Voyager Set To Enter Interstellar Space 362
Phoghat writes "More than 30 years after they were launched, NASA's two Voyager probes have traveled to the edge of the solar system and are on the doorstep of interstellar space. Today, April 28, 2011, NASA held a live briefing to reflect on what the Voyager mission has accomplished — and to preview what lies ahead as the probes prepare to enter the realm of the Milky Way itself."
Let me say (Score:5, Insightful)
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An example of reliable code and engineering.
It is a shame that programmers and engineers do not design and code their products so that they will be reliable.
How many times did they have to reboot Voyager?
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Informative)
How many times did they have to reboot Voyager?
In case you didn't know, it wasn't a reboot, but there was a problem where they actually did have to live patch the voyager 2 computer [nasa.gov] last year for a bit-flip problem...
Of course this was discussed previously [slashdot.org]
Although that's impressive, in general, the SW architecture of voyager is quite complicated and fragile, and during the operation, several mistakes have been made one of which caused the primary receiver on Voyager 2 to be accidently shut down, never to work again (so it's relying on a backup which has a faultly frequency tuning circuit which they compensate in software).
It's really only heroics which keep these probes up and running. The original engineering, while impressive, is really not the thing that's keeping things working now...
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My point is that the fact that the thing is still on at all deserves quite a lot of credit to the original engineering. Even if it is fragile and has required work to keep going - it is still
Who deserves more credit? The guys that have figured out the system updates and changes to KEEP it going, or the people that designed the thing so well in the first place that it ha
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It is a shame that programmers and engineers do not design and code their products so that they will be reliable.
But on the other hand, I can't say I am willing to pay $2 million for a copy of Windows, which is likely the cost per user if it really was designed by the same people and to the same standards as the Voyager code.
It's not cheap to design and develop bug free code. NASA had some very smart people working on these problems for quite some time.
Granted, there are plenty of areas outside of commercial software like Word, where reliability is not just important but critical. While a good amount is designed wel
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The voyager probe code was most likely entirely purpose written, which is much easier to manage than something like windows which is designed for third party programs and tries to allow for general purpose computing.
Although, there are a few things that could be done to improve some reliability, even in old c++. Although I'm sure there might be difficulties with platforms other than x86. Like using -1 instead of 1
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For example they gave the compiled code to a completely separate team and got them to reverse engineer the specifications.
This uncovered a Y2K bug in the ADA runtime that the code was built on
As the test driven development mantra goes - test until you aren't scared any more
Knowing that your code will be run once and only once in production
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is a shame that programmers and engineers do not design and code their products so that they will be reliable."
Speak for yourself.
Some of us take pride in our work and write fast, reliable software that runs on servers for multiple years without interference.
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Bang on.
Re:Let me say (Score:4, Interesting)
It all comes down to money. If you outsource your development to the lowest bidder and even try to beat a few more pennies out of their offer, you'll get a steaming pile. If you keep screaming "more coding faster!", you'll get a big steaming pile. Chase your best and brightest away with poor management and crazy bureaucratic proceduralism and you'll be lucky if the code is decentish.
If you willingly spend $100/line of code and ASK when it will be done rather than TELLING when it will be done, it'll be near bulletproof.
Re:Let me say (Score:4, Funny)
If you willingly spend $100/line of code and ASK when it will be done rather than TELLING when it will be done, it'll be near bulletproof.
So how is morale on the Duke Nukem dev team, anyway?
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Insightful)
Does every conversation on slashdot have to turn into a tirade about how stupid and frustrating and awful and shoddy and worthless and disappointing and shitty and aggravating and horrible windows is? We know already! It's also despicable and unreliable and saddening and ugly and untrustworthy and pernicious and inadequate and etc etc etc...
Take your blinkers off. It's not just Windows.
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Does every conversation on slashdot have to turn into a tirade about how stupid and frustrating and awful and shoddy and worthless and disappointing and shitty and aggravating and horrible windows is? We know already! It's also despicable and unreliable and saddening and ugly and untrustworthy and pernicious and inadequate and etc etc etc...
Take your blinkers off. It's not just Windows.
Fine. Would you pay $1,000 for a DVD player that will last 20+ years?
