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Farthest Human-Made Object: First Quarter Century
An anonymous reader writes "The NASA Astrobiology Magazine reports today the 25th anniversary of the Voyager I launch, now the farthest human-made object at 93 Sun-Earth distances (93 AU), or 12 light-hours away. Expected battery life to 2020. The fascinating part is that gold record of civilization, which is a strange audio mix of sentimental kisses [wav file, let ET phone home that way] and perhaps the most dated picture of DNA. Some progress there. Voy 1 will likely confuse even modern earthlings-- much less ET. Case in point: In 2002, can we understand that 70's show, when the Polish greeting memorialized as "Welcome, creatures from beyond the outer world"? Unlike those ET creatures we meet daily from the inner world?"
So what, they still don't last forever.
...in point: I some want.
That's gotta be one the more inarticulate(sp?) entries for a while, long time.
-cheers!
In slightly related news, NASA has lost contact with Contour, the Comet Nucleus Tour probe.
Money for nothing, pix for free
In about 300 years an advanced extraterrestrial civilization will come across it and think "Ha, what a primitive civilization, THIS is the extent of their technology... hey, they have lots of water and nitrogen, let's go conquer them." And when they get here they're met by the Global Planetary Defense System with its neutron shield and highly accurate laser weaponry instead, manned by fourth generation genetically-engineered Warrior Humans who kill without mercy but can be easily controlled.
Wish I was gonna be around to watch all this.
Get us thinking about the bandwidth of an inverted umbrella doesnit?
But, what really makes me think is if only a race with wonderous healling powers can come with audio encoding in sawdisks, or is the healing powers were developed after they discovered that they can encode huge...I mean *HUGE* amounts of sounds in a sawdisk.
Think about the ipods...
The fact that Voyager is now 12 light *hours* away really puts things into perspective for me. I'm not much of a space nut but I know that the distance from earth to the nearest stars (apart from our sun) is measured in light *years* so it's humbling to realise that even our furthest reach is trivial in the grand scheme of things. We haven't even stepped out of the house yet, nevermind explored the neighbourhood. (That sounds a bit like a put-down but it isn't. I think Voyager is an awesome achievement.)
Why? I still believe it's a rather good road-show. It could be much more outdated. All the information containted there is still very much valid. Breast-feeding is still normal practise :) Maybe seeing a breast just scares the nerds and that's why it confused you? :) *no offense*
I wouldn't worry about ETs not understanding us, looking at the pictures from the 70's. Our world hasn't changed that much really, from an outsider point of view. If the ETs can figure out what the dna picture means, I bet it doesn't matter if it represents our knowledge from 1970's or 2020's.
Why is the probe running on batteries? Is it even possible to use solar power that far from the sun? What does it use energy for anyway? Is it transmitting something back to earth?
It will drift into space, silent, waiting for someone to pick it up, hopefully it won't burn into the atmosphere of other planets.
12 light years would require it to fly at ½ the speed of light, which is not technichally feasible (unfortunately!)
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
considering it was going nowhere near Mars.
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On August 20, 1977, the compact disk, the microwave oven, and the fax machine were communication tools that could only be glimpsed on the technological horizon.
I'm probably going to regret asking this, but how can a microwave oven be used as a communication tool?
Assessing their key radio-isotope generators that power the on-board battery, Massey evaluates: "We don't run out of electrical power until about 2020", or at least for Voyager I, around 43 years towards its lifetime of some communication with its originating star, Sol, and its home planet, the Earth.
Looks like the isotope's power the battery.
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As BBC reported yesterday, in 2012 or so, Voyager 1 is predicted to cross the heliopause, the boundry at which time it *really* will leave our solar system.
Pretty neat for a piece of 1970's technology.
I have a question, why didn't we power the Mars Pathfinder rover by nuclear? Were they afraid that if it crashed into the planet, it would cause some nuclear fall out?
Looks like it was solar/battery http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/roverpwr/power.html
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When eminent biologist and author Lewis Thomas was asked what message he would choose to send from Earth into outer space in the Voyager spacecraft, he answered, "I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach." After a pause, he added, "But that would be boasting."
