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

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

#311

Post by energy123 »

Mistletoe wrote: post #307
energy123 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, but there are alternatives that are even worse, like agrarian communism under Pol Pot. I'm not saying there's no scope for improvement with billionaires and their role in society, I just dispute that billionaires are some unique and unitary source of problems. For example, if a tax law was passed that caused an exodus of billionaires (capital flight), I do not believe that the median living standards would rise. I do not believe things would get much better. So this is not so much a disagreement in values but more about the facts of the matter.

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

#312

Post by adrianN »

Nevermark wrote: post #308
ojosilva wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

Space ship speeds are unlikely to keep ever increasing. In the limit you can’t do much better than turning part of the ships mass into energy optimally, eg via antimatter annihilation or Hawking radiation, unless you already have infrastructure in place to transfer energy to the ship that is not part of the ship’s mass, eg lots of lasers.

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

#314

Post by anigbrowl »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #109
jacobgkau wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand correctly, you're just basing that statement on climate change or war destroying us before we can do any better than Voyager, right? Because if we don't assume the destruction of humanity or the complete removal of our ability to make things leave Earth, then just based on "finite past vs. infinite future," it seems incredibly unlikely that we'd never be able to beat an extremely old project operating…

Many reasons why. The probability is based on many many many factors. What you mentioned is just a fraction of the factors. If we do ever reach that distance again it will be even less likely we do it for a third time.

This is reflexive pessimism with no substance. You're not articulating a set of particular challenges that need to be navigated/overcome, which could provide a roadmap for a productive discussion; it's just doomposting/demoralization that contributes nothing.

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

#315

Post by foxglacier »

aylmao wrote: post #252
foxglacier wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want to buy poisonous food knowing it's poison. They might take a gamble on if it the odds seem good enough. (even in highly safety regulated western countries, people sometimes die from contaminated food). In contrast, people do want to burn petrol knowing that it 100% will pollute the environment every single time they drive their car. We do what benefits us personally despite the cost to the environme…

Most people don't get to pick how much money they have, their employer does. Most people don't choose and how much the car they want costs, a company does. Most people have very little say on laws and regulations, but billionaires have friends and family in government. If billionaires were less greedy and paid more, more people could choose environmentally friendly options. If billionaires were less greedy and sold e…

If billionaires gave their money to poor people, they're not going to spend it on electric cars because of the environment. They're going to spend it on stuff that benefits them personally because most people are basically more selfish than environmentalist.

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

#316

Post by swifthesitation »

EGreg wrote: post #289
tpurves wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing has been proposed before, for example within context of projects like Breakthrough Starshot. In that the case the idea is to launch thousands of probes, each weighing only a few grams or less, and accelerating them to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light using solar sails and (powerful) earth-based lasers. The probes could reach alpha centauri within 20-30 years. There seems to be som…

I bet you that this hasn't been proposed, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfClJxdQ6Xs I found that video very interesting! Especially the second half about apparent super liminal speed

really wonderful explanation

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

#317

Post by AliAbdulKareem »

I am curious, how are we communicating with it? like how do we know where it is right now, and how are we sending signals to communicate with it? won't our signal affected by noise or the like. When it is this far, how are accurately sending our signals to it.

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

#318

Post by JacobThreeThree »

AliAbdulKareem wrote: post #317

I am curious, how are we communicating with it? like how do we know where it is right now, and how are we sending signals to communicate with it? won't our signal affected by noise or the like. When it is this far, how are accurately sending our signals to it.

Per Wikipedia:

It has a 3.7-meter (12 ft) diameter high-gain Cassegrain antenna to send and receive radio waves via the three Deep Space Network stations on the Earth. The spacecraft normally transmits data to Earth over Deep Space Network Channel 18, using a frequency of either 2.3 GHz or 8.4 GHz, while signals from Earth to Voyager are transmitted at 2.1 GHz.

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

#319

Post by JacobThreeThree »

danishSuri1994 wrote: post #159

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…

It was a unique period of interplanetary space travel where most projects were simple flybys - the first time for each planet. Because the goal was just to flyby, the secondary benefit is that the trajectory sends it outside the solar system.

Nowadays, most missions involve insertions into orbit around the target planet, therefore no secondary opportunity to send it outside the solar system. The notable exception is New Horizons, which was a Pluto flyby and will also eventually leave the solar system.

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

#320

Post by jacquesm »

Sanzig wrote: post #179
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought I was pretty clear that I don't see this happening for hundreds of years at least. The engineering problem is insurmountable today. But there doesn't seem to be any reason it couldn't be done eventually , given our technological trajectory, unless we believe we are truly on the precipice of severe diminishing returns in most science and engineering fields, and I just don't see that right now. George Cayley…

> Obviously, I'm extrapolating a long way out, and maybe at some point we'll run against an unexpected wall.

GP has set the 'low bar' of providing a material that survives a series of nuclear blasts whilst generating useful thrust. I'm not qualified to judge whether or not that requires new physics but it seems to me that if we had such a material that we'd be using it for all kinds of applications. Instead, we rely on the physical properties of the materials we already know in configurations that do not lend themselves to the kind of use that you describe.

That's the difference between science and science fiction, it is easy to write something along those lines and go 'wouldn't it be nice if we had X?'. But if 'X' requires new physics then you've just crossed over into fantasy land and then further discussion is pointless until you show the material or a path to get to the material.

See also: space elevators, ringworlds, dyson spheres etc. Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.

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