Voyager 1 Exits Our Solar System 341
eldavojohn writes "The first man-made craft to do so is now entering a 'cosmic purgatory' between solar systems and entering an interstellar space of the Milky Way Galaxy. With much anticipation, Voyager 1 is now 'in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system. Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back.' After three decades the spacecraft is still operating and apparently has enough power and fuel to continue to do so until 2020. The first big piece of news? 'We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now.' This process could take months to years to completely leave the outer shell but already scientists are receiving valuable information."
Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I wonder how much further ahead humanity would be if we built everything with the need to have it last decades before becoming nonfunctional, then I realize that with the rate technology has advanced, that is just not possible. Not to mention that we would have a totally different world economy if people weren't continually replacing perfectly functional items, from clothing to electronics to vehicles. So much of the global economy is dependent on people buying more things.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
we can't even make mars rovers that last very long....ohh wait.
http://xkcd.com/695/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
As usual with the xkcd comics that people always link to, there was somebody else who did it better...
http://www.theonion.com/articles/mars-rover-beginning-to-hate-mars,2072/ [theonion.com]
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that we would have a totally different world economy if people weren't continually replacing perfectly functional items, from clothing to electronics to vehicles.
Totally new world economy not based on consuming breakable crap, please! I'd like one.
Well designed, well-engineered products, that last, would be more "expensive", but in the long run, humanity and the planet will be better off when we finally switch over to a less wasteful system.
Fortunately we do have examples (like the Voyager probes) of good engineering, not that our washing machines and TVs need to be *quite* that well-engineered, but still, there's a lot of room for improvement.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
This level of quality exists for almost anything you would care to buy. These items costs a bit more and they don't carry them at Walmart, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
My mom is still using a Mitsubishi television she bought in 1983.
Yeah really, my grandmother used the same damn toaster she bought in the early 60's almost every single day up until the day she died 5 years ago. Her Mr. Coffee was at least 25 years old as well, and her microwave, despite being so old as to have oven style knob controls, worked even better than any microwave I've ever bought.
Today you need to order commercial-grade appliances from European master craftsmen for thousands of dollars to get the same level of quality my grandmother got on sale at Sears 30+ years ago on her husband's truck driver salary. Pretty sad...
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty sad...
Not really. Sadly you can't ask her anymore, but I suspect that those items were very expensive and required careful planning and saving.
You can get a cheap and nasty microwave these days for 30GBP in a supermarket. You can also get light industrial units for under 600GBP which clock in at 1900W. It's not made by a European master craftsman, or hard to get. And I'll bet that 500GBP to me or you now would be less painful than the microwave was to your gran in the 60's.
The world now is frankly amazing. Even cheap, nasty stuff is often better then the very best stuff available 20 or 30 years ago, and vastly vastly cheaper. And you can still find the quality stuff (it took me about a minute with google for the microwave), and in fact find it even more easily than ever before.
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This level of quality exists for almost anything you would care to buy. These items costs a bit more and they don't carry them at Walmart, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Except that 2 decades ago you could still find well engineered products that lasted that the middle class could afford to buy. Today you either have cheap crap from Walmart, or high end stuff. Whats missing is the whole middle class thing, where you could find quality at an acceptable price.
Not today unfortunately.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny, two decades ago people were saying exactly what you're saying now.
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Informative)
This level of quality exists for almost anything you would care to buy. These items costs a bit more and they don't carry them at Walmart, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Congratulations, you've just discovered the Sam Vimes' Boots theory of wealth [lspace.org].
TL;DR: Only the rich can afford to save money.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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European-style washers and dryers have not made huge advances in energy efficiency in the last decade. Heck, dryers probably didn't for at least two decades. My parents had a BOSCH condensing dryer for 20 years, and there's no way really to make it any more efficient. A decent washing machine (front-loader) from 10 years ago will use a motor with electronic commutation, and those are as good as it gets. Same goes for a toaster: the ones from today aren't any more efficient than ones from 30 years ago. Coffe
Re:Worse (Score:4, Informative)
You've clearly never seen a proper cheap CRT. Yes, compared to bottom-of-the-barrel TN TFTs they would still have been better when new but with ten years and some age-induced blurring on them even a cheap TN panel will be easier on the eyes.
Of course, I've been using IPS monitors for years (and CRTs are a pain, you need a vertical refresh rate of at least 75 Hz for them to be usable and even then there are all sorts of other issues which are not cancelled out by "It's got blacker blacks than a TFT!!11one").
