Y it must travel through all points in-between then we are
| screwed.
| 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.
| scythe wrote:
| The 238Pu used in radioactive batteries is a lot more active
| than the more common 239Pu used in nuclear reactors/weapons.
| lazide wrote:
| Nothing says fun times like hundred gram quantities of
| something with a half life of less than 100 years!
| 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.
| mrtri wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| True, it's an opinion piece. On Anthropology and Sociology
| (at best), not Science.
| lovelearning wrote:
| I randomly searched the magazine's archives and found lots
| of articles on society, culture, and history in any year I
| looked. Any narrative that the magazine used to restrict
| itself to natural sciences and engineering seems false to
| me.
|
| 1906 snow sculptures; "money of savages"
|
| 1918 reorganization of a government health department
|
| 1929 construction in Washington and the role of the US
| Congress
|
| 1951 human resources of the US
|
| 1961 effects of air pollution on public health
|
| 1971 an early city in Iran
|
| 1980 census; whaling
|
| 1992 health care reform
| jgalt212 wrote:
| I think you proved your own argument. The rate of opinion
| pieces in the SciAm recently seems to be north of 10X
| what it used to be.
| lovelearning wrote:
| Your, and GP's, comments gave me the impression that you
| thought humanities weren't touched by SciAm until
| recently. I think I proved that narrative wrong. It
| wasn't my narrative.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Under your very broad definition of _touched_ , I'll
| concede the point.
| epgui wrote:
| Anthropology and sociology are both sciences.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| The founder of this forum doesn't feel that way.
|
| > comparisons of programming languages either take the
| form of religious wars or undergraduate textbooks so
| determinedly neutral that they're really works of
| anthropology.
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
| epgui wrote:
| I think you're reading too much into that.
|
| If the founder of this forum really believes sociology
| and anthropology aren't sciences, then respectfully, he
| is categorically and unequivocally wrong.
|
| This is not controversial.
| 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...
| emmelaich wrote:
| Yeh it's "only" 2/1000ths of a light year away.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Thanks, Jack. Looks like you gave birth to your magical child
| after all.
| bullen wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| StrangeLoop talk: "Uptime 15,364 days - The Computers of
| Voyager" by Aaron Cummings
| kristianp wrote:
| 45 years in space. About time for another set of probes to go
| beyond where they went and explore the border of the solar wind
| with more modern instruments.
| qayxc wrote:
| The New Horizons probe is still out there.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Space navigation is amazing. If I throw a rock into the lake I
| can barely see where it is until it hits the water. When we fling
| these craft into the void how do we know where they are and where
| they are going?
|
| I can think of three ways:
|
| (1) get the direction right in the first place and just assume
| the craft is where we calculate it should be;
|
| (2) watch it from afar somehow; or
|
| (3) have it tell us where it is.
|
| These seem like three quite different options and I would love to
| know how it's actually done.
| StellarScience wrote:
| Votager 1 hasn't changed its trajectory much since 1980, so
| just modeling its trajectory from there would be fairly
| accurate.
|
| However, they also calculate range precisely by sending it
| pings and timing its response. They calculate velocity
| precisely by looking at the Doppler shift of that return signal
| (https://geekswipe.net/technology/aerospace/how-nasa-
| calculat...). Measuring those over time provide a fairly
| precise location.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Thanks for engaging! Do the pings return a location, or are
| these range and velocity (and orientation from onboard
| sensors?) values used for dead reckoning, with Earth as the
| starting point?
|
| When external forces impart a force on the craft (eg exciting
| new moons!) how is that taken into account?
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| I've read about determining the "state vector" on the
| Apollo missions, and I would imagine it's similar for
| voyager. The ping delay and Doppler shift should be enough
| to determine 3D position and velocity with respect to some
| coordinate sysem. I know JPL ( and/or perhaps other
| agencies like ESA) have a computer model of the solar
| system where you can run a spacecraft's trajectory forward
| through time. It can also account for gravitational
| anomalies if the distance to a planet/moon is close enough
| where it matters. Assuming they have gravitational
| anomalies modeled for that body. I'm pretty sure at least
| Jupiter has a decent anomaly map. In voyagers case, using
| the sun as a point mass, combined with its state vector at
| any known time, any undergrad student who knows the vis
| viva equation can determine voyager's position at any time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I remember when Voyager was swinging past Jupiter for the first
| time. Caltech set up monitors all over campus, where we got to
| see the pictures as they arrived. We'd check the monitors before
| class, after class, etc. A popular joke was if one of the moon
| pictures showed a giant Death-Star-like hatch on it, how fast
| we'd be putting together a manned mission to investigate.