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Of course they still work, both of those devices are infinitely simpler than a DVD player. Niether are a testament to excellent engineering.
That, however, was not the question. I'll rephrase it if it helps: If a company would guarantee that a DVD (or even Blu Ray) player would last 20 years, what's the maximum you would pay?
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It is called planned obsolescence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence [wikipedia.org]
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It is called planned obsolescence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence [wikipedia.org]
It's hard to lay the blame on manufacturers when people flock to the newest upgrade. Which.... gets back to my question: How much would you actually pay to get a 20-year DVD player? I bet the answer is none and the reason for that is you're thinking of going Blu-Ray or streaming or whatever new whiz-bang thing comes along.
The real word you're looking for is 'consumerism'.
Re:Let me say (Score:4, Funny)
Lets just admit I should never post on slashdot after going to a 5 hour wine tasting
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Insightful)
You paid the equivalent of $700 for that setup. Did you pay that for your current media or audio center? People just barely pay that for a game console with an expected life of less-than-5 years.
Yes, for the whole setup. A full stereo, not just a CD player. That included a tuner, turntable, 2 speakers, an amp, and control panels including an equalizer. The CD player was probably worth $200-$250 of that $700. And you would pay that today for a good Blu-ray player. Blu-ray now is at about the same point that CDs were when I bought in.
So your quote of $1000 for a DVD player is a huge and ridiculous exaggeration. Quality control does not increase price by 2 orders of magnitude, and old tech gets cheaper as factories tool up and familiarity is gained with the ins and outs of the format.
And I wasn't the only person that bought it.
True. They would not have become ubiquitous otherwise. However, that market really wasn't sustainable, was it? Not in light of how many more people paid for cheaper versions of it. As time goes by, the desire to upgrade these components will go up as new fancy ways to use digital processors become fashionable. Again, this is the market dictating this, not the manufacturers. If it were the latter, we'd still have all those little repair shops all over the place like we did in the 80's.
The market is quite sustainable. People haven't stopped buying gadgets. More people are able to afford them etc.
The reason that you had little repair shops all over the place was that it cost more to replace than to fix. One reason for that was that quality control hadn't been thrown out the window. Today a manufacturer will put out shoddy rubbish to save $2 a unit. Most customers would pay an extra $2 for something that worked properly and lasted so blaming the consumer is just ridiculous misdirection. The blame lies squarely with manufacturers who refuse to back the quality of their products and instead compete on price point. The first few shoddy products ruin that manufacturer's reputation and they find they can no longer compete on quality.
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I have never owned a dvd player without those features. I think you had particularly bad luck in your choice of players.
My current main dvd player is 7 years old, and we leave the discs in pretty much always. It powers down after an hour of idle I think.
(Toshiba btw).
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Is that really a use case that is going to cause a huge turnaround?
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Web 2.0 sucks too. Like now on slashdot if I feel like reading an article without logging in because I'm on a different computer or for whatever reason, I can't make the slider move so that I can see all the comments. I have to click on each one to expand it. But I like to read without having to opt in to read every comment. It's a lot more effort and detracts from what I want to do, which is concentrate on reading the comments (ALL the comments), without having to keep my hands on the mouse pad to click on
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He meant "modern programmers" in his second sentence. Pretty obvious.
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Don't you mean "read yourself when you type" ?
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Funny)
But the modern version would automatically update its Twitter account from space!
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Funny)
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In case you didn't know voyager 2 already does have a twitter account [twitter.com] which is updated regularly.
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the mindset back them was what really made it work. Back then, anything was possible, even expensive research unlikely to have any direct benefits.
I think what you really mean is that the Cold War funding climate made it possible for politicians to vote to fund those things. Today, with Moody's on the threshold of downgrading US credit, nearly every state running massive deficits and every penny of the Federal budget being fought over, you're damn right that no politician in the US is eager to fund "expensive research unlikely to have any direct benefits." And frankly that may not be a bad thing. Maybe one of those other countries that I keep hear is
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It may have been a less advanced toolset, but the mindset back them was what really made it work. Back then, anything was possible, even expensive research unlikely to have any direct benifits. Now? If it isn't going to make a profit next month, trash it. Fuck the modern era. We did more with slide rules and determination than we do now with modern technology.