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
For some products this makes sense, but when it comes to things that change rapidly, like technology, you're making a trade-off between investing vs. features. If I choose a long lasting computer now I may miss out on features that are developed later.
With clothes there are probably trade offs regarding fashion, but then this is /.
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sort of, but old stuff still has a lot of use.
if you need raw speed for something other than games, it might be more economical to use EC-2 or some similar cloud service. otherwise your workplace most likely provides you with an adequate machine.
if you're a gamer, you could conceivably turn details down to maintain speed (the simplified view might actually make n00bs easier to pwn).
if you just browse, your netbook will give you years of use and can be repaired if need be.
phones are replaced far too often -
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If I choose a long lasting computer now I may miss out on features that are developed later.
From my experience, 75% of computers that are ten years old still work, more or less. Sometimes a power supply or hard drive (or more likely, monitor) will die, and the other 25% have motherboard failures, but most work fine. We just traded out our 7 year old computers at work, 75% of what we bought back in 04 and haven't done anything except add ram and upgrade the monitors to LCD back in 08 (we are still using a
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Why wouldn't you want your washing machine last a long, long time? I know I do, and bought a Miele, the only brand that is actually manufactured in Germany (unlike all the others, being made in China). That washing machine cost twice as much as almost any other equivalent, but I figured it will last me about 4 to 5 times as long. It has already worked for longer than any other brand would have, and shows 0 signs of getting old. It seems I'll sooner sell this apartment than replace my washing machine.
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Why wouldn't you want your washing machine last a long, long time
Well, washing machines haven't done much on the efficiency front, but if you were talking about a fridge, you wouldn't want to pay for the durability up front if it was going to cost you the same amount as a new fridge every 5 years in electricity, above and beyond what a new fridge would use. In that case, buying a cheaper model that needed to be replaced would actually save money, and ecological impact.
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but if you were talking about a fridge, you wouldn't want to pay for the durability up front if it was going to cost you the same amount as a new fridge every 5 years in electricity
Why would it? I'm sure some high end refrigerators aren't particularly energy efficient, but I imagine you have choices of models that are.
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Because this [treehugger.com].
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes I wonder how much further ahead humanity would be if we built everything with the need to have it last decades before becoming nonfunctional, then I realize that with the rate technology has advanced, that is just not possible. Not to mention that we would have a totally different world economy if people weren't continually replacing perfectly functional items, from clothing to electronics to vehicles. So much of the global economy is dependent on people buying more things.
Only if you don't mind your next cell phone costing you a few months' salary. Top-notch quality in tech is costly:
The cost of the Voyager 1 and 2 missions -- including launch, mission operations from launch through the Neptune encounter and the spacecraft's nuclear batteries (provided by the Department of Energy) -- is $865 million.
(That'd be $3.2B in 2011 dollars)
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/factsheet.html [nasa.gov]
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For a lot of items that is worth it.
for example my kitchen knives, they are rather expensive (not absurd, but easily 10x the price of the cheap walmart set), and worth every penny. I expect at some point my kids will be using them after I am dead.
much of my tools are of a similar build quality. I want to trust my tools not to break, at all under normal use, and not catastrophically under above max rating use. i.e. using a non rated socket on an impact driver. cheap socket will fracture and grenade, thro
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I expect at some point my kids will be using them after I am dead. much of my tools are of a similar build quality. I want to trust my tools not to break, at all under normal use, and not catastrophically under above max rating use.
I have my grandfather's household tools, keep in mind that in his day you did most of the maintenance and repairs of your home yourself so the collection is a little larger than one might guess. I have a granduncle's tools too and he was a carpenter. Unfortunately the wiring on his power tools are unsafe now but I also have his hand tools from the earlier part of his career. Too bad I flunked wood shop. If your stuff is built like the stuff from the 1940s and 50s it may make it well past your grandkids.
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that's amazingly cheap! my estimate was an order of magnitude higher.
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Not to mention that we would have a totally different world economy if people weren't continually replacing perfectly functional items, from clothing to electronics to vehicles. So much of the global economy is dependent on people buying more things.
It doesn't have to be this way. We have made the economic system we are currently living under; it has been designed to achieve particular ends, such as efficient allocation of resources. This system is isn't a law of nature. We can change it. We can tweak it.
