Nasa's Voyager 2 Probe 'Leaves the Solar System' (bbc.co.uk) 151
The Voyager 2 probe, which left Earth in 1977, has become the second human-made object to leave our Solar System. From a report: It was launched 16 days before its twin craft, Voyager 1, but that probe's faster trajectory meant that it was in "the space between the stars" six years before Voyager 2. The news was revealed at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in Washington. And chief scientist on the mission, Prof Edward Stone, confirmed it.
He said both probes had now "made it into interstellar space" and that Voyager 2's date of departure from the Solar System was 5 November 2018. On that date, the steady stream of particles emitted from the Sun that were being detected by the probe suddenly dipped. This indicated that it had crossed the "heliopause" -- the term for the outer edge of the Sun's protective bubble of particles and magnetic field. And while its twin craft beat it to this boundary, the US space agency says that Voyager 2 has a working instrument aboard that will provide "first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space".
He said both probes had now "made it into interstellar space" and that Voyager 2's date of departure from the Solar System was 5 November 2018. On that date, the steady stream of particles emitted from the Sun that were being detected by the probe suddenly dipped. This indicated that it had crossed the "heliopause" -- the term for the outer edge of the Sun's protective bubble of particles and magnetic field. And while its twin craft beat it to this boundary, the US space agency says that Voyager 2 has a working instrument aboard that will provide "first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space".
Maybe not (Score:5, Funny)
second human-made oblect to leave the solar system
I wonder if there isn't some chunk of arrowhead embedded in an asteroid smashed off the Earth in some titanic collision.
Re: Maybe not (Score:1)
Not even a remote possibility. Last time that happened was long before humans existed (think dinosaurs) let alone humans who had advanced to making stone into an arrowhead.
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Re:Maybe not (Score:5, Funny)
That's odd. I searched for "meteorite" in the Bible and there weren't any results.
Did you search the original Hollerith version, or were you using the updated Unicode version?
You've got to remember that there have been several translations (through EBCDIC and ASCII, with a short diversion through UTF8), and there's no direct translation for "meteorite" (the closest would be "comet" (U+2604, U+FE0F) or "shooting star" (U+1F320)).
Gotta be careful when electronically searching ancient texts!
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That doesn't sound like a meteorite burst to you?
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Genesis 19:24-25:
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.
That doesn't sound like a meteorite burst to you?
You'd have to be quite delusional to think that referred a meteorite rather than a volcano. "Sulphur" FFS!
Also, 5000BC is far too early for any biblical influence. The Hebrew language itself only goes back to around 1000BC.
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Quite a lot of stories in the Ancient Testament are basically lifted from older stories from the Middle East. Like how Noah's Ark is taken from an episode in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In another example, the Vedas (Hindu sacred teachings), used to be transmitted orally for several thousand years until they were written down much later.
A lot of the knowledge we have from Greek myths is also a transcription of oral transmitted stories including Homer's Illyad and the Trojan War. The Indian Mahabharata may be anot
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You didn't use the GoogleWebs properly. I found about a dozen. [openbible.info]
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Seems weird that an almighty being would need a hammer, but who am I to argue with History.
He's not almighty. He can't defeat Iron Chariots.
"And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."
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If it is "he drave", then the lower case he is refering to Judah not Lord.
Lord would be refered to with uppercase "He"
Still, funny comment/observation
If you don't like history, just rewrite it!
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But given Earth's escape velocity and dense atmosphere, it's extremely unlikely.
"unlikely" just means it happens less often. The dinosaur-killer would have sent countless tonnes of earth-rock, some life-bearing, to Mars and beyond.
Maybe none in the last 100ky to carry arrow-heads?
BTW, Earth's escape velocity is not the limiting factor. To escape the solar system, allowing for earth's orbital velocity, you need to be expelled from the surface at more than double that speed.
The Voyager probes reduced this by doing gravity-assist flybys.
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To escape the solar system, allowing for earth's orbital velocity, you need to be expelled from the surface at more than double that speed.