Nope re the mindset back then. I was coding for living back then and the ratio of good developers to bad developers is still pretty much the same now. Go and read the Mythical Man Month. What's sad is not that 'we were better at this stuff in the good old days' but that we, as an industry, haven't learned how to do things better having had 30 years of practice.
Re:Let me say (Score:5, Funny)
1) A university system that wasn't designed to maximize profit therefore bringing in anyone into EE. Only actual engineers made it back then. The engineer working on the other system wasn't a dumbass.
2) Computers and software were simpler and easier to understand instead of the morass of chaotic, barely-functioning layers of unknown code we have today.
3) They had SPICE back then!
4) Plenty enough technology to do what was needed.
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And as we all know, spice is an important part of space travel.
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I was lucky to find a copy of Carl Sagan's book Murmurs of Earth in my local library years ago. It is a fantastic read and I would recommend it to anybody.
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And slide rules! Don't forget the slide rules.
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And slide rules! Don't forget the slide rules.
I won't. I was sitting in the coffee shop, figuring some stuff out with one just the other day.
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They also loved in an age where beating the Soviets in science and technology was considered more important than building the next iDink consumer device, or concocting some alchemical algorithm for market traders.
The best talent available to us is being wasted on pointless commercialism.
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Ah yes, the 1960s. Peace, man!
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You know, they weren't club-wielding savages in loincloths back then.
Stone knives and bearskins, son, stone knives and bearskins. And that's the way we liked it, too! None of this mamby-pamby object-oriented whoopsiedoodle; we entered our code changes by tapping out ones and zeros under a microscope (optical, of course, you insensitive clod!) using a cat's whisker. Why, I'd give you a real old-school lesson in how-to-get-it-done-and-done-right-the-first-time-ness, but I've gotta go chase some darned kids outta my yard!!
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we entered our code changes by tapping out ones and zeros under a microscope (optical, of course, you insensitive clod!) using a cat's whisker
You had cats?
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OBL: When I was a boy ... (Score:3)
When I was a Boy by Frank Hayes:
Videos:
Faster Paced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnUFfy9ZhoE [youtube.com]
Really Slow Paced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1fBd7UbQPA [youtube.com]
Lyrics:
http://www.stevemacdonald.org/lyrics/wiwab.html [stevemacdonald.org]
When I was a boy our Nintendo
Was carved from an old Apple tree
And we used garden hose to connect it
To our steam-powered color tv.
But it still beat that ancient Atari
'Cuz I almost went blind, don'tcha know,
Playing Breakout and Pong on a video game
Hooked up to the radio.
And we walked twenty miles to t
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A university system that wasn't designed to maximize profit
- false. The university system was always designed to maximize profits. What they did not have was government giving loans left right and center, thus increasing the demand in nominal terms, while destroying the currency and forcing tuition fees up, while simultaneously driving savings and thus the investment capital out to other places, that wanted that capital more and weren't punishing people for success in business. The only driving force behind innovation is need that comes out of the market and caus
Re:Let me say (Score:4, Informative)
More then likely written in pure Assembler or Machine Code. Hand Debugged, Hand Optimized back when software engineers were programmers in the very real sense of the word.
Although unconfirmed AFAIK the whole thing is run on a RCA CDP1802, also known as the COSMAC (Complementary Symmetry Monolithic Array Computer) [wikipedia.org] and at this moment the entire spacecraft runs on +/- 275 watts of power at 30 Volts DC which is pretty damn amazing.
Put that in your god damn JVM/Python/PHP/Erlang/Lang De Jur pipe and smoke it ya damn weenies!
AMAZING Nuclear Power (RTGs) (Score:3)
Wow, 275 watts of power FOR THIRTY YEARS (actually I think it was substantially higher at the beginning, exponential decay and everything).
This is in a device with no moving parts, about the size of a microwave oven (I think, but maybe that's just one of them), able to operate in interstellar cold and Jupiter's radiation belts, not to mention the vibration and acceleration of liftoff. Oh, and it has to survive an explosion on the pad or accidental re-entry!
If these things were cheap enough, we could use th
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I am not quite sure what you are talking about in terms of "toolset they had 30 years ago". There have been relatively few relevant improvements since then. The only thing that is better is computer processing power, and that is very much a mixed blessing.
