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Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

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301–310 of 411 posts

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#301
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

175 years isn't a lot of time when we speak in humanity's time scale. We've been around 200,000 - 300,000 years. That alignment will happen many more times in the history of humanity. That is to say, I don't know if a spacecraft to overtake Voyager will be launched on the next alignment or one 10,000 years from now, but it doesn't seem unlikely to happen.

If humans survive 1000 years I can’t see any way we haven’t populated the solar system and can build probes which travel far faster than voyager, including self sufficient asteroids Once we leave the solar system in a self sufficient way I can’t see any event which would cause a species level extinction

I admire the confidence but a bunch of meat bags prone to bacterial and viral infection, impact damage and with limited use by dates would need some serious luck to survive a simple impact on earth let alone living in cans around the solar system. If we don’t mess our nest so much that we make it uninhabitable. We’re stuck here with short term horizon psychopaths pulling the strings remember.

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#302

The Voyagers are just the beginning. We can't see it yet, stuck as we are, in the present moment, filled with strife, failure, and disappointment. But the years and centuries to come will see us colonize the solar system, bringing new opportunities for millions, while easing the drain on Earth's ecosystem. How can I be so sure? Because in the long arc of history that is what we've always done. We went from Africa to…

I share the sentiment but it seems a bit like imposing a human narrative on a Universe that does not seem to care all that much about us. Maybe we really are stuck in the Solar System and space is just too vast to do much about it.

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#304

Not that we would literally do this with Voyager, but it makes me wonder at the potential utility of a string of probes, one sent every couple of [insert correct time interval, decades, centuries?], to effectively create a communication relay stretching out into deep space somewhere. My understanding with the Voyagers 1 and 2 is (a) they will run out of power before they would ever get far enough to benefit from a re…

Could a probe return data by semaphore? Wave a flag that blocks the light of Alpha Centauri as seen from a telescope off to the side of the sun, say at the distance of Neptune's orbit. It should be possible to hide Alpha Centauri behind a relatively small semaphore until the probe gets fairly close.

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#305
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided we don't wipe ourselves out, there's no technical reason why we can't go interstellar. It's just way harder and more energy intensive than most people imagine, so I doubt it's happening any time in the next few hundred years. But we already understand the physics and feasibility of "slow" (single-digit fractions of c ) interstellar propulsion systems. Nuclear pulse propulsion and fission fragment rockets req…

Nuclear pulse and fission fragment designs require no new physics in the same way that a Saturn 5 didn't require new physics when compared to a Goddard toy rocket. It's easy until you try to actually build the damn thing. Then you discover it's not easy at all, and there's actually quite a bit of new physics required. It's not New Physics™ in the warp drive and wormhole sense, but any practical interstellar design is…

Yeah this is something I think a lot of people tend to overlook. People are far too quick to rewrite "we don't know of any reason why it would be impossible" to "we know how to do it" in their heads.

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#306
post #149
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2025. The first heavier than air flight was barely more than a century ago. The first human in space was less than 70 years ago. These enabling technologies are very, very hard. No doubt about it. That's why we can't do this today, or even a century from now. But the physics show it's possible and suggest a natural evolution of capabilities to get there. We are a curious species that is never happy to keep our p…

First, what's the return on that? You are talking about massive investments to shoot off into space never to return. Who's paying for that? The only way you do that is if you're so fucked, it's your only option and the profit in it is the leaving. Not to mention, we need to solve the problems of living in space. Which we haven't yet. According to NASA. The space people. And it very well could be an insurmountable pro…

There is another way. Irrationality. People spend a lot on religion. Like a whole lot.

What if there was a faith system of ultimatley going to interstellar medium. You have faith, you automatically pay, like the rest of the people and you dont question it. You get tax breaks. It will help you in the end of times or something.

Just decide the ultimate goal to be interstellar medium touching in all directions.

You are a farmer? Well now you continue to farm to feed budding spacers. You are a game dev? Well, people are going to get bored in space, continue developing games for the ultimate goal.

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You people should stop demonizing billionaires. You're the ones burning the fossil fuels, not them. If their wealth way distributed among more people then those people would spend it damaging the environment which is what people generally do with their money anyway.

It's fine to criticize billionaires but people shouldn't make the common mistake of thinking the world would get much better if billionaires ceased existing. That tells me their understanding of how the world works is overly simplistic in the wrong ways leading to a distorted understanding and flawed predictions.

I think we could wish for better billionaires don't you? Some are ok, some are extremely not ok and have made the torment nexus we live in right now.

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even explore with something nonbiological. Humans evolved to live on earth. Our bodies fare poorly in low gravity, not to mention vacuum. Given sufficiently advanced technology, I'm pretty sure we could evolve some form of intelligence better suited to the environment.

Not very encouraging to imagine ChatGPT to be the first earthling to reach another star system, but that's an option we'll have to keep on the table, at least for the time being...

Fortunately, any state of the art ship with ChatGPT on board will quickly get passed by the state of the art ship of a decade later, with a decade better AI too.

The universe really doesn't want ChatGPT!

It is fair to say, that given space travel tech improves slowly relative to AI, but the distance to be travelled is so great that any rocketry (or other means) improvements will quickly pass previous launches, the first intelligence from Earth that makes it to another system will be superintelligence many orders of magnitude smarter than we can probably imagine.

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#309
post #11

Wrote about the Voyager probes two days ago in my blog - The two Voyager spacecraft are the greatest love letters humanity has ever sent into the void. Voyager 2 actually launched first, on August 20, 1977, followed by Voyager 1 on September 5, 1977. Because Voyager 1 was on a faster, shorter trajectory (it used a rare alignment to slingshot past both Jupiter and Saturn quicker), it overtook its twin and became the f…

Is this HN discussion about your blog post? If not, can you share it? I would like to read it.

#17

https://www.rxjourney.net/30-things-i-know

Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

#310

It’s wild how Voyager forces two truths to sit together: Technically, what we’ve done is almost boringly modest. ~17 km/s ~1 light-day in ~50 years No realistic way to steer it anywhere meaningful now On cosmic scales it’s… basically still on our doorstep. Psychologically, it’s still one of the most ambitious things we’ve ever done. We built something meant to work for decades, knowing the people who launched it woul…

That plate with info about us, where to find us... not smart, naive. I get that 70s were probably way more enthusiastic and open minded re space space exploration compared to rather bleak times now when greed often takes prime and Star Trek TOS probably had its effect too, but next time we should do better. Dark forest theory sounds more rational conclusion on long enough timescale than Star trekkish utopias. Althoug…

Hopefully we never see a photoid collapse us into 2D space.
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