That's actually almost meaningless. You can no more achieve 17 km/s than you can achieve 11 km/s. Basically the problem is that the combination of high velocity and dense atmosphere at low altitude AND passive flight after ejection means you need to reach a HIGH initial velocity with a LARGE solid object (to survive the atmospheric exit), but that's only possible with a truly massive impact as you point out. In addition, besides hitting Earth in the first place, it would also probably have to hit a place wh
Re: Maybe not (Score:2)
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A lot of cultures have mythologies regarding a large, devastating flood covering the world to lend credence to the idea that there was a significant flooding event at some point in human history. Now, whether it was a global event or just one far enough back to affect common ancestors is up for debate.
Well, flooding has happened all over the world many times- in the old days before dams and river controls the paths of rivers didn't even stay put. The history of China is strongly linked with the Yellow River suddenly flooding and it's course moving hundreds of miles.
When all the world that you know about (which could only be an area of 10 square miles in an era when most people travelled by foot, not even horseback) quite possibly once every few generations they WOULD experience a flood that, to them, l
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Was there ever a time when Homo Sapiens traveled that little? The natives here regularly traveled to the interior (300+ miles) by foot to trade as well as paddling to Hawaii to get laid, not to mention the 10,000+ miles they traveled from Africa and then there's their cousins who went on to the southern tip of S. America.
The America's were covered with trails used by the natives and I'd assume likewise everywhere else.
There were some huge floods at the end of the ice age as well which may have been remember
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Was there ever a time when Homo Sapiens traveled that little? The natives here regularly traveled to the interior (300+ miles) by foot to trade as well as paddling to Hawaii to get laid, not to mention the 10,000+ miles they traveled from Africa and then there's their cousins who went on to the southern tip of S. America.
The America's were covered with trails used by the natives and I'd assume likewise everywhere else.
There were some huge floods at the end of the ice age as well which may have been remembered.
Nomadic people obviously travelled more, but even they probably didn't travel far in the midst of flooding and storms.
I daresay the majority of people in Western Civilizations prior to 1600 (unless they were military, clergy, or traders) probably never travelled more than 20 miles from their home in their entire lives, they had no reason to. When everything around them was flooded I daresay they travelled even less. :)
In the era between proper civilization but after farming was discovered (so less migratio
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Or of an interchange of legends/stories between cultures. Or an innate fear of flooding that makes a story about floods popular.
The idea of a worldwide flood doesn't really make sense.
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The idea of a worldwide flood doesn't really make sense.
So there's no need to worry about rising sea levels then? ;-)
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Not like the sea is going to raise that much. Earthquakes lowering the land would be more notable and stick to the psyche compared to a slow raising of sea level.
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The whole central valley of California was under several feet of water during floods in 1862 [wikipedia.org]. If you take a 1000 year period anywhere in the world there's bound to have been at least one flood that covered the entire extent of the known world as the world was known in ancient times. Add on the tendency of storytellers to exaggerate about how much snow there was uphill both ways to school in their youth and it'd be amazing if any culture didn't have a world-drowning flood myth.
Re:Maybe not (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if there isn't some chunk of arrowhead embedded in an asteroid smashed off the Earth in some titanic collision.
1) A collision of that magnitude (large enough to create ejecta) would likely be a mass extinction event. Humans have yet to experience one of those (from an asteroid).
2) Other planets (especially Jupiter) would likely ensnare the newly created asteroid. Getting past them once is very unlikely to start with but getting past them, being just the right size to not cause a mass extinction event but large enough to create ejecta, then have the ejecta (now asteroid) getting past those same planets and all in the span in the last 100k years (hell, I'll give you all 400k years for proto-humans) and there being no recognizable evidence? Finding a unicorn being ridden by a leprechaun seems more likely.
The chances of this happening are slim to start with but the chances of this happening while humanity existed and there being no clear evidence of it are beyond infinitesimally small. It's a neat thought experiment but that's all it is.
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Other planets (especially Jupiter) would likely ensnare the newly created asteroid.
This incredibly stupid. The chances of a random object shot out from earth being caught in Jupiter's gravity well is essentially zero. Space is big!