...and perhaps the most dated picture of DNA
Huh? Unless something changed recently, all the details illustrated in the DNA diagram are still as valid now as they were in the 70s. Is the story submitter upset because the double helix isn't animated, spinning slowly around, backlit by an offscreen purple fluorescent light source with meaningless reams of genetic code flashing past in the background like in a million bad sci-fi movies?
You'll still find a very similar style of diagram in any molecular biology textbook.
The BBC are reporting that they've found the probe orbiting the sun... No comets then ...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Do you all there know languages like the one who put there the voice of woman speaking Polish? She greeted, in perfectly pronounced Polish, the creatures that live after death, like ghosts, spectres and other Nazguls. Polish language difficult is, heh? Or the translation expensive too much?
Well actually one of the problems I have is the ridiculous distance for an AU. I'd think it would have made more sense to make an AU 100 Millions miles or 1 billion miles so as to make calculations easier. Then they can simply say Earth is 0.93 AU or 0.093 AU. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the current choice for the distance is kinda dumb.
I agree that the voyager is a nice thing to be there, but even a brick (4000 bc technology...:) would fly to alpha centauri if given enough time. What would be really neat is that if it would still actually do something.
Yes. "The planet" in question being Earth. If a nuclear-powered device explodes on launch, or in low orbit, it's "not a good thing". At the very least you'll get radioactive debris spread over a wide area.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Ohh, that's what it means. I understood the whole sentence as the origin of this confusion. IMHO, the whole article was confusing, not the data in voyager.
Pretty neat for a piece of 1970's technology.
Not really. I mean, the journey it made, the navigation around the planets to gain more speed was pretty impressive, but in my view it is not impressive to leave to solar system. You see, on the next Shuttle flight they could bring a 16th century vase, and hurl it into space. Give it a few years, and it will too leave the solar system, but is that neat, or impressive?
But is seems as though this heliopause is something more concrete. The article goes on to say:
Weird. Is it just me, or does this sound suspiciously like an old Star Trek script?
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
Doesn't the disc on Voyager feature an introduction by then UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim giving greetings from Earth?
How odd that the first human voice any aliens who could work the disc will hear is the voice of a former Nazi alleged to have taken part in war crime atrocities in the then Yugoslavia...
"Information wants to be paid"
Often scientists talk about how the universe is expanding. The concept of expansion itself demands that a boundary be present. And boundaries demark two regions, one within and one beyond. Yet nobody dares mention what is beyond the universe.
All these contradictions just tell us one thing. Alot has to be undone about our stake of knowledge before we can begin to truely understand.
Our current state of knowledge is similar to the days before Galeleo, when people thought the world was flat and you could reach the end of the world.
My 0.02
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
That's a nice sentence fragment you've written. Try full sentences next time. You might like them.
Neither, unless they strap a decent engine to the vase it would quickly get caught in Earth's gravity and vaporize on re-entry.
I don't know about anyone else but I get this quite erie vision of this thing out there with nothing around it for millions of miles.
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Obviously the universe isn't getting any larger. Everything inside of it is getting perportionaly smaller, evenly. That way it looks like the universe is getting bigger, but really not. It's just the size of a softball. really.
Besides, your analogy falls flat. I presume your point was that the age of the technology is irrelevant when it comes to leaving the solar system? Then consider this: what is it that pushed the 1970s technology of the Voyagers out of the solar system? Answer: more 1970s technology. If your 16th century vase were propelled by 16th century rockets, then your analogy would be valid.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
How fast is voyager traveling? Can we launch something that is faster? We've got 4.2 light YEARS to get to Proxima Centauri. 12 light HOURS are not going to cut it....
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
The power source on the Voyager I & II spacecrafts, like most other of the time, is called a PTG or plutonium thermoelectric generator. Basically you have a heat source (chunk of plutonium) surrounded by devices similar in construction to modern peltier coolers. The Seebeck effect (opposite of Peltier effect) allows electrical power to be generated by the temperature gradient across the device. Basically you have an electrical power source with no moving parts and a very long life (Plutonium has a decently large halflife). It's a shame that the environmentalists had a hissy fit in the 80's and 90's that blocked this very reliable technology from being used on modern spacecraft.