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Re:Let me say (Score:5, Informative)
I know (Score:2)
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I saw it on Star Trek, TMP!
...and as long as it stays on Star Trek and doesn't move to "Voyager: Excrement my dad says", it'll be just fine!
won't fly forever (Score:5, Interesting)
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Several of the compositions on the record are protected by master rights and were licensed specifically for the record, which is why you can't buy a CD of the Voyager Golden Record -- the recordings aren't licensed for sale.
RIAA doesn't own the copyright to any music.
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RIAA doesn't own the copyright to any music.
Just the souls of many unfortunate artists.
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When space travel become cheap and safe enough, they will be seen as collectible items, and will be recovered.
I kind of have my doubts that it's ever going to be cheap to get out to where they are. Even if we reach the point (and I sincerely hope we do) where we're zipping around the inner planets the way we currently fly around the world, catching up with the Voyagers would be on a whole different order of difficulty. And the longer it takes us to to develop the technology, the farther away they get ...
not yet (Score:4)
Re:not yet (Score:5, Informative)
You're probably thinking of the Oort Cloud.
From the wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
In August 2009, Voyager 1 was over 16.5 terameters (16.5×1012 meters, or 16.5×109 km, 110.7 AU, or 10.2 billion miles) from the Sun, and thus had entered the heliosheath region between solar wind's termination shock and the heliopause (the limit of the solar wind). Beyond heliopause is the bow shock of the interstellar medium, beyond which is interstellar space, a vast area where the Sun's influence gives way to that of the Milky Way galaxy in general. At this distance, light from the Sun takes over 16 hours to reach the probe.
The Kuiper belt [wikipedia.org] extends from 30 AU to 55 AU.
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The end of the heliopause is sometimes considered the end of the solar system. Any Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud objects further out are blasted by the galactic winds at that point, they experience nothing from the solar system bar gravity and even Alpha Centauri experiences that.
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Every two years or so Voyager \d crosses the (heliosheath | heliopause | bow shock | edge of the cosmic wind | edge of the Oort cloud | ... ) and this arbitrary boundary is used as a pretext to run off a press release.
Nothing... (Score:2)
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I don't know about "nothing" - we have zero knowledge of the galactic winds. We can't even be sure that the probes won't hit a glass dome.
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We can't even be sure that the probes won't hit a glass dome.
Maybe they already did a long time ago and the "Voyager Anomaly" is just a floating-point-error in the Matrix...
How long till (Score:2)
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As of April 21, 2011, Voyager 1 was about 116.825 AU, or about 10,843,294,886 miles or about 0.00183 of a light-year from the Sun. [...] Voyager 1's current relative velocity to the sun is 17.061 km/s, or 61,452 kilometres per hour (38,185 mph). This calculates as 3.599 AU per year, about 10% faster than Voyager 2. At this velocity, 73,600 years would pass before reaching the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, were the spacecraft traveling in the direction of that star. [...]
Voyager 1 is not heading towards any particular star, but in about 40,000 years it will pass within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis. That star is generally moving towards our Solar System at about 119 kilometers per second.
You might want to take that with a grain of salt, though, since there's an incorrect calculation in part of the paragraph I didn't quote and 11 significant figures is very suspiciously precise in the miles figure. Also, the 73,600 figure doesn't agree with my own calculations in the hundreds place. But I imagine what I quoted is pretty close to the truth.
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a tall funny man noted that (Score:2)
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Celestia (Re:How long till) (Score:2)
I've found that most people can't grasp how big space is. I can on a intellectual level but most people don't seem to understand just how distance even the closest stars are. I've met a few who thought a lightyear was the distance it took up to travel in a year in a modern space shuttle. But wow Voyager is going itno the black, I hope it doesn't turn into a Reaver.
Indeed. I always felt like I kind of "got it" on an intellectual level of matching big numbers to huge differences. But I realized that I didn't really get it until I started playing with Celestia [shatters.net], a free space simulator that lets you move around the universe using actual astronomical data. Everything is to scale in that program, and it really does give you a feel for just how big and empty space really is.
I highly recommend playing with it, for anyone who really wants to try to grasp the hugeness of space.