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Yes. And that is the problem with the economy. When you can't muster the resources to keep "growing" as you blatantly can't on a finite planet, then you go into a world credit crisis because the whole thing is a house of cards built on the premise of waste. Waster of resources, waste of money. And economists call it "economy". If they knew anything about economy they would hire an ecologist to fix their basic theories. Boom and bust is a sign of a broken ecosystem, yet we're to believe that's how an economy
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
Voyagers transmitter uses a pencil type vacuum tube in the final amplifier. At the time they were designed there were no transistors that could operate at the required frequency and power level and also withstand the expected cosmic radiation in space. Tubes were the ONLY devices RAD hard enough to do the job.
Since then RCA has quit making tubes (and a lot of other stuff as well).
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Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
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You still need to prevent stray currents from between the tube elements and the surrounding conductors. Circuit boards need insulating coatings although the lower voltages normally associated with solid state circuits helps.
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If they come back looking like Tricia Helfer I won't be complaining
Please spell Persis Khambatta [imdb.com] correctly next time.
This is what happens when Americans make things. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's too bad so many people here were born or grew up after 1990, at which point most American industry had been decimated and sent over to third-world shit heaps like China, India, and Mexico.
You people will never realize that American-manufactured goods were once the best there were. They were durable, they actually weren't that expensive, and you could trust them.
Then globalization and so-called "free trade" happened to ruin all of that. Products that you could once buy from an American manufacturer and you'd know they'd work perfectly for decades could now only be obtained from third-world manufacturers. Of course, they skimped on just about every aspect to make the product as cheap as possible. American-made equivalents would have lasted for many years, while these third-world manufactures often break after two or three uses!
But since the American industry has been destroyed, it's not even possible to buy American-made goods even if you wanted to. You're stuck buying shitty foreign products.
dont you mean 'union made goods'? (Score:4, Insightful)
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
Re:dont you mean 'union made goods'? (Score:5, Insightful)
number 2, to avoid labor unions
While I share your distaste of unions, there's no really way to avoid them in a democratic society. Democracy require the freedom of association, which will inevitability lead to unions if a majority of your workers are dissatisfied enough.
Re:dont you mean 'union made goods'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then a company should be able to not hire someone if they belong to a union, as the company's (owner's) right, correct?
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1. If you hire someone on the condition that they will not join the union, then union will simply strike until that person is removed. This prevents you from getting new employees.
2. Employees will retire or jump ships.
Problem #1 means you can't add new employees, and problem #2 means you gradually lose employees, therefore you will eventually end up with 0 employees.
Re:dont you mean 'union made goods'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Will you really end up with 0 employees?
Why aren't there software engineer unions? (I've seen that mentioned here before.)
Also, aren't various companies anti-union in general? I think Walmart is one example (and yes, I know a lot of people hate them). Walmart does not seem to be in any danger of losing employees.
Re:dont you mean 'union made goods'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why aren't there software engineer unions? (I've seen that mentioned here before.)
Because the software industry is relatively new and treats its employees relatively well. Some industries with high percentage of unions used to mow down their workers with machine guns [wikipedia.org], so the unions were originally a self-defense mechanism of the workers that was born out of necessity.
I think Walmart is one example (and yes, I know a lot of people hate them). Walmart does not seem to be in any danger of losing employees.
Walmart will close entire stores if the workers tries to unionize. So yes, they've probably lost millions of workers and thousands of stores across globe due to this tactic. But so far, like you pointed out, it's been quite effective (at a huge cost to Walmart).
However keep in mind that this tactic only works if you have a huge number of distinct locations across many different countries. Not many companies fit that criteria.
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Doesn't work this way.
1 - You hire people not from the union (without a clause forbiding them of joining). Unionised people go on strike. You let those go, and hire more people not from the union.
There are a few ways things may proceed from then:
1 - Good workers want to join the union. That is because both the union is good for them, and employers aren't. You are out of luck, since you won't replace those unionised workers with good ones.
2 - There are plenty of good workers out of the union. That is because
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1. If you hire someone on the condition that they will not join the union, then union will simply strike until that person is removed. This prevents you from getting new employees.
The case seems more to be (at least in Denmark, until it was made illegal) that if you hire anyone and you do not demand them to join the union, the union will strike until that person is fired, or has joined the union. This, of course, makes unions a force against freedom of association (which must include freedom to not be a part of any particular association as well).
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I suspect you're just making a rhetorical point, and logically correct.