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The chances of a random object shot out from earth being caught in Jupiter's gravity well is essentially zero. Space is big!
Sure, space is big but planets are moving very fast (relatively). It's like trying to stick your finger in an active industrial fan and pulling it out before a fan blade gets you. You're going to lose a digit.
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However, the delta-v [wikipedia.org] needed to barely traverse from Mars to Earth is only 2.9 km/s. The delta-v needed to leave the solar system from Earth is a minimum 12.3 km/s, or 18x as much energy. And that's on top of the higher ejecta velocity needed to escape Earth's gravity well (more than twice that of Mars).
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I have heard other arguments claiming it was a volcanic eruption, kinda like the one in Pompey, and that the description makes more sense that way.
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s/Pompey/Pompeii
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A assuming a volcanic eruption provided enough energy to escape Earth's gravity, whatever was being ejected would be subjected to a huge amount of frictional heat. Also, it's not going to have a whole lot of velocity and it has billions of miles to travel, so this would need to happen a LONG time ago (and what the hell were they doing atop a mountain/volcano?). Since ancient arrowheads are made of rock, the frictional heat of the atmosphere would cause them to explode, much like meteorites do entering Ear
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I wonder if there isn't some chunk of arrowhead embedded in an asteroid smashed off the Earth in some titanic collision.
Pretty sure that's all at the bottom of the ocean.
41 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:41 years (Score:5, Informative)
2 years to get from Earth to Jupiter, 2 more to Saturn, 4.5 to Uranus, 3.5 to Neptune, and an astonishing 29 to reach interstellar space. Truly amazing.
Agreed. Also amazing that it is still operating after all these years and harsh conditions. That was some seriously good engineering done 40+ years ago.
Re:41 years (Score:5, Interesting)
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The oldest company in the world was founded some time around 750 AD. That any company involved in building Voyager no longer exists is abysmal.
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Re:41 years (Score:4, Interesting)
Though a screamer at 36K mph, a fraction of a snail's pace in terms getting to another star.
Yeah. The moon was hard. Mars is hard. But going interstellar... even if SpaceX built the BFR, boosted it to the max in a high elliptic orbit, put another stage on top instead of the BFS and sent it on the Grand Tour of gravity slingshots (which won't happen again until 2150, but that's still a small problem) it'll go from 40000 years like Voyager to what, like 10000 years? Chemical rockets are almost like breeding horses to reach the moon. But I do hope they'll limp humans to Mars in my lifetime...
At that speed we are going nowhere. (Score:2)
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Re:41 years (Score:5, Funny)
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A space probe made of Twinkies, piloted by cockroaches.
No cockroaches. If we're settling a planet- I don't want cockroaches sent there to populate it first. Earth 2.0 needs to be void of cockroaches, otherwise what's the point of leaving earth?
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A space probe made of Twinkies, piloted by cockroaches.
No cockroaches. If we're settling a planet- I don't want cockroaches sent there to populate it first. Earth 2.0 needs to be void of cockroaches, otherwise what's the point of leaving earth?
Getting away from the people who thought Pee Wee Herman movies were a good idea, obviously.
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> otherwise what's the point of leaving earth
Getting away from Republicans... oh wait, I see your point about cockroaches. nvm.
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> otherwise what's the point of leaving earth
Getting away from Republicans... oh wait, I see your point about cockroaches. nvm.
Obviously you're joking... but... you can't get away from them that easily. Studies have shown that lottery winners usually go on to become right wing politically after winning money regardless of their political affiliation before winning the lottery. The reason is probably obvious, if you have a lot of money you're more likely to want to protect it, rather than live in an egalitarian society.
The study only showed lottery winners, (it's easier to track them than the population at large), but it would sug
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Socialism is on the left,fascism is on the right,NAZI's were right wing fascists. Because you disagree with the entire rest of the world EXCEPT other self loathing incels in the US doesn't make you correct, it just makes you a fucking idiot.
https://www.snopes.com/news/20... [snopes.com]
So... grow a brain and realize people don't hate you because you can't get laid, they hate you because you're a fucking NAZI asswipe. The biggest problem in the US is the
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The fastest man made object will be the modern Parker probe at 430,000 mph. That is 0.0006% the speed of light. To get to Alpha Centauri it would take 6810 years. There is no point trying to go to Alpha Centauri. Nothing would make the trip.
