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sorry, i just have a silly question: what would it take to send new probes out there? voyager 3 and 4 for example to follow the same path (more or less, sans planet alignment) V1 and V2 followed, but with better hardware of course.
On the technical side of things, there are also other companies doing live patching, like the Ericsson telephone exchanges. Their code can be altered “live” while operating, in order to fix or enhance the software and with zero downtime ;-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They turn stuff off. It's not a secret. The vast majority of the sensors are off. They're simply not needed in interstellar space.
Good lord could you imagine the meltdown HN would have if Apple had taken this option to solve the old-batteries-support-lower-peak-current physics problem? “Your device battery no longer supports the camera. Or the backlight on the top third of the screen. But it runs at full speed otherwise!”
There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.