On the off chance you weren't, you may wish to review US labor history, with the Pullman Strike [wikipedia.org] and passage of the Taft-Hartley Act [wikipedia.org] as especially significant milestones.
"Closed shops" are illegal in the US. Someone joining a company with a union contract may, however, be required to join a relevant trade union, or at least pay the dues.
The grandparent (troll-rated) post is correct as far as it goes (re: avoid EPA/unions), insofar as envi
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There are no problems with unions only with government support or hostility towards them. What is interesting is there are no neutral states. There are pro-union and right to work states. One uses force to make an employer deal with unions and the other forces them to allow people to work without joining unions. The neutral position would have the government take no stance on them. Like you said in a free society with freedom of association you would have unions form. But the employer would also have the fr
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Boeing is moving to non-union plant in South Carolina because the machinists union in Washington struck just to slow down the 787 program and show Boeing how powerful the union was.
Consumers, not businessmen, killed US made goods (Score:5, Insightful)
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
You are not facing facts. The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing. Consumers selected goods based on one and only one criteria: retail price. When presented with a high quality US made product and a less expensive foreign made product the US consumers overwhelmingly chose the foreign made good. It wasn't the CEOs, the 1%, etc. The 99% did it to themselves. Corporations don't care where things are made, only that they sell, and consumers chose what sells and what does not. Corporate greed can lead to domestic manufacture just as easily as it can lead to foreign manufacture, it just depends on US consumers favoring domestic production over retail price. Assuming you are a US citizen and you need a flashlight for your car, there is a $20 US made Maglite next to a $7 chinese made brand, what do you chose? What does your choice tell the Maglite CEO to do?
Unions knew this too. There was no shortage of "Save a Job, Buy American" bumper stickers in the 1970s. US Consumers didn't care, a classic example of tragedy of the commons.
Fortunately the internet has made it easier to find US made goods than one might expect by browsing local brick and mortar establishments.
Re:Consumers, not businessmen, killed US made good (Score:5, Insightful)
"The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing" The US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world.
Stats that make that claim usually compare dollar amounts. So extremely high priced products like jet liners, heavy caterpillar tractors, etc distort the numbers and do not reflect huge number of manufacturing jobs that have been exported. These products merely represent the heavy high tech manufacturing which is the last to go and is currently targeted for the next round of job exporting.
These dollar based stats also show that we are just about to fall from that #1 position. You should look at the historical trend and not look at the current stat out of context.
Re:This is what happens when Americans make things (Score:5, Informative)
While that's true for many types of things, ABC News has been doing a Made in America series for most of this year. (I've only seen a few of the reports when reaired on World News Now.) They've found lots of things made in America, and some was cheaper than the foreign made stuff. I don't remember all of the examples, but toys, furniture, cooking implements were some of them. (The most recent report I saw was a followup where the Bundt pan factory hired a few more people, at least partially because sales had gone way up since the last report.)
As others have said in past discussions of this type, what do you call a Toyota made (assembled/built) in Kentucky? Is that an American car or a foreign car?
I disagree with your main premise, but if you want "American made", you can find it, at least for many things.. but you'll sometimes have to pay more, and definitely will have to look harder.
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its a foreign car because the profit goes over seas and is invested there.
Re:This is what happens when Americans make things (Score:5, Insightful)
Then by that logic, products made by American companies in other countries should count as "American made".
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truth be told, a lot of the profit is invested where the car was made - people need to be paid, machines need to be maintained/replaced.
it's not as good as made and owned, but really, what's the difference between a rich person in Japan and a rich person in the USA? the bulk of the good comes from local manufacture. you can see this from the proliferation of USA companies that manufacture overseas - how much are they contributing to life in the USA?
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Products that you could once buy from an American manufacturer and you'd know they'd work perfectly for decades could now only be obtained from third-world manufacturers.
You mean, like American cars in the 80s? I used to see quite a few of those clunkers when I first came to the US, and their lack of quality was shocking.
Face it, American products had gone down the shitter a long time before NAFTA. I think this might be the equivalent of the uphill, through the snow, both ways stories old people tell.
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And 20+ years later many of them are still on the road.
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Re:This is what happens when Americans make things (Score:5, Insightful)
You people will never realize that American-manufactured goods were once the best there were. They were durable, they actually weren't that expensive, and you could trust them.
Any facts or figures to back up this hyperbole of a statement ?
