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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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Excellent opportunity to dump Tesla and pump SpaceX.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a catch 22. If you want to preserve the Earth's biosphere or even biological humans, then you would need to move at least a ship the size of a small planetoid. That will support life for millenia that will be required for interstellar travel. And if you can do that, then why bother with the interstellar travel? Just move to a higher orbit to survive the red giant stage. And then move closer to the stellar remnan…

I think moving a small planetoid and moving a planet are not really comparable technical challenges, are they? Even a small moon like Deimos you could probably move by attaching giant rockets to a side and pushing(absolutely absurd, but let's go with it). How would you move the earth with its atmosphere still intact? Is your rocket stretching out the entire way from the surface to the edge of space?

Arrange a stream of asteroids to transfer momentum from one of the outer planets.

Or just terraform Mars.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you really believe we'd have "peace and food for everyone" if not for Apollo? Really? Or is this an unserious argument you can use to nitpick anything? Why is my local government building another playground when they could be feeding African orphans??

well ofcourse it was a bit unserious. it has no backing :D happy someone made a big list of tech that came out of it. thats good stuff.

and another playground isnt really comparable investment (or i am really jeolous of the kids in your neighborhood damn!) :p

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

#275
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how far technology has come in 100 years. Then imagine if the alien had just a 1 million year head start to technology. 1 million years is less than 1/1000 of the age of the universe earlier. We have literally no idea what technology the alien could have.

The aliens have the same physics we do. Science isn't magic. Without quite literally having to replace everything we have known or discovered in the past 250 years from entropy to electromagnetic theory to gravity to motion with brand new theories that somehow equally explain all known phenomenon while also allowing lots of outright magic , no, the aliens are not able to collect radio waves from below the noise floor…

> The aliens have the same physics we do. Science isn't magic.

Show a spacecraft to someone from the middle ages and they would think it's magic.

There is physics that has not been discovered. Lots of things are still unexplained.

> no, the aliens are not able to collect radio waves from below the noise floor

Before we had quadrature modulation and quadrature phase shift keying, we thought we had hit the noise floor for wireless bandwidth. After we thought we really hit the ceiling, we had beamforming. There's stuff that hasn't been thought of. We don't know the unknown unknowns.

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