|
| It was fun watching the scientists boiling over with excitement
| when all their theories were trashed by each new picture, and
| they had to reinvent them from scratch.
| 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.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| That's why the really useful dials go to 11.
| 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)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Carl Sagan is mentioned in the article. He was quite a treasure.
| He came by our dorm once for conversation and dinner. The
| conversation was about whether life could be based on silicon
| rather than oxygen. I.e. living rocks! Very fun.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Did you go to Cornell?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Caltech
| mongol wrote:
| Was it not whether it would be based on silicon rather than
| carbon? I think that is usually where the similarity lies.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Oh, you're right, it was carbon.
| 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.
| hoten wrote:
| I recently[1] learned that you can telnet to a NASA machine to
| query various information about astronomical bodies, including
| man-made satellites.
|
| > telnet horizons.jpl.nasa.gov 6775
|
| The interface is pretty difficult to use, but there is a python
| wrapper for it. I forced myself to stumble through the telnet
| interface.
|
| > Voyager
|
| (no semicolon-othewise it'd look up in the small-bodies table)
|
| That tells you Voyager 1 is ID 31, and Voyager 2 is ID 32.
|
| > 31
|
| > E
|
| > <Enter> x2 (take defaults)
|
| > 2022-06-18
|
| > 2022-06-19
|
| > 1h
|
| > <Enter>
|
| > A
|
| Spits out this data:
|
| https://gist.github.com/connorjclark/de205ce62a7f1d4fda6d8fa...
|
| I'm not knowledgable enough to know how to utilize this data in
| an interesting way, but I assume this "Ephemeris" data can be
| utilized to determine where to point your telescope for any given
| object.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/cjamcl/status/1536609292572184576
| mct wrote:
| Very interesting telnet site, thank you for sharing!
|
| FYI, though, I think this may be looking at the wrong object
| ID. It selected "31", which appears to be the entry for one of
| the Lagrange points. Voyager 1 and 2 appear to have negative ID
| numbers, "-31" and "-32".
| basementcat wrote:
| You can also point your browser to it.
| [deleted]
| woliveirajr wrote:
| Point telescope x point browser: this one was funny :-)
| _petronius wrote:
| Horizons is also available as a web interface (as another
| commenter mentioned), and if the orbital elements output (which
| is what you have there and is basically this data:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements) is a bit
| opaque, you can also request it in Cartesian coordinates
| ("Vector table" under "Ephemeris type" in the web ui).
| Apparently it also has an email interface, which is neat.
|
| The web UI is here:
| https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/
|
| I once did a hobby project doing 2-body orbital simulations,
| and was able to use this data to set up a model of the solar
| system, and satellites orbiting the Earth. It's quite a fun
| dataset!
| 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...
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| If Voyager had the equivalent of a modern cell phone, worth of
| compute. What would have been the power requirements for the
| mission for the same duration?
| doingtheiroming wrote:
| Probably because it's so disappointed at how Scientific American
| has declined.
| 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?
| peter303 wrote:
| New hHorizons will eventually overtake them because it had the
| goal of reaching Pluto in the lifetime of its investigators.
| 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]
| mastazi wrote:
| The way I see this is: today, we say that Voyager 1 and 2 were
| the first.
|
| Imagine that Voyager 3 and 4 are launched next year.
|
| In 100 years from now, people will say that voyager 1,2,3 and 4
| were the first.
|
| It's not that voyager 1 and 2 will lose that distinction, but
| they might share it with others, in the same way that Voyager 2
| shares it with Voyager 1 to our eyes.
| 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."_
| exhilaration wrote:
| The Pale Blue Dot picture for those that want a reminder:
| https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-b...
| [deleted]
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| This frustrates me. How far are we from relativistic travel?
| grogenaut wrote:
| about 9995 basis points https://theconversation.com/have-we-
| made-an-object-that-coul...
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