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Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

cnn.com

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Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#321

Post by kortilla »

jacquesm wrote: post #290
dotnet00 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where you're getting this from? It's so blatant that things are only improving, the US is running so many high profile missions, SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its ow…

What I'm getting this from? Reading the news for the last 40 years or so. Watching the new generation and their education levels. Seeing how science is now 'the enemy' rather than the future. > SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain…

[flagged]

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#322

Post by dotnet00 »

jacquesm wrote: post #290
dotnet00 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where you're getting this from? It's so blatant that things are only improving, the US is running so many high profile missions, SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its ow…

What I'm getting this from? Reading the news for the last 40 years or so. Watching the new generation and their education levels. Seeing how science is now 'the enemy' rather than the future. > SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain…

Thanks for clarifying that you really no idea what you're talking about.

South Korea achieved orbit by their own power, on their own rocket: https://www.voanews.com/a/south-korea-tests-space-rocket-/66...

It actually does move the needle because the key feature of many upcoming vehicles is significant private investment, focus on higher cadences, lower costs and in some cases, partial or full reusability. All of which are factors indicative of increasing expansion into space as it starts increasingly becoming commercialized. That isn't just "getting really good at redoing 1939 to 1969", that's taking the latest in materials science, electronics and so on to push the line in what we are capable of doing in space. These capabilities were simply not realistic even in the 90s. Both American lunar landers under development are near scifi in terms of their capabilities, a far cry from the Apollo era's closet sized tin can.

Saying we're only redoing things is like saying that the latest x86 CPUs are just redoing what the original 8086 did.

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#323

Post by nemo44x »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #291
voytec wrote: post #70

I always have a sense of pride and a feeling of respect for us as a human race when reading about V'ger. It's astonishing that we were able to send a space probe, designed and built to be so robust that it's still doing its thing and sending us postcards after 46 years(!!!) of flying away from us in an extremely harmful environment, while we still fuck simple stuff up back home.

What the US accomplished from 1950-1980 is incredible.

Indeed. A group of people went through 15 years of financial hardship and horrific war and it made them so strong willed and determined to do something with surviving that. I’m grateful to not have to have gone through all that but also accept that they formed a certain wisdom we can’t appreciate fully.

That era should be looked on like we do the renaissance, etc. Just a remarkable era that we still are building on today. The springboard.

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#324

Post by eastern »

dotnet00 wrote: post #279
jacquesm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure about that. Humanity is turning ever more inward and education is getting worse and worse with the peak somewhere in the 1950's. If we have a bright future in space travel none of the countries with launch capability today look like they will be the ones driving it.

I don't see where you're getting this from? It's so blatant that things are only improving, the US is running so many high profile missions, SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its ow…

Also, there's that other country, which cannot be named, which can do this rocket shit reasonably well.

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#325

Post by ddingus »

gzer0 wrote: post #282

One of my favorite facts ever is that Voyager 1 contains something called the Voyager Golden Record [1]. It has the following quote written: This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. I get chills everytime I think about this. I hope we can recover from this ev…

I like the simple, humble message.

My own take is similar. Truth is, we are young, we shit where we eat, we spend considerable resources killing one another, we do not take good care of our own, and we reproduce like rabbits.

For all we know there is a signpost some parsecs out there that reads: Do not yet approach. These things have not yet become ready for what contact could likely mean. We must pass tests to come. Tests that arise as an artifact of our current human condition.

Trying to survive our time is so damn spot on too! Real as it gets, and for that record, real as it needs to be.

Once we do get to really living, thriving on a scale we imagine others farther along in their journey as beings could maybe be, we might look back in awe that we managed it! Others may look toward us with some hope and anticipation of a meeting being worth it one day, should we succeed.

Maybe, just maybe that scrappy little world and it's people some how grow enlightened enough to endure through and become peers of a sort, likely young, but maybe ready sort.

A whole lot went into those short phrases. Damn good stuff.

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#326

Post by yreg »

jacquesm wrote: post #292
yreg wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strangely high bar. As if Voyager had some nonnegligible effect outside of the Solar system.

If something like Voyager would arrive from outside our Solar system it would be the event of the millenium.

Well so would be picking up radio signals like the ones we emit.

And while the probability that someone will be able to pick these signals up is low, it is still almost infinitely greater than that of someone finding one of the Voyagers out there.

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#327

Post by seeknotfind »

nemo44x wrote: post #316
apitman wrote: post #308

One of my favorite tech legends is that apparently Voyager 1 launched with a Viterbi encoder, even though there was no computer on Earth at the time fast enough to decode it. After a number of years Moore's Law caught up and they remotely switched over to Viterbi for more efficient transmissions.

I don’t know how well it holds today but for some time it was known that running certain computations on existing hardware would take longer than waiting for new hardware and running when available.

If hardware next year is X times better (e.g. even 1.01 or 1% better) than this year, and you have a computation that takes T time today, then next year, it'll take T/X time. So waiting will take 1 + T/X years if time unit is years. So the condition you want is 1+T/X Though even faster will be doing part of the computation now and then switching to new hardware later, so it's a false dichotomy.

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#328

Post by Tommstein »

japhyr wrote: post #175

My favorite graph of all time is the one that demonstrate Voyager 1 had left the solar system. I was a high school math and science teacher at the time, and I spent the whole day sharing this graph with students. It was so much fun watching everyone's faces and seeing the moment they realized what it really meant. https://phys.org/news/2012-10-voyager-left-solar.html

The Voyagers leaving the solar system is so popular that they've done it like 10 times!

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#329

Post by jjeaff »

btach wrote: post #221
voytec wrote: post #70

I always have a sense of pride and a feeling of respect for us as a human race when reading about V'ger. It's astonishing that we were able to send a space probe, designed and built to be so robust that it's still doing its thing and sending us postcards after 46 years(!!!) of flying away from us in an extremely harmful environment, while we still fuck simple stuff up back home.

I appreciate the Star Trek reference (V'ger incase somebody doesn't know what I'm talking about - Star Trek, The Motion Picture). That movie awed me as a kid.

ah, I didn't remember the reference. I did think that was a weird place to create an abbreviation.

Re: Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

#330

Post by AndrewKemendo »

dotnet00 wrote: post #275
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For who but the gilded?

You could've said the same for air travel in the early days.

Well, we don’t have great figures on this but there are some estimates that only 20% of the human population has ever flown on an airplane.

That seems like it’s a pretty heavily “gilded only” type of thing especially if you look at percentage distributions of flight frequency and by class.

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