There's an ambitious, but possibly feasible concept for this, with R&D happening now: the Breathrough Starshot [breakthrou...atives.org] initiative. Short form: many small probes with solar sails being driven by lasers.
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Still like to know how they're planning on communicating with Earth
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NASA should be written in ALL CAPS since it is an acronym
So is laser, taser, radar, sonar, scuba, base jumping, care packages, (giga/mega)flop, Pakistan, snafu, gulag, zip code, modem...
TS Eliot (Score:2)
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
-- TS Eliot, The Dry Salvages
[Ed Stone added this quote to the last slide of his Voyager-Neptune talk, at the Fall 1989 AGU meeting.]
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In the future a machine society will build it a giant space cloud with a leggy bald Indian hottie in a bathrobe!
V'ger
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Agreed. I understand there's a Public Relations consideration in these announcements, but the real, final, inarguable milestone would be connected to the gravitational influence. It will have escaped the solar system when it's at a place where an object couldn't be held in orbit around the Sun. (How far away is that anyway?)
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Assuming an infinitely slow orbit is possible, I'd expect the limit to be at the midpoint between the sun and the nearest celestial body... so a couple of light years, give or take.
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Agreed. I understand there's a Public Relations consideration in these announcements, but the real, final, inarguable milestone would be connected to the gravitational influence. It will have escaped the solar system when it's at a place where an object couldn't be held in orbit around the Sun. (How far away is that anyway?)
The suns gravitational influence ends at the outside edge of the heliosphere, which is about 100 AU from the sun. This is what most everyone labels as "the edge of the solar system"
The oort cloud starts about 10000 AU from the sun and is not under the suns influence in any way.
It also kind of makes the anon parent post a bit silly.
Any small or large value for 'solar system' will still be FAR closer to the sun than the oort cloud is.
Also keep in mind the oort cloud is insanely thick, starting just under 100
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The heliosphere in the region dominated by the solar wind from the sun. The sun's gravitational influence extends far beyond that. The Oort cloud is under the gravitational influence of the sun, though a lot of it is rather tenuous which is why other objects that pass nearby like stars can dislodge objects in the Oort cloud and send some of the into the solar system where we usually call them comets.
To answer the original question, if there wasn't any other objects in the universe, the Sun's gravitational
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Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html [nasa.gov]
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Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html [nasa.gov]
This artist's concept puts solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is in astronomical units, with each set distance beyond 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. One AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun, is about 30 AU.
Informally, the term "solar system" is often used to mean the space out to the last planet. Scientific consensus, however, says the solar system goes
It'll be back... (Score:2)
Amazing! (Score:4, Insightful)
This really is an amazing thing. And I mean that in the truest sense, not in an OMG-this-pumpkin-spice-frappachino-is-amazing kind of way. Sadly, I am guessing most people won't even read this story because it's not trash news.
I really liked this from the article: "Voyager 1 will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years, even though it is moving at such great speed. "
It's fascinating and hard to comprehend.
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Re: Amazing! (Score:4, Informative)
You missed your chance to quote Douglas Adams.
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
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Technology has improved so much since then. We should send something new up for the next generation.
Why? Is there anything of use to look at way out there?
It's not like we are going to go any faster. Delta-V (speed) is produced the old fashioned way still. You burn rocket fuel and/or slingshot around a planet to get moving. I'm thinking that there are better uses for our exploration dollars than heading into interstellar space. I'd like to see some more exploration of Saturn's moons myself, more poking around Mars, or even heading inward toward Venus and Mercury might be interesting too.
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Did you miss New Horizons [wikipedia.org]?
If you missed the Pluto flyby there will be another flyby of a Kuiper Belt Object ((486958) 2014 MU) on January 1, 2019.
Moving at 36,373 mph and heading toward the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It will be the 3rd man made object to leave the solar system.
