If someone is wondering about this, it has taken 46 years for voyager 1 to travel 22 light hours. fascinating.
I wonder in how many years from now, we can do the 46 years in 22 months? 22 days? 22 hours?
Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
241–250 of 649 posts
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I need an eink display on my office wall showing the current location/status. I always get a tremendous sense of wonder and wellbeing thinking about these probes/achievements, maybe it'd help keep me centered before the daily onslaught.
the current status is that we do not know where it has fared to, according to the title
Unless aliens grabbed it or something hit it, I’m pretty sure we know precisely where it is. What we don’t know is what it’s experiencing there.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#243Criminy. Why aren't we launching more of these probes? With Musk's cheap rockets, we could launch a fleet of them.
I think launching stuff with nuclear RTGs would probably be met with red tape :(. Even if they are basically impossible to destroy even with a failed launch. I'm sure it will happen again but sadly not as fast or as often as I wish we would.
Uhhh lots of stuff is launched with RTGs still. Curiosity is powered by an RTG.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I remember correctly Voyager benefitted from a particular alignment of the planets to get multiple slingshot boosts from gravity wells. Part of the appeal of the mission was that it will be a very long time before we could possibly do this again because the planets won't line up correctly and we have no technology to speed the probes up to the velocities that the voyager probes achieved.
> Voyager benefitted from a particular alignment of the planets to get multiple slingshot boosts from gravity wells. What exactly does that get us? It gets further into space faster? It travels faster? Cheaper to launch? I mean if it just means it leaves the solar system 20 years faster or something then it seems like cheaper launches far outweigh those favorable conditions.
You need a lot of speed to go into space really fast.
When you fly your spacecraft really close to a planet and let it get influenced by its gravity, you let the planet transfer some of its massive amounts of kinetic energy into your spacecraft, which can add to its kinetic energy (and also help the spacecraft change direction)
You're essentially stealing some kinetic energy from planets to sling your spacecraft faster.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gravity. The suns gravity field is in theory infinite but there is a pretty precise boundary where it stops to have an immediate effect on the things around it and orbits around the sun are no longer possible.
> The suns gravity field is in theory infinite but there is a pretty precise boundary where it stops to have an immediate effect on the things around it and orbits around the sun are no longer a thing. This is not correct. The particles are not in orbit about the Sun, they're coming from the Sun--they're the solar wind. The heliopause is where the solar wind particles are stopped by the pressure of the surrounding in…
Correct:
The heliopause is the theoretical boundary where the Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar medium; where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the stellar winds of the surrounding stars. This is the boundary where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance. The crossing of the heliopause should be signaled by a sharp drop in the temperature of solar wind-charged particles,[30] a change in the direction of the magnetic field, and an increase in the number of galactic cosmic rays.[34]
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, the future of space travel and exploration is very bright.
I'm not so sure about that. Humanity is turning ever more inward and education is getting worse and worse with the peak somewhere in the 1950's. If we have a bright future in space travel none of the countries with launch capability today look like they will be the ones driving it.
There are many, many unmanned missions happening now making amazing discoveries. Cassini was nothing short of mind blowing.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to your claims, and I wish more people were intellectually curious, but there are very likely more people in absolute numbers performing scientific research now than ever.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#247Criminy. Why aren't we launching more of these probes? With Musk's cheap rockets, we could launch a fleet of them.
While I fully support more craft being sent out of the solar system, we are making some mind blowing discoveries in the solar system itself. I recommend watching a good video (or article with images) about what we discovered with Cassini.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#248Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Voyager benefitted from a particular alignment of the planets to get multiple slingshot boosts from gravity wells. What exactly does that get us? It gets further into space faster? It travels faster? Cheaper to launch? I mean if it just means it leaves the solar system 20 years faster or something then it seems like cheaper launches far outweigh those favorable conditions.
Looks like once you escape earths orbit at 11km/s, you still need another 30km/s delta-v to then escape the solar system
I thought it was 12 km/s. 30km/s is what’s required to fall into the sun, which is considerably more than escaping the solar system.
Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I remember correctly Voyager benefitted from a particular alignment of the planets to get multiple slingshot boosts from gravity wells. Part of the appeal of the mission was that it will be a very long time before we could possibly do this again because the planets won't line up correctly and we have no technology to speed the probes up to the velocities that the voyager probes achieved.
> Voyager benefitted from a particular alignment of the planets to get multiple slingshot boosts from gravity wells. What exactly does that get us? It gets further into space faster? It travels faster? Cheaper to launch? I mean if it just means it leaves the solar system 20 years faster or something then it seems like cheaper launches far outweigh those favorable conditions.
The delta-v for a mission like this is pretty incredible. Voyager 1 is still traveling at about 17km/s away from the sun. That's not much less than when it left Earth despite traveling so far away from the Sun... only because of the special gravity assists it did on the way out. There are some things that even money can't solve :)
Compared to a planet, a spacecraft is almost negligible in both weight and capability to accelerate in space. Ion engines are pretty cool though; Maybe we can do it today but it will take a lot longer to get there. Of course, if it takes too long, we may not have a viable spacecraft by the time it gets there. Furthermore, even if do have a viable spacecraft, we might not have the knowhow to work with the technology that we sent in the first place.