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NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

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Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#271

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

physicles wrote: post #82
fuzzythinker wrote: post #47

To put the 12B miles in an easier grasp, Pluto's average distance is 3.7B miles. So Voyager 2 is a hair under 3.3 Plutos away, and Voyager 1 at 15B miles is slightly over 4 Plutos away. Another point of reference is the heliosphere, at 100AU. 1AU (earth to Sun) is 93M miles, so the heliosphere is around 2.5 Plutos away.

On some other YouTube channel, I recently saw a diagram where the width was 0.01 light-year. That’s “only” about 59 billion miles; surely we can’t be too far from the moment we can conceive of Voyager 1’s distance in light-years. Nope. At its current speed, we’ve got another 129 years. That’s an underestimate because the spacecraft will continue to decelerate a bit as it pulls farther away from the sun. That’s about…

the one they updated is apparently 18.40 light hours away. So it will be quite some time before we're talking about light years.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#272

Post by mvdwoord »

umeshunni wrote: post #269
macintux wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought universal healthcare (& UBI) would enable more people to take entrepreneurial risks, but I hadn't considered that passion jobs like NASA could also be beneficiaries.

If that were true, we would be seeing far more entrepreneurship from countries with Universal healthcare (most of EU) or UBI (most gulf countries).

EU taxation and regulation plays into this more I guess, outweighing the benefits of healthcare and other social benefits?

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#273

Post by tg16 »

grishka wrote: post #144
AllegedAlec wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent of about 4 billion dollars in modern day money for both of them. That, plus waiting for some very opportune launch times so that we can gravity boost off of everything.

But the more copies you make of something, the cheaper they become. The R&D cost is the same and is only paid once whether you're building 2 space probes or 2000.

The probe itself is a relatively insignificant cost. The launch costs and timing windows are the limiting factor.

The tyranny of the rocket equation is the fact that to carry more fuel to orbit, you need more fuel to get it into orbit, which itself needs more fuel. That's why gravity assists are so essential for escaping the solar system on a budget.

The planetary alignment that enabled the Voyager launch windows only occurs once every 175 years.

We should definitely be sending out more probes, but we can't just do it whenever we want, at least not without a lot more expense.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#274

Post by tg16 »

huytersd wrote: post #5

I don’t understand why we are not sending these off in every direction constantly. The price can’t possibly be that prohibitive considering what we can accomplish with 40 year old technology.

The cost is the fuel. It takes an insane amount of energy to leave Sol. The voyager probes were able to save 30km/s worth of Delta-V by performing a ton of gravity assists during the "Grand Tour" launch window planetary alignment that occurs once every 175 years.

For context, getting something to low earth orbit is about 9.4km/s of Delta-V. From LEO to mars is another 4.3 km/s of Delta-V. Getting from LEO to any solar escape trajectory adds is about 18km/s.

As you can see, 30km/s of fuel savings is extremely significant, and that required the 175 year Grand Tour alignment.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#275

Post by fuzzythinker »

godshatter wrote: post #256
fuzzythinker wrote: post #47

To put the 12B miles in an easier grasp, Pluto's average distance is 3.7B miles. So Voyager 2 is a hair under 3.3 Plutos away, and Voyager 1 at 15B miles is slightly over 4 Plutos away. Another point of reference is the heliosphere, at 100AU. 1AU (earth to Sun) is 93M miles, so the heliosphere is around 2.5 Plutos away.

Voyager 2 is over 50,000 average Earth/Moon distances away, Voyager 1 is coming up on 63,000. I don't know if that makes it any easier to grasp, but I have a hard enough time relating to Pluto's distance, let alone the Voyagers.

50k Earth-moon distance may be easier to grasp for some. For me, I'm not sure how to understand the earth/moon distance enough to make 50k earth-moon a more meaningful measurement. Pluto is in the Kuiper belt, which for many, signifies the physical bodied edge of our solar system. So for me, scaling that to 2.5 to know where the heliosphere is and 3.3 & 4 to where the Voyagers are is more understandable.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#276

Post by ninju »

fuzzythinker wrote: post #47

To put the 12B miles in an easier grasp, Pluto's average distance is 3.7B miles. So Voyager 2 is a hair under 3.3 Plutos away, and Voyager 1 at 15B miles is slightly over 4 Plutos away. Another point of reference is the heliosphere, at 100AU. 1AU (earth to Sun) is 93M miles, so the heliosphere is around 2.5 Plutos away.

How many bananas is that? (/s)

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#277

Post by tivert »

xattt wrote: post #240
psunavy03 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the program literally depended on the planets aligning a certain way that they won't align again until about 2150. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#History

Start getting the probes designed now.

> Start getting the probes designed now.

That makes absolutely no sense. Even someone who thinks technological progress will slow greatly in the future would acknowledge that something designed today will likely be obsolete and unbuildable in 127 years. I mean, probably *every* *single* electronic component in a design made today will almost certainly have been EOL for over a century by the time 2150 rolls around.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#278

Post by ta1243 »

samtho wrote: post #65
HappyDaoDude wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those gravitational boosts are vital. The closest in speed so far would be 'New Horizons'. But even then NH is going at 14.5KM/sec compared with Voyagers 18KM/sec. There are no probes currently that would catch up to Voyager.

18km/s is almost understated in terms of speed, so I looked it up to more familiar measures of speed: 65,000kph or 40,000mph. The only thing I really learned here was how even in the thousands of miles or km per hour, it’s just inconceivable how fast that is. Km per second was a better measure after all.

Round the world in 40 minutes

Travelling from New York to LA quicker than playing the song "From New York To LA"

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#279

Post by nickik »

simpaticoder wrote: post #198
qrybam wrote: post #31

This is incredible. Not just because of the engineering that went into such a long lived machine, but also because of the ingenuity of the teams that have looked after this mission and those currently working on it. Half a century of operation. Bits of data, like gold dust, peppering our radio telescopes with telemetry from the edges of our protective solar shell, and beyond. Not only is the technical achievement som…

>Half a century of operation. The stability of society (specifically American, specifically California/Caltech/JPL/Pasadena) must also be marveled at. That's 2 or 3 generations of engineers and scientists that were trained well enough to actually get things done. This is a marvel of teaching, technical communication, and societal infrastructure. Notably, NASA/JPL has maintained its prestige and funding for that entir…

Education on an ongoing project is far easier then rebuilding fresh, even with better science and engineering.

We often see this in infrastructure, like train electrification, tunnel boring and so on. Trams is a good one, so many cities got ride of their tram system, 50 years later they want to build it again and many of them issues.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#280

Post by tivert »

grishka wrote: post #144
AllegedAlec wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent of about 4 billion dollars in modern day money for both of them. That, plus waiting for some very opportune launch times so that we can gravity boost off of everything.

But the more copies you make of something, the cheaper they become. The R&D cost is the same and is only paid once whether you're building 2 space probes or 2000.

> But the more copies you make of something, the cheaper they become. The R&D cost is the same and is only paid once whether you're building 2 space probes or 2000.

The problem with that idea is, except for a few geeks, no one wants to spend that kind of money on space probes.

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