[HN Gopher] Ed Stone, Top Scientist-and Salesman-For the Voyager...
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Ed Stone, Top Scientist-and Salesman-For the Voyager Mission, Dies
at 88
Author : impish9208
Score : 90 points
Date : 2024-07-10 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| tocs3 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Stone
|
| It would be nice to see an occasional mission like Voyager. Every
| few years just send something out to take some pictures of
| something we have not seen close up yet. Let it keep going and
| looking around (and back).
| dylan604 wrote:
| looking around at what though? there's nothing else out there.
| when Sagan proposed to turn the cameras back to look at earth,
| ultimately resulting in the Pale Blue Dot and family portrait,
| there was push back that looking back at the Sun might ruin the
| sensor. the response was essentially, so what if it does.
| there's nothing else it will ever be close enough to that would
| require using the camera.
|
| New Horizons was the closest attempt at what you are suggesting
| in that they were able to aim for another body after the Pluto
| fly-by, but that was just luck in the alignments.
|
| The only thing I can think that might be useful would be having
| observatories with opposite trajectories for ever increasing
| parallax info, but I don't know what that would actually be
| useful for. The fact that nobody is doing it means people much
| smarter than me don't think it'd be useful either.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > New Horizons was the closest attempt at what you are
| suggesting in that they were able to aim for another body
| after the Pluto fly-by, but that was just luck in the
| alignments.
|
| An orbital mission to Pluto would be amazing. Maybe we can
| get its planetary status back. It is interesting and
| important to note that New Horizon's computers crashed for a
| bit as the probe was nearing Pluto. During the time the
| computers were down Horizon was scheduled to be scanning for
| as yet undiscovered moons of Pluto. If it had found a bunch
| more, perhaps Pluto would have already regained its rightful
| planetary status.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Compare how long New Horizons took to get to Pluto in a
| fly-by against how long it would take to get there at a
| slow enough speed to actually park in orbit. I don't know
| what those numbers are for the comparison, but my gut says
| it'd be a really long time. Maybe they could use some
| gravity assists to speed up the journey out to
| Saturn/Neptune, and then use aerobraking to slow down again
| for the rest of the journey??? I find the trajectories that
| they use for these kinds of missions very interesting. Even
| the Parker solar probe has a seemingly very complicated
| trajectory.
| tivert wrote:
| > Maybe they could use some gravity assists to speed up
| the journey out to Saturn/Neptune, and then use
| aerobraking to slow down again for the rest of the
| journey???
|
| Or an gravity assist at Neptune to slow down? Given their
| orbits cross it maybe it would be practical and
| relatively fast _someday_ , but maybe not for a long
| time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist
|
| https://www.theplanetstoday.com/the_planets.html
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Outer solar system distances are _large_. Pluto
| occasionally orbits within Neptune 's orbit, but can be
| up to about 1.5 times more distant (49 AU vs. 30 AU at
| aphelion). Which means you'd be braking with 40% of the
| voyage to complete, worst case.
|
| Your larger problem is that there aren't very many outer-
| solar-system planets, and their orbits don't align in
| ways useful to gravitational slingshots (for acceleration
| or deceleration) or aerobraking very often, as in on the
| order of many decades or centuries. The Voyager "Grand
| Tour" missions (launched in 1977, primary encounters from
| 1979 through 1989, both missions ongoing presently in the
| Heliopause) relied on one such rare alignment. Those
| occur at roughly 175 year intervals:
|
| "When is the next Outer Planet lineup (Voyager)"
|
| <https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5075/when-is-
| the-n...>
|
| Getting to Pluto is _hard_. Stopping at or orbiting it is
| _harder_. That said, there are at least three proposals
| for such a mission. One is a fusion-enabled pluto orbiter
| and lander (the propulsion system envisioned is still
| theoretical). Another a "hop, skip, and jump" mission
| utilising Pluto's own highly tenuous atmosphere for
| aerobraking. A third is called "Persephone" of which I
| have no further details on propulsion, though Wikipedia
| links several very vague descriptive articles.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Pluto#Futur
| e_mi...>
| tocs3 wrote:
| Another comet,asteroids, another mission to Pluto, Neptune,
| Uranus, and moons. More data on heliosphere. A modest space
| telescope measuring parallax. I am not proposing flagship
| missions just something so we can see something new a little
| more often.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "JWST isn't providing enough new for you?" he asks
| sarcastically.
|
| I think the budgets required would make any of the things
| you describe as flagship missions. Taking years after
| launch before the mission can start is a hard sell. The
| couple of months for JWST to become operational seemed like
| it was killing some anxious/excited people in that wait.
| Nevermind the decades long wait from delays in getting it
| launched too. It could literally something where the
| designers/builders _never_ see the results. So I guess we
| should have started 10 years ago?
| tocs3 wrote:
| Power way out there is hard and I do not know the best
| ways to deal with it but a standard sort of "explorer"
| class spacecraft the gets produced and sent out every few
| years. avoiding he development costs and some of the
| risk. Maybe one or two in Earth orbit to chase down
| interstellar interlopers. I suspect (but do not know,
| maybe someone else does) some of those that worked on
| JWST did not get a chance to see it launch (but an
| amazing project non the less).
|
| Also, JWST is mostly looking at things kind far away and
| sort of a long time ago (with some closer that is
| incredible. It cannot really compare to the images from
| Voyager(s) of the outer planets.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| For both technical and scientific reasons (e.g.,
| fundamental limitations of optical resolving power),
| there are things which cannot be seen via JWST or _any
| other near-Earth telescope_ which a probe might be able
| to observe.
|
| There are also observations which extend beyond the
| electromagnetic spectrum itself, or sample physical
| conditions in the neighbourhood of outer-solar-system
| planets.
|
| (These are not knocks on JWST which is absolutely
| phenomenal for what it does. These are simply
| observations on the limits of JWST or any comparable
| near-Earth telescope or remote-sensing resources.)
| whycome wrote:
| Amazon Prime (Canada) has "It's Quieter in the Twilight", a 2022
| doc about the Voyager team, and they have an interview with Ed.
| It features some of the interesting stories of the people
| involved throughout the project -- and it also deals with the
| challenge of moving the project headquarters, a failing system,
| and the pandemic.
|
| https://www.itsquieterfilm.com/
| anotherhue wrote:
| It's well worth your time
| WanderPanda wrote:
| I enjoyed the docu recently and I'm still in awe how
| ,,software-defined" the voyager system was/is for it's time
| dylan604 wrote:
| Makes me wonder if Ed was aware that Voyager was fixed and
| once again operational before he passed. One of those
| situations where he held out long enough to see that, and
| then was able to let go knowing his project would long out
| live him.
| bobowzki wrote:
| I'm still looking for a place to watch that documentary from
| Sweden. It doesn't seem to be available on any platform.
| fragmede wrote:
| Just checked, and it's available on the 2003 platform I most
| associate with Sweden, as a foreigner.
| sgt wrote:
| Such a legend. Warrants a black bar, IMHO.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Email suggestions such as this to mods at hn@ycombinator.com
| joecool1029 wrote:
| https://archive.is/vnKYp
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| NASA JPL page from last month:
|
| https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ed-stone-former-director-of-jp...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40651715
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