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Sounds to me like American goods were once like Chinese goods are becoming right now. Seriously, the jokes about Chinese goods being crap is showing its' age.
It pains me to think about it, but if I had to bet my pension on either the Americans or the Chinese building a successor to Voyager, I would go all in on the Chinese.
Re:This is what happens when Americans make things (Score:5, Informative)
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New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006, directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory with an Earth-relative velocity of about 16.26 km/s (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph) after its last engine shut down. Thus, the spacecraft left Earth at the greatest ever launch speed for a man-made object. It flew by Jupiter on February 28, 2007, the orbit of Saturn on June 8, 2008; and the orbit of Uranus on March 18, 2011. (Source: Wikipedia)
Nice!
Re:This is what happens when Americans make things (Score:4, Funny)
Made in USA goods exist (Score:2)
... it's not even possible to buy American-made goods even if you wanted to. You're stuck buying shitty foreign products ...
Try googling "Made in USA".
And when on a particular website see if "Made in USA" is one of the search filters: http://www.rei.com/search?search=Made+in+the+USA [rei.com]. Look at the categories and item counts on the left of this page.
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Are you a communist?
He's a realist. I've still got an HP 11C (made in the USA), bought it almost 30 years ago.
Its still going strong and boy do the batteries last. A pair of button batteries could last for 10/15 years of use. But that was a time when American industries acutally produced things, and management was not ruled by a band of legalised criminals.
While the rest of what you say might be true, management has *always* been ruled by a band of legalised criminals. Globalization has merely provided them with the means to dare what they wouldn't have gotten away with before.
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Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just freaking amazing that things electronics can still work after being exposed to such an environment for so long. Good job Voyager and good job old school NASA. Just don't come back home in a few hundred years with a chip on your shoulder!
Well if you want to put the situation into perspective, Voyager one has been going on for 34 years and has YET to leave the solar system. Another 10 years and it will find itself on the threshold of interstellar space. And then no more power it will go dead. Think about it, 47 years in space and it will barely have reached the begining of interstellar space. Half the lifetime of a human being (more or less) and our fastest spacecraft is still right by our home. If this doesn't drive home just how far we are from really reaching into space nothing will.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Well if you want to put the situation into perspective, Voyager one has been going on for 34 years and has YET to leave the solar system. Another 10 years and it will find itself on the threshold of interstellar space. And then no more power it will go dead. Think about it, 47 years in space and it will barely have reached the begining of interstellar space. Half the lifetime of a human being (more or less) and our fastest spacecraft is still right by our home. If this doesn't drive home just how far we are from really reaching into space nothing will.
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." (HHGG)
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
Info (Score:3)
The general DSN site is here [nasa.gov]; however, for detail on the system hardware, services, and capabilities, see the 810-5 Handbook [nasa.gov].
Moving goalposts (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Moving goalposts (Score:5, Informative)
The Oort cloud, if it proves to exist, is speculated to extend quite a ways out -- possibly 2/3 of the way to the nearest star by some estimations. It's a much looser "full shell" of relatively stationary objects, where the Kuiper belt is more similar to a large asteroid belt.
Wikipedia has some good visualizations and links --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud [wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt [wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Moving goalposts (Score:5, Informative)
Voyager will define where the edge is. Or rather, returns enough data so we can decide where it is.
Really, it's past what was thought of as the edge of the solar system when it was built.
11 Billion (Score:5, Insightful)
Voyager 1 is travelling at just under 11 miles per second and sending information from nearly 11 billion miles away from the sun.
This reminds me of just how big space is. What absurd distances we're talking about now. I can't be but at awe and terror when I think of the stars.
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"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." -HHGTG
Re:11 Billion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:11 Billion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:11 Billion (Score:5, Funny)
Shit, some of those distances are astronomical.
rj
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I can't be but at awe and terror when I think of the stars.
They say Aldebaran once killed a man at Rigel, just to see him die.
It's Proxima Centauri on the phone. He's calling from inside the Oort Cloud!
And then the hitchhiker turned around, and instead of a main-sequence class F, it was a red giant!
