291–300 of 330 posts
I wonder if a "modern" probe from 2024 could ever have a similar lifespan. With systems hundred times more complex and build by a NASA that is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago, i guess a modern day Voyager will not even make it to the edge, let alone continue to function.
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The Google Pixel 8 series receives 7 years of updates. And unlike Apple they are upfront about it, which is important. Maybe your iPhone gets 8 years of updates, maybe 6 noone knows.
I'm not sure why anyone would take Google seriously when it comes to sticking to their word, but Google is merely promising to deliver in the future what Apple has already been doing in the past, since that iPhone SE is already in it's eighth year of support. Remember Google promising to never link your advertising profile with the other data they had about you when they bought DoubleClick?
And advertising n years of updates is legally binding in a way. Apple can stop updating tomorrow if they feel like it. Google can't.
Yep, 45 years old hardware, still getting software updates. Hey Apple, JPL is close to you, can you get someone to bike over and see how they do it? Thanks!
Planned obsolescence [1] in the problem. Apple could certainly create modular devices designed to be used and piecemeal modified/updated indefinitely. But it's way more profitable to sell you a brand new phone every couple of years than it is to sell you a modular device that you could update as desired, especially if the parts/connections are standardized meaning you could foster a [normalized] third party market fo…
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_smartphone, the modularity of the FairPhone helps it live 5-7 years. Notably that's not different from the 6-8 years that an iPhone is supported for.
It's easy to blame it as planned obsolescence on the part of a single party instead of viewing it as a consequence of natural marketplace dynamics. You may of course adjust those dynamics by having the government impose a different set of constraints to have a different outcome. Politically that can be difficult though, especially in America, & it's not primarily because of the GDP but because people here generally distrust the government.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why anyone would take Google seriously when it comes to sticking to their word, but Google is merely promising to deliver in the future what Apple has already been doing in the past, since that iPhone SE is already in it's eighth year of support. Remember Google promising to never link your advertising profile with the other data they had about you when they bought DoubleClick?
Google certainly delivered on 8 (now even 10) years of updates for Chromebooks. And advertising n years of updates is legally binding in a way. Apple can stop updating tomorrow if they feel like it. Google can't.
I think the fact that Apple started delivering long term support over a decade ago is much more compelling.
If each ship was used like an expendable stage, and we were willing to use 100 ships, how long would it take to catch up to Voyager, stop, and return to earth?
How many Starships would it take to go and bring Voyager 1 back to earth? If each ship was used like an expendable stage, and we were willing to use 100 ships, how long would it take to catch up to Voyager, stop, and return to earth?
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It's probably a lot easier in a way, because they don't have to worry about external dependencies changing at all. Modern code is a real PITA that way. What's hard about their work is 1) it's really, really slow to communicate with, so you can't iterate quickly, 2) the tech is really old and unlike today's stuff, so it's very specialized domain knowledge.
Also whatever you do don't break the receiver pathway! Otherwise you will need to send a technician on-site.
Dark Forest Hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
Although that’s one of the many possible explanations of the Fermi paradox [0], I prefer to think that the real reason we haven’t discovered (or we haven’t been discovered) is the fact that we’re limited by the speed of light. The distances are so vast, almost unfathomable, that we need Faster Than Light means of traveling. Perhaps I’m being naive or romantic, but I prefer to think this is the real reason :-) [0] htt…
Also as particles spread out, there's less of a chance of interaction, which by extension makes it so there's less of a chance that a system of electrical impulse that fires in a synapse would exist over large distances. This system, of course, would be the catalyst for producing such thoughts as "I wonder if we're alone in the universe."
That's not to say you can't send dense information over larger distances with a shorter wavelength (re: radiation; gamma rays)... it just means the flying saucers with little green men landing on earth are probably out.
The Voyager project is an amazing feat for humanity. But I wonder, does NASA take into account the repercussions of sending a probe deep into space? I know space is big but I can only think of the dark forest hypothesis. What's the plan for further space exploration?
Voyager 1 is currently 2.4e10 km from Earth. Trisolaris - sorry, I mean Proxima Centauri - is 4e13 km away [2], so in the (almost) 47 years since its launch, Voyager 1 has covered a whopping 0.06% of the distance. And it's not even headed that way. Meanwhile, radio, TV and radar have been advertising the presence of a new technological civilization on Earth for more than a century. That means any entity worth worryin…
"Oh, looks like Earth just got radio waves, which means there's probably life there."
From there you just monitor the wave Hertz output by the planet, and when they start transmitting waves at higher Hz, you know it might be time to meet up.
"Oh they're sending photonic gamma rays as messages now instead of radio waves, I'm gonna go say Hi."
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I’ve imagined a scene playing out, in sci-fi or for real in the distant future, where astronauts test out a new propulsion system by flying out towards Voyager 1 and catch up to it with ease. As they approach, they see the ancient probe grow larger and larger in their window until…
If my math is correct, we would already need to build a spaceship that can travel at 1/10th the speed of light to reach Voyager 1 within one week. It will be quite an engineering challenge for the future.
$ qalc '24.4e6 km / 1 week / c to %'
(((24.4 * (10^6)) kilometers) / (1 week)) / SpeedOfLight = approx. 0.0134572816%
Edit: found a potentially easier (more intuitive to understand) query, giving the same result, as well as how to ask it nearly for the how manyth part of c this is. I'm still learning all the tricks of this tool :)
$ qalc '24.4e6 km / 1 week to c%'
[...] approx. 0.0134572816(%c)
$ qalc '24.4e6 km / 1 week to 1/c'
[...] approx. 7430.92125 c^-1