Voyager 2 hasn't really left the solar system (Score:4, Informative)
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I've always been curious about how the sun's gravity can affect objects so far away from itself as the Oort cloud. Consider that I am thinking in terms of distance versus force where the intensity of the force decreases with distance, at such distances the intensity of the gravitational force should be really really small right?
It probably doesn't matter how small the force is as long as it is stronger than the other outside forces of gravity from other bodies. One billionth of a G in force is still stronger than nothing and if it is competing with "statistically" nothing it wins the tug of war.
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Inertia doesn't care about the gravity from the 'void' beyond the solar system. Out in the oort, objects are orbiting so slowly that the micro-gravity from the sun still keeps them. The gravity from the void beyond is a tiny fraction comparatively. So this is about inertia vs gravity, not local gravity vs interstellar gravity.
Also consider that the oort cloud has not been observed. 'cloud' might be a very optimistic description of what orbits out there, if anything. A single icy body out there could be
Only to be shot down hundreds of years later... (Score:2)
...by Klingons.
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Obligatory XKCD (Score:2)
Oort cloud? (Score:1)
Have either of them made it past the Oort cloud?
No? When will that happen?
So you're saying there's some distinction between "leaving the solar system" and "leaving the neighborhood of objects which orbit the sun"?
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Have either of them made it past the Oort cloud?
No? When will that happen?
So you're saying there's some distinction between "leaving the solar system" and "leaving the neighborhood of objects which orbit the sun"?
They probably won't be the first past the Oort cloud. I'm sure we will have vessels that can travel fast enough to overtake Voyager in time to beat them past that distance.
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So you're saying there's some distinction between "leaving the solar system" and "leaving the neighborhood of objects which orbit the sun"?
Yes.. Interstellar space is defined as being beyond the Solar Wind's reach; Where the particles ejected by the Sun reach equal pressure with Interstellar space. Gravity influences objects at much greater distances. So you can orbit the Sun in Interstellar space.
More tools this time through (Score:5, Informative)
Voyager 2 has an additional instrument [nasa.gov] that Voyager 1 lacked during its crossing:
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(Warning: Pedantic wording discussion ahead)
I admit "lacked" is vague, but it was made clear in the quote below it. How would you rework my statement & quote context so that such was clear yet brief?
If one's neighbor asked, "Do you have a hammer", but one only had a broken hammer that was likely beyond repair, typically they'd simply reply, "Sorry, I don't".
I more thorough answer would have been, "I only have a broken hammer". Would the neighbor want the fuller second answer? It depends on the audience.
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Slashdot is OCD school.
selected comments from reddit (Score:2)
FactualNeutronStar writes:
It didn't actually leave the Solar system. It entered "interstellar space" which means the Solar wind is basically negligible, but it is still well within the influence of the Sun's gravity. It's similar to saying that a rocket has left Earth because it escaped the atmosphere, despite the fact that it is still very much influenced by the Earth.
Classified0 writes:
Voyager 2 is travel
Obligatory xkcd (Score:3)
https://xkcd.com/1189/ [xkcd.com]
Anyone Else Still Around? (Score:2)
In the late 1960s, I was employed as a programmer by a subcontractor at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. That was before the Voyager satellites were launched. I wrote part of the software that would later be used to track and collect data from the Voyager ssatellites. I also wrote part of the software used by the project management to schedule tasks in the development and launches of the satellites.
Is there anyone else reading this who participated in the Voyager project before they were l
It will be back, someday. (Score:2)
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Yes, but it was never actually moving that fast after it left earth. It launched at 16km/s relative to earth, but lost much of that velocity simply escaping earth's gravitational pull. While it's true that 29.7km/s of that can be taken from earth's speed, it would have to accellerate an *ADDITIONAL* 13km/s beyond that to reach solar escape velocity, and while it launched at 16km/s relative to earth, it lost about half of that just getting into s
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I fitted it with shields and an energy bomb from a Cobra Mk III.
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And don't come back!
Old movies aside, I don't think we are in any danger of that.