Why do we put our DNA in space like that? Its fucking stupid!!
What next? Displaying your social security number on the INTERNET? Yeah let all the terrorists and hackers grab your identity?
Well thats what we are doing in space, dumbass Nasa scientists should get their ass kicked seriously.
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You are an astoundingly brilliant troll, tps12. :) Out of respect for you, I'll bite. ;)
Since we already emit significant amounts of radio signals (among other things) into space, discerning our location would be rather trivial for a technologically advanced (or equal) race. Provided they possessed sufficient technology to travel here, abducting and studying human specimens would provide an infinite amount of knowledge in comparison to what is presented by the NASA probes.
Do you like German cars?
Voy 1 will likely confuse even modern earthlings-- much less ET. Case in point: In 2002, can we understand that 70's show, when the Polish greeting memorialized as "Welcome, creatures from beyond the outer world"? Unlike those ET creatures we meet daily from the inner world?
Is it just me, or did the article poster really stop making sense at this point?
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If its velocity is constant, when it dies in 2020 Voyager will have travelled less than a light-day from Earth. In the grand scheme of things, unless it really collides with something there is very little chance it will ever be noticed.
I dont care how many degrees you have, anyone ignorant enough to put pictures of us, our DNA, our sound files and everything into space deserves to have their asses kicked.
Its as stupid as me posting my social security number on slashdot, Here 002-32-4840
Here you go, please hiijack my identity, heres my credit card number too! James Spencer 220345035212
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How are they ever going to collect royalties on the gold record when it is played by extraterrestrials or copied by them?
I want all of the power and none of the responsibility.
Does this mean the goatse guy was actually an ALIEN ANAL PROBE?
Was image 26 where they got the idea? (http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/record_image
What have we done?
I mean damn of all things you could give a person why give them your DNA?
If aliens decide to take over the world, well theres a map, our DNA so they can change their genes to look exactly like us, some wav files so they can learn how we talk and maybe even our language from the greetings. What the hell are Nasa scientists doing? Where is the government and national security?
I mean damn shouldnt the NSA outlaw us putting DNA into space and maps, I dare the scientist who gave our DNA to aliens to post his social security number and credit card number on the internet in plain text!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Time and time again it has been proven that the housing and framework around these nuclear containers can easly take the force of an explosion as well as the fall back to earth. The idea that it 'might' still rupture is just stupid. Its like saying that a big asteroid might hit the earth so I am going to hide under my bed for the rest of my life. Come on, this kind of attitude is holding us back!
I'm a programmer, I don't have to spell correctly; I just have to spell consistently
Radio Signals allows them to know theres something going on at Earth. But they'd have to come here physically to see exactly what we were doing, They'd have to physicially land a ship, get out, snatch a few hundred of us of us from all diffrent races and capture our DNA.
They wouldnt be able to just hiijack our DNA from space, and come to earth looking just like us.
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All I hear is "Wytajcie, istoty zaswiatu," which would basically mean "Greetings, otherworldly beings," or better, "Greetings to beings from beyond Earth." The "outer world" is at best a rather poetic (or possibly condescending) translation.
I think it would be an equivalent of "Greetings, creatures from Outer Space," but they didn't intone it pretentiously, right before Ed Wood hovers the hubcap from a string and a theremin plays in the background as his boustier intrudes into the picture, as we are wont to do over here.
If you found this record do you think you could play it?
And extract the images from it?
I have the directions http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/messages/VgrC
and it would still be pretty tricky.
If I didnt have them I dont think I would have any chance of figuring out what this thing was.
-M
I agree.
This would be an interesting experiment to try. Replace the symbols with a consistent set of otherwise meaningless glyphs -- a kind of substitution cipher. Then hand it to a competent biologist and see how long it takes him to come up with a correct interpretation -- probably not more than a few minutes.