This news again? (Score:5, Informative)
It's really really cool that Voyager is still going, but this talk of crossing into the heliosheath, etc seems to be dragged out a bit (yes, it's a vague and slow transition, I understand...)
http://science.slashdot.org/story/05/05/24/2334240/voyager-1-crosses-the-termination-shock [slashdot.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/02/0243246/voyager-probes-give-us-ets-view [slashdot.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1451216/voyager-1-beyond-solar-wind [slashdot.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/2314203/voyager-set-to-enter-interstellar-space [slashdot.org]
Re:This news again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Usually these stories get trotted out right around budget cutting time.
good. someone has to fight the morons in congress (Score:5, Insightful)
otherwise, the only thing we would ever spend money on is bailing out big corporations and bombing people.
Re:good. someone has to fight the morons in congre (Score:4, Insightful)
So long and thanks for all the fish (Score:2)
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Voyager's on-board sensors (Score:5, Interesting)
They are hoping to get data on spectral lines not visible from within the solar system, with Voyager 1 now outside the solar system, but they're running into power budget issues. The battery is very, very low on juice, and with AAA not operating that far out, there's no chance of it getting any more. Data collected will therefore be rather more limited than NASA would like, but since existent data is zero any data will be an improvement.
I wish they would send some more of these (Score:3, Informative)
With updated equipment, high resolution sensors/ cameras.... heck even put on a hubble like telescope while we're at it... a dozen of these in all directions.... that would definitely kick ass... >
Beautiful (Score:3, Interesting)
Communications numbers (Score:5, Informative)
The amazing thing (well, one of the amazing things) about the Voyager program is the communication link. Voyager's signal, as received on Earth, is almost unbelievably weak.
One can use the Friis Transmission Equation [wikipedia.org] to see just how weak the signal from Voyager 1 is at the moment:
Pr = Pt * Gt * Gr * (lambda/(4 * pi * R))^2, where
Pr is received power, in watts;
Pt is transmitted power, in watts;
Gt is the gain of the transmitting antenna, relative to an isotropic source (a unit-less value);
Gr is the gain of the receiving antenna (one of the 70m DSN antennas), relative to an isotropic source (a unit-less value);
lambda is the operating wavelength, in meters, and equal to c/f, or very close to 300/fM, where fM is the operating frequency in MHz;
and R is the range (distance) in meters.
Pt = 18 watts [nasa.gov] (assuming this hasn't degraded over time and distance);
Gt = 48 dBi [nasa.gov], or about 63100;
Gr = 74 dBi [nasa.gov], or about 25.1*10^6;
fM = 8420 MHz [nasa.gov], so lambda = 300/fM = 0.0356 meters; and
R = 17,545,000,000 km [nasa.gov], or 1.75 * 10^13 meters.
Grinding all this out, one is left with a received signal strength -- at the terminals of a 70-meter dish, mind you -- of:
Pr = 18 * 63100 * 25.1*10^6 * (0.0356/(4 * pi * 1.75 * 10^13))^2 = 7.45 * 10^(-19) watts, or 745 -- wait for it -- zeptowatts [wikipedia.org].
This is equal to -181.3 dBW, or -151.3 dBm. (I don't know how many Libraries of Congress that is.)
In the year 2020, when the probe's power generator is expected to expire, the probe will be about 2 * 10^13 meters away from Earth; using the same calculation the signal will have weakened slightly, to 5.73 * 10^(-19) watts, or 573 zeptowatts, -182.4 dBW, or -152.4 dBm.
(Unless I've made some trivial calculation error, of course.)
Obligatory pirate jokes (Score:4, Funny)
'We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us.
Arrrgh, trim yer sails, and steady on, mate.
Next fortnight we shall leave the solar system and finally escape from the RIAA.
Re: (Score:3)
'We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us.
Arrrgh, trim yer sails, and steady on, mate.
Obligatory interactive fiction link:
Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home [eblong.com]
Half of the success is a good name (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, at this point telling the probe to "Fear Ground" does sound kind of prophetic.
Did it hit the wall holding creation yet? (Score:3, Funny)
Voyager 1 Exits Our Solar System (Score:3)
Its last message was, oddly enough, "So long and thanks for all the fish".
Its going the wrong way! (Score:3)
They are entering the slow zone!
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
Voyager are not the only ones.
Pioneer 10 and 11 were both launched with sufficient velocity to escape the solar system. They were launched before Voyager, but did not have as large a velocity, so were passed by the Voyager probes in the 1990s as the furthest from the Earth.
I'm pretty sure this was planned, since the Pioneer probes has this really cool plaque on them (designed by Carl Sagan), in the event they were found by alien species:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
We should send more.