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NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

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Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#11

Post by Dylan16807 »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8
jmclnx wrote: post #2

Sad to see EOL coming up, but too bad NASA's budget has been cut so back over the years. We just had a smaller planetary alignment a few months ago. Would have been nice if NASA had the budget to send out a more robust craft a few years ago. But I guess science no longer means anything to the US. Especially now. Maybe China will take up the mantle, I heard they are about to send out a rather long term interesting cra…

A visual alignment like the one you mention wouldn’t have been useful for spacecraft to get to the planets more easily. An alignment in the scale of the one that enabled the Voyager flybys of the outer planets won’t happen until sometime in the 23rd century.

> An alignment in the scale of the one that enabled the Voyager flybys of the outer planets won’t happen until sometime in the 23rd century.

Only if you're particularly concerned with using a single probe to visit all of them. Jupiter provides the main boost and launch windows from jupiter to anywhere come by every decade.

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#12

Post by andyjohnson0 »

jahlove wrote: post #4

Obligatory trailer for the "It's Quieter in the Twilight" documentary, about the team of engineers riding out the end of the Voyager program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJT8AW0wYw

Seconded. I found it both technically interesting and also moving.

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#13

Post by rayiner »

saagarjha wrote: post #10
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA’s budget is larger today adjusted for inflation than during the Voyager program. https://images.app.goo.gl/qai42hiZ8RMtfViw6

People usually measure this as percentage of GDP, not absolute dollars.

No they don’t. Why would a budget scale with GDP?

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#14

Post by loloquwowndueo »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #11
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A visual alignment like the one you mention wouldn’t have been useful for spacecraft to get to the planets more easily. An alignment in the scale of the one that enabled the Voyager flybys of the outer planets won’t happen until sometime in the 23rd century.

> An alignment in the scale of the one that enabled the Voyager flybys of the outer planets won’t happen until sometime in the 23rd century. Only if you're particularly concerned with using a single probe to visit all of them. Jupiter provides the main boost and launch windows from jupiter to anywhere come by every decade.

Parent did mention a single craft. Of course NASA can’t even afford that these days so it’s all moot anyway.

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#15

Post by andyjohnson0 »

gzer0 wrote: post #6

Every time this topic comes up on HN, I always like to remind readers about the following: One of my favorite facts ever is that Voyager 1 contains something called the Voyager Golden Record [1]. It has the following quote written: This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may liv…

The Golden Records [1] seem like astonishing, singular undertakings to me. Like the Svalbard seed bank, or the LHC, or the Prado. Their existence inspires me because they remind me of what we're capable of.

The book Murmours of Earth by Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, and Ann Druyan is an interesting commentary on the ideas and choices behind the production of the Golden Records. Published in 1978, but there are copies available from the usual aources.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#16

Post by qingcharles »

gzer0 wrote: post #6

Every time this topic comes up on HN, I always like to remind readers about the following: One of my favorite facts ever is that Voyager 1 contains something called the Voyager Golden Record [1]. It has the following quote written: This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may liv…

I always imagine it being the only thing left of humanity one day to show we even existed.

Like, some aliens will play it and feel an experience like the TNG episode "The Inner Light."

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#17

Post by saagarjha »

rayiner wrote: post #13
saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People usually measure this as percentage of GDP, not absolute dollars.

No they don’t. Why would a budget scale with GDP?

A couple of reasons. One is that NASA is an arm of the United State's advanced research, and if you want to get compounding returns there the goal is that you allocate a proportion of your spending there rather than a fixed value, because every year some of that research will drive gains to your GDP. Another is that the services that NASA provides gradually expands as it provides more things to society: I expect that alongside space exploration there is an increasing budget allocated to dealing with civilian spaceflight. So if you keep the budget constant then you are necessarily prioritizing some things over others, which means a net decrease to specific programs.

Of course, none of this means it should be pegged at a specific fraction of the GDP, it's just a helpful metric to compare against when we look at overall spending. I expect its budget to fluctuate naturally as our needs from it change, and there are certainly programs that have fixed budgets (or even need less money as time goes on) that we should still be looking at. But in general the spending for things like NASA should gradually increase because of its goals.

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#18

Post by kelnos »

saagarjha wrote: post #10
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA’s budget is larger today adjusted for inflation than during the Voyager program. https://images.app.goo.gl/qai42hiZ8RMtfViw6

People usually measure this as percentage of GDP, not absolute dollars.

Why would I measure it that way? What matters is the capacity of NASA's ability to do things, based on its funding.

You can argue that an outfit like NASA should get more or less funding, but it should be based on what you want them to be able to do, not some arbitrary measure like a percentage of GDP.

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#19

Post by rayiner »

saagarjha wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don’t. Why would a budget scale with GDP?

A couple of reasons. One is that NASA is an arm of the United State's advanced research, and if you want to get compounding returns there the goal is that you allocate a proportion of your spending there rather than a fixed value, because every year some of that research will drive gains to your GDP. Another is that the services that NASA provides gradually expands as it provides more things to society: I expect that…

I agree with that. But that’s different than saying “NASA's budget has been cut so back over the years.” The military budget has been shrinking as a share of GDP since the 1980s as well. It would be odd to say the military budget had been cut back though.

Re: NASA's Project Scientist Faces Painful Choices as Voyager Mission Nears Its End

#20

Post by Bud »

davidwritesbugs wrote: post #3

It's stunning to think how well these missions have done and what we've learnt. I'd love to see new missions aimed at much greater longevity with more modern instruments. I wonder how long one could make the mission? 100 years? 200? Would new generators reduce the power loss to less than 4W/year, or would it just need more/much bigger ones?

The power loss is due to the fact that the power source is plutonium. Which decays over time. So, your lump of plutonium contains less and less plutonium over time, and thus generates less power. A more modern generator doesn't really change this basic fact; the power source would still likely be plutonium, and would have the same issue. But yes, you could send up a larger lump of plutonium so that your power budget started out larger and would remain adequate for a longer time.
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