You can make it progressively harder, by eliminating certain assumptions about how to represent certain things. For example, you could replace the lines used to indicate chemical bonds with dots; 1 dot for a single bond, 2 for a double, three for a tripple. Also, the alternating 1/2 bond representation of carbon rings is a bit arbitrary; another symbol might be better to represent the nature of the bonds within the ring.
Nonetheless, when looked at by a person who studies organic chemistry, I don't think it would take long for him to figure out.
I think it is very likely that any intelligent life form which encounters Voyager is going to be carbon based; if the civilization has the technology to recover Voyager, it will no doubt have organic chemists. What it will tell them is that we, like they, are carbon based life forms. The exact function of DNA may take them some time to work out, and they may never be sure, but there is a good chance that somebody will conjecture that this is the mechanism by which our genetic inheritance is transferred (assuming they die and leave offspring!). It's a plausible guess, given that if you wanted to give a chemical picture of yourself, the mechanism of genetics would be a high priority.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
First, as has already been pointed out in other replies, miles are also an absurd, arbitrary unit as far as science is concerned. We could get a 'round' unit if we took, say, about .65 AU, as the 'new' astronomical unit--exactly 10^11 m.
But then the AU would be a pretty useless yardstick. Earth's orbit is very nearly circular, which means that over a period of six months, the Earth moves a net distance of (almost) exactly 2 AU. Using this knowledge, it is possible to measure the distance to nearer stars. As the position of earth changes, the apparent positions of nearby stars will also appear to change relative to much more distant stars--a parallax effect. To get a precise measure of this distance, you want to move the Earth as far as possible, to get the maximum apparent shift in position. 2 AU is as far as we can readily move the earth.
There is even a unit of measure that is defined on this basis. The distance at which the apparent parallax shift of a star is equal to one second of arc is defined as one parsec. Parsec measures can be directly obtained from astronomical images taken six months apart, so they are the preferred unit of measure for some types of observational astronomy.
Of course, this also works backwards. If we could see a planet orbiting a star one parsec away (about 3.26 light years--this is a hypothetical case) and its orbital motion was across one apparent second of arc, we would know it orbited its sun at a distance of 1 AU.
~Idarubicin
What are you talking about? Theres no redirect at all in there, let alone a porno redirect. I suppose thats why you posted as an AC.
siri
Absolutely - you don't want those damned aliens pirating his work, do you?
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
First cab off the rank is probably the Orion drive. Build a really big plate, attach it with really big springs and dampers to a heavily radiation-shielded spacecraft, and detonate atom bombs behind the plate. The basic technology exists right now, all you need is a pile of cash and be prepared to violate the space weapons treaty. Maximum speed is about 1-2% of the speed of light, so you're still taking a couple of centuries to Proxima Centauri.
Next option is a fusion engine. We can't generate power with controlled fusion yet, but ITER probably will if and when it gets built. ITER is, er, rather large and heavy, and doesn't really produce much net power, so a practical space fusion power plant is a fair bit of engineering development down the road. Anyway, the idea is quite simple. Release the "exhaust" of the reaction out the back of the engine, just like a normal rocket except the exhuast is a hell of a lot hotter and travelling a lot faster. Maximum speed maybe 10-12% of the speed of light.
Alternatively, use a light sail powered by a really big laser. All you need is to scale up laser and telescope technology a crapload (so, again, considerable engineering development required). Maximum speed? Somewhere between 10 and maybe 30% of the speed of light, depending on just how big you can make your mirror (and consequently how far you can keep accelerating).
The other big issue with interstellar spacecraft is the question of how much debris is out there. If there's a lot, as you go faster you'll need one hell of a shield to protect you.
Finally, there's there's also the possibility of using antimatter-matter reactions to power a ship. Antimatter is kinda powerful stuff to have around, and you could theoretically use it to power a ship to near the speed of light. However, there is no known natural source, and manufacturing it requires milllions of times more energy put in than you get back when you "burn" it. It, therefore, is a really long-term option from when humanity has such astounding energy generation capacity it can afford to use it to power antimatter-powered spaceships.
