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Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

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Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#41
post #9

I knew about the memory, but an 8-track tape ? That is a surprise. But when you think of it, what else could you use for this in 1977. What amazes me is the tape lasted almost 30 years. I knew tapes back then could last a while, 30 years being bombarded with cosmic rays ? inconceivable :)

An old 1970's arcade game, Quiz Show, used an 8-track tape to store the questions and answers. There's a YouTube video about it, and audio dumps of the 8-track on archive.org I think.

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#42
post #6

The thruster fix is the part that gets me. They sent a command that would either revive thrusters dead since 2004 or cause a catastrophic explosion, then waited 46 hours for the round trip with zero ability to intervene. That's a production deployment with no rollback, no monitoring dashboard, and a 23-hour latency on your logs. They nailed it.

I'd argue that once you have a very well defined requirement doc that mostly kicks humans out of the picture, as well as a patient boss who doesn't want anything ASAP or "Tomorrow morning first thing", engineering is not that hard, and is almost...enjoyment.

I’d argue that you must not be working on interesting problems if you think that “engineering is not that hard”

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#45
post #15

There is a terrific documentary, 'Its quieter in the twilight', about the aging and dwindling team that still runs both Voyager missions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6L9Du_IFmI

Such a wonderful meditation on career and meaning and fellowship and purpose. I loved it.

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#46
post #6

The thruster fix is the part that gets me. They sent a command that would either revive thrusters dead since 2004 or cause a catastrophic explosion, then waited 46 hours for the round trip with zero ability to intervene. That's a production deployment with no rollback, no monitoring dashboard, and a 23-hour latency on your logs. They nailed it.

I'd argue that once you have a very well defined requirement doc that mostly kicks humans out of the picture, as well as a patient boss who doesn't want anything ASAP or "Tomorrow morning first thing", engineering is not that hard, and is almost...enjoyment.

Would sending voyager have been a real definite deadline?

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any website that uses more memory than Voyager 1 should be considered bloated.

There's almost certainly less than 69KB of useful human-readable information on any given page.

I was actually a bit curious how much HN uses, since it's probably the lightest site that I frequent.

According to Brave's dev tools, looks like just shy of about 90kb on this comment page as of the time of this writing.

Obviously some of that is going to be CSS rules, a small amount of JS (I think for the upvotes and the comment-collapse), but I don't think anyone here called HN "bloated". Even that one page wouldn't fit on Voyager.

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#49
Voyager 1 & 2 is one of my favourite human science achievements, not even so much from technology standpoint, as it's relatively simple compared to what we have now (although that's one of the charms), but just the fact that it's so far away, it still more or less works long after the scheduled mission end time, we can communicate with it and despite all the modern technology progress, it would take decades to catch up. Absolutely amazing and inspiring!
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