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Earlier quoted context omitted.
not to be that guy but I have faith a powerful AI could understand all the ins and outs of the voyager code no matter what language
Not to be that other guy, but AI might take a few tries, and you really might not get a 2nd try with these probes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
not to be that guy but I have faith a powerful AI could understand all the ins and outs of the voyager code no matter what language
Based on what documentation?
I ran a few research tasks at JPL, small dollar studies. We'd often recruit part time work from engineers around the lab through informal networks, (instead of the official channels that segment by "specialization"). One year, one of the developers on my task was the apparently last person who could encode the command sequences for Voyager 2 (hoping memory serves me correctly - event though it was only 8 years ago).…
To be fair, nearly all of the science payloads on Voyager 1 & 2 have been shut down. The probes are doing very little. The doesn't take away from the very unique science they are doing but its a far cry from what the program offices were doing in 30-40 years ago. I'd expect anyone working on a Voyager probe in 2026 to need something else to do most of the day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on what documentation?
Setting aside AI, it’s a little outrageous they had her come in to communicate with it rather than write down how to communicate with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on what documentation?
Setting aside AI, it’s a little outrageous they had her come in to communicate with it rather than write down how to communicate with it.
Experts aren't made from reading a data sheet or process doc. Competence in performing a critical task comes from actually doing the task in practice and for real.
I wish more robotic missions like that were sent. Not necessarily the most expensive ones, just one that can use only gravity assists and plutonium power generators. They could be relatively small ones. Maybe even trying to ride some of the small rocks/asteroids, now that we have a better catalogues of such.
If you want to land on an asteroid/rock, either you match speed with it, in which case you already had enough speed to go wherever it's going, or you intercept it at a different speed, in which case you get smashed to dust if your speed was any more than a few m/s different.
Maybe you didn't mean this, but it's a common enough misconception. People even on HN were suggesting a spacecraft could hitch a ride on ʻOumuamua to get a quick way to a different solar system.
I ran a few research tasks at JPL, small dollar studies. We'd often recruit part time work from engineers around the lab through informal networks, (instead of the official channels that segment by "specialization"). One year, one of the developers on my task was the apparently last person who could encode the command sequences for Voyager 2 (hoping memory serves me correctly - event though it was only 8 years ago).…
Some would call that an organizational failure. I suppose it depends on the budgets.