All in all, there are some possibilities, but most are still a fair bit of technological development away. Let's get to the rest of the solar system first :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Is the Voyager really going fast enough to make it to another star, even if it was pointed at one? A lot of these posts and articles similar to this seem to imagine the thing just sailing on forever, not in a particularly long orbit around our sun.
If I'm plugging in the equation right, taking into account the 93 AU that the Voyager has already reached, and the present speed (39,000 miles an hour, assuming none of that's tangential velocity), I get a required speed of 4000 km/s, and the Voyager is going far slower.
So as far as I can tell, really the gold record, etc. on board are more of a time capsule for when the craft swings back around on its comet-like trajectory, rather than for contacting aliens. I think the nasa people and popular science writers like to preserve the more romantic notion of an unintentional first instellar voyage, though my calculations could be wrong.
I'm curious as to why they chose Polish for their greeting. I'm sure whatever aliens find the satellite have already mastered English, thanks to broadcasts of "I Love Lucy" and the "Honeymooners".
Fully updated with ion or solar sail propulsion to get it out there quicker with a nice AOLesque "VERSION 3.0" stamped on the side so they know its the latest.
On board we also include a copy of Lord of the Rings in DivX format and Mp3's of Britney Spears. That way if the aliens invade, we can tell the RIAA and MPAA they have pirated movies and music and watch the aliens recoil and flee under the unsuing crush of lawyers and DMCA threat letters.
If that doesn't work, we trick them into installing the cracked copy of WinXP convieniently on stowed board and watch their ships fail in horrible and astonishing ways.
Now if that fails, then we trick them into installing AOL and logging onto it. After all nothing can withstand humankinds most powerful weapon... Pure stupidity.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Honestly, there are not many things that survive in space, even bacteria have a temperature/atmosphere range, along with a virus which will denature at a certain temp/pressure.
Voyager is carrying a GIF image of DNA? Good luck tracking that one down, Unisys!
I don't understand this embarecement to be seen as a baby. Don't we all were babys once? Everyone loves to se babies but get embareced when people see themselves as a baby. I used to have a picture of my self as a baby in my wallet, it was a funny one cause I was doing some "dirt" gestures. Actualy my hands were caugth in a random position that casualy looks like an "ok" for american, but in Brasil it stands for "asshole".
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
realize that the article was submitted a day before it was posted to the main page, so "today" actually refers to August 20th.
How about creating an object that will catch up to Voyager 1 before it leaves our solar system, in 2012. That's something I'd like to see us commit ourselves to.
"Project Thunderwell was the inspiration of astrophysicist Bob Brownlee, who in the summer of 1957 was faced with the problem of containing underground an explosion, expected to be equivalent to a few hundred tons of dynamite. Brownlee put the bomb at the bottom of a 500-foot vertical tunnel in the Nevada desert, sealing the opening with a four-inch thick steel plate weighing several hundred pounds. He knew the lid would be blown off; he didn't know exactly how fast. High-speed cameras caught the giant manhole cover as it began its unscheduled flight into history. Based upon his calculations and the evidence from the cameras, Brownlee estimated that the steel plate was traveling at a velocity six times that needed to escape Earth's gravity when it soared into the flawless blue Neavada sky. 'We never found it. It was gone,' Brownlee says, a touch of awe in his voice almost 35 years later.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall/189
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Some progress there. Voy 1 will likely confuse even modern earthlings-- much less ET. Case in point: In 2002, can we understand that 70's show, when the Polish greeting memorialized as "Welcome, creatures from beyond the outer world"? Unlike those ET creatures we meet daily from the inner world?"
If the lack of grammar and comprehension checks implied by the acceptance of this submission is any indication, then yes, the aliens will have trouble understanding us.
At least they'll have Glenn Gould.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
God speed little one.
If your reading this over 802.11, then my message will reach Voyager in a little over 11 hours and 38 minutes.
It should be, "Greetings, creatures from beyond Earth."
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
Even without believing tinfoilhat stuff, isn't it more accurate to call this the farthest known manmade object?
How impossible is it that a pottery shard was included in some ejectile material 25,000 years ago... and given the likely orbits of something like that, how far could it have gone?
