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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

#231

Post by GuB-42 »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #160
jgalt212 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voyager, Apollo, and Hubble. Everything else NASA has done is a distant 4th place. And it's not like 4th place is trash, it's just that the big 3 are just so impressive.

I don't think Apollo was very interesting or useful beyond cold war propaganda. Yes, we're capable of amazing things—but putting a man on the moon pales in comparison to basic healthcare funding. Why must we insist on wasting billions on histrionic braggadocio when we can't perform the basics of a modern society? https://youtu.be/otwkXZ0SmTs?si=DqEyklYpEbUO69HL

I hate this argument. Every time there is some big and expensive technical achievement, someone is going to say that the poor are dying somewhere in the world. As if not going to the moon would have saved them.

I would argue that a healthy population is what allows great things like Apollo to happen. For such a program to succeed, we need lots of highly skilled people. Scientists, engineers, astronauts, tradesmen, managers, etc... Everyone needs to be at the top of their game. Such talent doesn't develop when you are struggling for your life, you need good conditions like health, confort and stability to be able to focus on your craft.

If we use life expectancy as a proxy, we could say that the US had a healthier population during the cold war than the USSR, and they are the ones who succeeded on the most ambitious project in the space race, despite the USSR having a head start. To me, it is not a coincidence.

Also, the cold war era was not just about space, it is also a time of major advance when it comes to medicine, life expectancy has seen a dramatic improvement, so we can put men on the moon and keep a population heathy.

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

#232

Post by GuB-42 »

aorloff wrote: post #161
throwaway27448 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Apollo was very interesting or useful beyond cold war propaganda. Yes, we're capable of amazing things—but putting a man on the moon pales in comparison to basic healthcare funding. Why must we insist on wasting billions on histrionic braggadocio when we can't perform the basics of a modern society? https://youtu.be/otwkXZ0SmTs?si=DqEyklYpEbUO69HL

Which country do you think got basic healthcare funding right ?

Since we are talking about the cold war: USSR.

They had pretty good results post WW2. The problem is that they ended up lagging behind the western bloc because of a lack of resources and innovation. Basic healthcare doesn't mean much if you don't have good treatment in the first place. It is a common problem with communist countries, they usually have good access to healthcare, but they don't have the resources to give proper treatment.

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

#233

Post by bradley13 »

Amazing engineering. Today's software development: Write a program running on a framework (of which you need 1%, but get it all), that framework depends on dozens of libraries (but again, you only needed 1% of them), which in turn depends on dozens more.

Result: Your starter program takes 1GB of memory and needs 6 cores to display "Hello, World!"

We waste resources, because Moore's Law gave us resources to waste.

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

#234

Post by halapro »

tombert wrote: post #47
amiga-workbench wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Downloaded data != memory usage

You're comparing apples to apple trees

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

#237

Post by mikkupikku »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #160
jgalt212 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voyager, Apollo, and Hubble. Everything else NASA has done is a distant 4th place. And it's not like 4th place is trash, it's just that the big 3 are just so impressive.

I don't think Apollo was very interesting or useful beyond cold war propaganda. Yes, we're capable of amazing things—but putting a man on the moon pales in comparison to basic healthcare funding. Why must we insist on wasting billions on histrionic braggadocio when we can't perform the basics of a modern society? https://youtu.be/otwkXZ0SmTs?si=DqEyklYpEbUO69HL

> ""useful"

Fuck all of it is useful besides satellites. Even the HST is only marginally useful; useful for fields of research which will almost certainly never have tangible benefits for life on Earth, built to satisfy our curiosity about phenomena too large and far from Earth to ever be put into use here on Earth.

Nonetheless, interesting? You're bonkers if a system like the Apollo program and all associated hardware isn't at least interesting.

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

#238

Post by mikkupikku »

trvz wrote: post #77
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #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…

They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent. I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.

There is zero empirical evidence that aliens actually exist. All the arguments for why they should exist despite this lack of evidence are borderline theology.

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

#239

Post by gus_massa »

mememememememo wrote: post #158
joe_mamba wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fingers crossed, if we manage not to blow each other up until then, we have 126 years to go till we can try again.

Ideally cattle not pets. We are continually shooting stuff out and in 126 years it'll be as nerveracking and watching a train departure, but still exciting knowing the train is going further.

Good idea, but it's hard to get funding for cattle, people pay more for pets perks.

From another comment Jupiter and Saturn align every 20 years, so we have 5 rehearsal windows before the big one. What fancy projects can we do in them to get funding? Is it too late for the first one? Can we ask Elon to pay for the first two?

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

#240

Post by seanc »

gpvos wrote: post #199
quotemstr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was ballsy! But, sadly, it was a temporary hack. Both Voyager have degrading, unfixable thrusters. The rubber diaphragms in the hydrazine fuel tanks are degrading, shedding silicon dioxide (i.e. sand) microparticles into the thruster fuel. These particles are gradually clogging the thruster nozzles and reducing their thrust. Eventually, thrust will decline to the point that they could fire the thrusters all day…

They're still functioning after ten times of the Voyager's projected lifetime, I can't call that an error.

Upvoted. Sooner or later the Grim Reaper comes for us all.
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