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It does, however, assume no significant transfer of momentum from the galactic winds to the probe, even over a 40,000 year period. I've a real hard time with that, but sadly I can't find any cryogenics facility with a 40,000 year warranty. Even then, posting the results on Slashdot might be difficult.
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Can anyone do the math as to how long it will take the probe to reach it's next solar system? I realize the amount of time will be insane and the probe will be most likely (read definitely) dead by then but still it's interesting.
At its current speed, it would take tens of thousands of years to get to the nearest star. But since it's not aimed at any particular star, it would probably take many millions of years before it actually enters another solar system by chance.
I assume that the probe will gradually be eroded away over millions of years by interstellar dust, gas and radiation. I've never seen an estimate of how long it will remain recognizable, though. I wonder if it will actually ever reach another star system while it still
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I wonder - 4 billion years later when (if?) our sun explodes, will it be far away enough to escape being destroyed? .
Sure. Its far enough away now.
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Re:How long till (Score:4, Funny)
Forever is a pretty long time, If something is physically possible, eventually it will happen.
I know of several supermodels that will disagree.
Voyagers, thank you for what you have given me (Score:5, Interesting)
the brain waves of a young woman in love (Score:2)
I'm glad they didn't decide to record the brain waves of a young *man* in love... those would certainly make the aliens skeptical about ever visiting us.
"What did we learn from this Golden Record?"
"From what we can tell, we're dealing with a race that can't concentrate, constantly listens to The Smiths, worries about its hair looking right, broods pensively throughout the day, and fears never knowing the right things to say."
"On second thought, let's head out to Ursa Minor and see if we can find any intelli
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Obligatory Star Trek Motion Picture Reference (Score:2)
How Long ? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not aimed at any other solar system, and the times involved are such that we can't predict what's going to happen very well.
In places like Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] you will read things like
"in about 40,000 years [Voyager 1] will pass within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis."
but this is highly misleading. 1.6 light years is almost 1000 times further away from that star than either Voyager is from the Sun right now, so it won't in any sense be "in" that stellar system.
Worse, stars travel (relative to each other) at ~ 0.001 c, so even in 40,000 years all the nearby stars will move around by 10's of light years. We can estimate stellar velocities reasonably well, but their accelerations are very poorly measured, and so, after a few million years at most, we really don't know which star will go where.
The bottom line is, it will be millions of years before any of these spacecraft get as close to another star as they are now, and we have no idea which star that will be... ... unless, of course, our descendants pick them up and put them in a museum somewhere, which is what I would predict.
And the response from the rest of the galaxy is... (Score:2)
why not a space shuttle? (Score:2)
Am I the only person who read this, then remembering the decision of how to store the retiring shuttles, put two and two together? Perhaps even with one or more volunteers traveling some initial portion of the final leg, perhaps aimed for a swing around mars and a cargo bay full of food and water? Seriously??
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It would be like driving a flat water fishing boat across the Atlantic ocean. The shuttles are highly specialised vehicles designed for low earth orbit, and nothing else. Apollo on the other hand...
They may not last. (Score:2)
Re:Just wait (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just wait (Score:4)
The real challenge will be dealing with the alien race of machines who interface with it and set out on a destructive journey toward Earth in order to contact its creator.
Is V'Ger tied in with the Borg? (Score:2)
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Personally, I try to forget ST:Voyager. Oh wait, you're talking about something different...
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According to "The Return" by William Shatner, yes...
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/V'Ger#Background_information [memory-alpha.org]
Makes more sense anyways than when they tried to explain why Klingons looked different in the train-wreck that was ST:Enterprise...
Re:What exists beyond? (Score:5, Informative)
Radio Lab has a great episode [radiolab.org] interviewing Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow, regarding her part in developing the sound recordings for the voyager mission. She beautifully captures the art and love inherent in such an awesome act of science and exploration. If you have a free few minutes, you won't be sorry you listened.
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Best part is that if the tube cracks because of some thermal stress from years of heat cycles... Still in a vacuum! bonus
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Hate to break this to you, but almost all high-power RF transmitters at these sorts of frequencies use vacuum tubes, space or otherwise.
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That was a Pioneer -- the Voyagers don't have pictures of nekkid people bolted directly to the side.