Just because the nearest star is really far away, it doesn't make it disappointing. We'll get there some day, it may take time and it may not be easy to phone home, but does it matter.
1000 years ago, it took years to go or communicate from one end of the known world to the other.
250 years ago, we reach the new world. But it still took most of a year, and the danger of shipwreck to get there.
In 100 years from now we may have very fast ships. Lets say 10% of light speed. This would put us on the nearest star in 40 years. People who go on that mission will be expecting it to be so. Civilization is not a one mans cause; it's the perspective of generations.
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
No. It hasn't been proven at all - there is entirely too little experimental and experiental data for any strong claims about the safety of RTG containment to be made.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Also, the alternating 1/2 bond representation of carbon rings is a bit arbitrary; another symbol might be better to represent the nature of the bonds within the ring."
It is a bit arbitrary, but it would be difficult accurately to depict the real nature of the bonding in a fused heterocyclic aromatic system in any simple way. A common convention is to draw a six-electron aromatic ring (e.g. benzene, thiophene, tropylium) with a circle in the center. One organic chemistry text, March's _Advanced Organic Chemistry_, adopts this convention for single rings but does _not_ use it for fused systems, for a good reason: if you drew (say) naphthalene with a circle in the center of each ring, you would inaccurately give the impression that napthalene was a system of two independent six-electron rings, and not a fused system of ten electrons with a certain amount of bond fixation.
hyacinthus.
Does anyone know if there is a warning sticker on the plutonium batteries? If not, then the aliens maybe very angry or dead.
I don't think they will get so much info from that simple picture. No reason to be worried there. If they would figure out *what* it is, they have to figure out *where* in our DNA it is, and even then they have no clue about nearly anything regarding our DNA... let alone creating humans.
Will work for bandwidth
The on-again off-again 2006 Pluto probe (launch date) relies on favorable planetary configurations as Voyager did. If it isn't launched in 2006 then its something like 40 years before another favorable Pluto configuration occurs.
How quickly could we catch up with Voyager using 2002 technology?
Oh no, I wrote a sentence that has contains two verbs.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A big stink was made when Cassini was launched several years ago. Seems they finally figured out that deep space probes aren't solar powered. Cassini still launched and RTG's are still the only practical way to power spacecraft beyond the orbit of Mars.
It's a shame that the environmentalists had a hissy fit in the 80's and 90's that blocked this very reliable technology from being used on modern spacecraft.
Not really. The problem is that in order to make one of these generators safe, it needs to be protected from the launch rocket exploding on take-off. It doesn't matter whether you're an environmentalist or not - if a couple of kilos of plutonium gets vaporised and spread to the four winds on the launch pad, you've just made enormous chunks of the US's only major space launch site unusable until it can be cleaned up. You can stick your head in the sand about it, but that doesn't make the radiation go away. Needless to say, the clean-up operation and interruption to US space activities would cost tens of billions of dollars - and quite possibly a lot more.
It's perfectly possible to protect these generators from the explosive force caused by a rocket blowing up on the launch pad - it's just a simple engineering problem. The problem is that it costs weight - lots of it, and the number one thing you want to avoid on a rocket launch is extra weight. Every extra kilogram costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars, or costs you one or two or three valuable scientific instruments.
So unless you absolutely need a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, you don't use one. Solar panels are lighter (because they don't need explosion protection) and, therefore, cheaper to launch (which is the only really major cost consideration - the cost of the space vehicle itself pales in comparison). Modern solar panels are good out to nearly Jupiter. Beyond that you need an RTG. I can only think of one mission that NASA has launched since the Voyagers that has gone out that far - Galileo, which was launched in 1989 - and yes, it had an RTG on-board despite the protests.
Honestly, NASA - at least the engineers - couldn't give a damn about the environmental issues involved with RTGs. Because as long as their containment engineering is up to scratch - and I rather suspect it is - there simply are no environmental issues. Instead, it comes down to economics - and for most missions that NASA undertakes, which go no further out than Mars, thermoelectric generators lose out badly to solar panels.
