91–100 of 276 posts
> For the first time in the history of the universe, as far as we know, an object built by a living species had left the protective bubble of its home star system... Seriously?
An easy claim to make if you only check with species from one star system
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent. I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.
I assume you are against them due to the silent forest hypothesis? Better not announce ourselves, because anything out there might not be friendly to us?
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…
They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent. I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.
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…
They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent. I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.
I knew about the memory, but an 8-track tape ? That is a surprise. But when you think of it, what else could you use for this in 1977. What amazes me is the tape lasted almost 30 years. I knew tapes back then could last a while, 30 years being bombarded with cosmic rays ? inconceivable :)
What amazes me is the tape lasted almost 30 years Yesterday I loaded a program on tape bought at Radio Shack in 1985 into my TRS-80. That's 41 years ago. I suspect the key is using commercial-grade recorders and thick tape.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent. I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Voyager 1 and 2 are 25 and 21 billion kilometres away, respectively. Even if we built a rocket just designed to get stuff as far away as quickly away as possible, it would take decades to catch up to where they are now.
Could we even catch up to them at all with the current propulsion technology? Not only did they have decades of head start but they took advantage of a unique planetary alignment that I don't think will come back around anytime soon.
New Horizons achieved 80% of Voyager's velocity with just Jupiter, and it wasn't really trying to optimize for speed, it approached Jupiter only to 10 million km (over 100x greater than the planet's radius.) A probe dedicated to a fast slingshot past Jupiter could easily overtake Voyager. We haven't had any need to try, unless one of the missions to specifically study the heliopause-interstellar area happens. It would still take a while to catch up to Voyager's head start, but it's doable.
The alignment for Voyager was captivating, but it really wasn't as important as people typically think. Jupiter alone can get you anywhere and launch windows for it come every 12 years. If the four-planet alignment hadn't happened then, realistically we would have just done separate Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Neptune missions.