Live data from Hacker News

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

techfixated.com

261–270 of 276 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " "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 hard…

who wants to spend billions on peace and food for everyone if you can have pretty pictures of a barren wasteland millions of miles away. simple logic. just be happy there's no cats in space to take pictures of otherwise all would be lost.

Big multi-disciplinary problems typically yield vast amounts of ancillary technology and solutions that may last generations... small sample fo things that either were invented for the Apollo program or became commercially viable:

Heat-resistant fabrics for fire fighting

Smoke detectors

portable oxygen

memory foam

kapton insulating foil

cordless tools

solar panels

modern water purification

clear optics grade plastics

freeze dried food

the dustbuster

CMOS digital image sensors

Vacuum packaging

Shock-absorbing shoe soles

modern artificial limbs

insulin pump

scratch resistant lenses

LASIK

wireless headsets

grooved pavement

air purifiers

LEDs

de-icing systems for aircraft

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

#262

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…

Don't forget that the mission planners figured out the "Grand Tour", calculating orbits and trajectories to slingshot around the Solar System. All with 1960s technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program

I have a ~20 in x 30 in poster of the Grand Tour from this collection[0]. I considered printing the whole series, but not enough wall space.

[0] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it around the house to Airplay music to various devices. A number of things don't work, or work in unexpected ways, mostly because Apple doesn't allow me to log in to iCloud with such an old phone. I can't control lights with the Home app. But Airplay works fine. The phone doesn't know what a HomePod is, but it shows up with a regular generic speaker icon, like the AirMac I have hooked up to my stereo. Sometime…

Why can't you log into iCloud? unless somethings changed in the past year or something broke between ios 6 and 10, it should work. I'm still signed into my iPad 2 running iOS 6 (granted, iirc the root cert expired a bit ago so you need to update that). the 2fa is also a bit weird, you have to input the code after your password (eg: if your password is password123 and the code is 789 you'd submit password123789)

Why can't you log into iCloud?

Ask Apple.

I just tried it again.

"Can't Use Your Apple ID on This Device

Your Apple ID can only be used on devices running iOS 15.0 or later, or macOS 12.0 or later. This iPhone can't be updated to the latest software."

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

#264

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.

You might enjoy "A Canticle for Leibowitz" on this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz | https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2626638W/A_Canticle_for_Leib...

I read the book but don't recall any correlation to the topic of solar system alignment. Spoiler: Era 3 in the novel does speak of space exploration but this is all before the launches of Voyager (though Sputnik had launched by the books release IIRC).

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you log into iCloud? unless somethings changed in the past year or something broke between ios 6 and 10, it should work. I'm still signed into my iPad 2 running iOS 6 (granted, iirc the root cert expired a bit ago so you need to update that). the 2fa is also a bit weird, you have to input the code after your password (eg: if your password is password123 and the code is 789 you'd submit password123789)

Why can't you log into iCloud? Ask Apple. I just tried it again. "Can't Use Your Apple ID on This Device Your Apple ID can only be used on devices running iOS 15.0 or later, or macOS 12.0 or later. This iPhone can't be updated to the latest software."

I think that might be a thing with apples Advanced Data Protection if you have it enabled, which is understandable since the software needs to know how to un-encrypt the data. If you don't have that enabled, then ignore this and assume apple decided to kill a whole lot of devices (particularly their macs, I know a surprising amount of people still on 10.15)

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that the mission planners figured out the "Grand Tour", calculating orbits and trajectories to slingshot around the Solar System. All with 1960s technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program

I have a ~20 in x 30 in poster of the Grand Tour from this collection[0]. I considered printing the whole series, but not enough wall space. [0] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/

Okay those are pretty rad.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might enjoy "A Canticle for Leibowitz" on this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz | https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2626638W/A_Canticle_for_Leib...

I read the book but don't recall any correlation to the topic of solar system alignment. Spoiler: Era 3 in the novel does speak of space exploration but this is all before the launches of Voyager (though Sputnik had launched by the books release IIRC).

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

> A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic social science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.

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

#268

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

your link has a "si=..." tracking identifier

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

#269
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

James Webb Telescope is up there with Hubble.

The rovers on Mars as well and New Horizons that went to Pluto. That is also at escape velocity so it will leave this solar system and most likely no human will ever lay eyes on it again. Voy 1 and 2 are still faster but hey they're all going in different directions so it's not exactly a race.

> The rovers on Mars as well

Curiosity was intended to operate from 2011-2013 and is still active now, just shy of 5000 days after landing. Really impressive.

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth's "radio bubble" is well over 100 light years across now. If there are aliens out there, they are probably already on their way to ask us in person why Ross, the largest Friend, doesn't simply eat the others.

After the transition to digital TV our broadcasted signals mostly look like noise, though. Maybe an outside observer would assume that our civilization ended sometime in 2010.

Analogue TV would not be much better. How would the aliens know they're supposed to shoot an electron raygun left-to-right 486 times across a screen, then ignore the next 39 lines, then repeat this 29.97 times a second? And that's before you get into interlacing, horizontal blanking intervals, line 21, luma and chroma (encoded by reference to human eyesight), or different standards altogether like PAL or SECAM, etc.

Analogue TV has always felt so much more clever than digital TV to me, at least from a purely technical standpoint. I guess that's because we're mostly digital natives now, so video codecs seem ordinary and programmable electron rayguns do not.

Post reply on HN