Now, perhaps environmentalist fears are preventing NASA from sending more probes beyond Jupiter because they need an RTG, but that's a different matter entirely. Maybe they need to publicly blow up a few rockets with the generator containers on-board to prove their point.
I can only think of one mission that NASA has launched since the Voyagers that has gone out that far - Galileo
Cassini, as well. Which, surprise surprise, also has an RTG on-board.
Pompeii was just an failed rocket launch, DUH.
If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving definitely isn't for you.
Perhaps ot got caught in the gravity feild of some asteroid, and now is in bits in peices?
Or.. perhaps it became artifically Intelligent with the help of cosmic beings, and now represents the God of some primitive civilization.(only to be destroyed later by Captain Kirk)
--Me
I noticed that a drawing of a circle is copyrighted. It's a the top of the list on NASA's webpage on the Voyager photograpic recordings. Makes me wonder, will extraterrestrials be sued under DMCA?
The reason why there is a RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generators...it generates power on the heat) on all deep robotic probes (Pioneer 10,11, Voyager 1, 2, Galielo, Cassini etc.) is because of the good old inverse square law.
:-) The power a probe would receive from panels around Earth would now be 0.01 times as strong around Saturn. Needless to say you aren't going to get the 200 or so Watts needed to power critical equipment on Voyager 1 out of solar panels at the place it is flying right now(I suppose you could attach monsterous solar panels but that is mass a spacecraft doesn't need).
Lets say that the power collected from standard set of solar panels for an object around Earth is suffient to power the electrontrics. The problem is space is big...really big! For instance...
Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the Sun as Earth....
Jupiter is about 5.25 times as far away...
Saturn is about 9.5 times as far away...
I won't go farther.
Of course the idea of radio active material on space probes sends some people into a fit but it really isn't that much material. It also ignores the fact that if we want to do distant science there is no better powersource built yet.
If a nuclear-powered device explodes on launch, or in low orbit, it's "not a good thing". At the very least you'll get radioactive debris spread over a wide area.
You actually think NASA would be dumb enough to send up a nuclear-powered device without adequate containment against explosion and re-entry?
NASA may be huge, inefficient, wasteful and sluggish, but they're not stupid.
We're giving out thousands of times more info through Discovery and other such channels and so on. The difference is, though it's difficult, it's possible to stop this probe. Our radio and TV transmissions are impossible to stop. Should we stop this too and use only wiretechnology for information exchange? For how long have we had TV broadcasting, like 60 years or so? By now there's a lot of information for anyone within a 60 light year radius from us, even further if they pick up our radio signals. If they can understand our TV programmes, they should know by now that we can't even unite as a species but instead we choose to kill each other every now and then. They also know some of our technology; if they are 30 lightyears ago they're aware that we have the ability of interplanetary travel. Will they be worried about this? Or will we be considered too primitive for them to establish contact? Are we a threat to others? Or will they realize that we have many good sides too, and that that would make them think we're worthy of contact with them?
Whether it is right or wrong to give out information about us, I don't know. There is a possibility someone will try to benefit from this, in one way or another. In case of contact, it could give them an unfair advantage.
However, I don't think we should stay quiet all the time. Actually I think we should more actively send out radiomessages for *their* SETI-scientists to detect and maybe send back an answer to us. As I see it, if we establish contact by the means of radio signals, the chance is great that they are more advanced than us. Why? Becuase basically, we discovered radio yesterday. We might find civilizations that are new to radio too, but chances are they have advanced much more than that. Somehow I like to think that they would therefor be peaceful, because they have survived longer than we as a technological civilization, and therefor would pose no threat to us.
Will work for bandwidth
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If there is an Interstellar Criminal Court, you sir are in big trouble. :-)
>Just how does the 4000 bc brick gain enough
>velocity to escape the gravity of the solar
>system (let alone the earth)?
Ass-launched bug-plasma. Duh.
-l
there is entirely too little experimental and experiental data for any strong claims about the safety of RTG containment to be made
Rubbish. NASA RTG containment systems have been tested in real-life missions on re-entry twice, once in 1968 from a failed meteorological satellite, and once in 1970 from the remains of Apollo 13. On both occasions the RTG containment worked fine. Lab studies on both the re-entry and the explosion-on-launch scenarios have been extensive, and NASA's RTG systems have been tested to and survived nearly 4x the pressure produced from a rocket explosion on a Shuttle-type spacecraft.
The physics and engineering behind an effective RTG containment system are quite simple. Frankly, a good Victorian-era engineer could have done it (although it would certainly have been a lot heavier than modern systems).
NASA has a nice little piece on RTG safety that they wrote for people concerned about Galileo's power system. It's available here.
Of course, you are free to disagree with NASA's findings, but it seems like good enough evidence to me.
(* I have a question, why didn't we power the Mars Pathfinder rover by nuclear? Were they afraid that if it crashed into the planet, it would cause some nuclear fall out? *)
Probably because of fears of protests. The Mars Viking landers of the 1970's used the nuclear approach, and lasted years.
The protests don't stop NASA from using nuke stuff, but it makes them hesitant, and Mars is a grey-area WRT solar-power.
The Pathfinder mission was slated to only last a few weeks because it was experimental, so that is what the design was for. If they had a longer target, then there are probably ways to not have to rely on recharge-diminishing batteries as much as they did.
Table-ized A.I.
Pretty neat for a piece of 1970's technology.
It's nothing compared to my lite-brite! Oooh, the colors!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
But, I want to take a crap all over NASA and the utter inability to best Voyager in the 25 years of innovation since. Is it just me or is the space industry in a completely different reality than the rest of our technology sectors?
:-)
What exactly are you expecting?
Note that the radiation of space limits the miniturization of many electronic parts. Thus, things can only be shrank so much up there.
I mean really though, think... the space shuttle was in the 80's, 20 years ago and we're still there!
Well, chemical propellants are still the most viable launch technology, so the shuttles still do what they do. It would be nice if there were better/cheaper ways to get into space and move fast, but nobody has found the magic formula for that. Trek's Cockrin has not been born yet
Table-ized A.I.
(* Am I the only one who thinks it's a bad idea to give aliens our DNA? Surely any civilization capable of interstellar travel would also be able to use our "blueprints," as it were, to quickly whip up a few fake humans, or even develop biological or genetic weaponry. *)
The Voyager version was only an example, not the complete DNA. Besides, I don't think the entire genetic code is enough to make a person without references to how Earth biology works. It would be like giving machine code of a program. Without knowing the OS and the chip's language/archetecture, it may be nearly useless.
Table-ized A.I.
What about the Oort Cloud? Shouldn't that count as part of the solar system? It's held in place by the Sun's gravity, if only barely, so I would think it should. If memory serves, Voy1 won't reach that for another 100,000 years.
(* So what, they still don't last forever. *)
My understanding is that the problem is not so much the half-life dwindling of radioactivity, but the connectors and/or gatherers of the energy within the power cells. They tend to corrode over time and diminish the power returned.
Plus, as the probes get further and further the signal is also weaker and weaker. Thus, there are 3 factors diminishing communications power:
1. Regular "half-life" diminishing of the radioactive material's power.
2. Corrosion of the power-gathering terminals
3. Increasing distance from Earth
4. Alien babys playing with probe
(Okay, #4 is a little speculative)
Table-ized A.I.
Looks like the isotope's power the battery.
Bob would like a word with you, please.
It's all about weight. Dragging around an RTG on wheels isn't exactly easy work. Remember that the Sojourner was carried on Pathfinder, which itself was carried another stage.
What would have been a better question would be: Why wasn't the Pathfinder lander powered by an RTG and then Sojourner recharged via a docking station?
What a stupid comment. Just how does the 4000 bc brick gain enough velocity to escape the gravity of the solar system (let alone the earth)?
By bouncing off the forehead of a numbskull
Table-ized A.I.
Wow, I should work for NASA.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
are you really ready to trust nasa engineers like that after that last big mix-up with metric and English units? i don't think i am.
Won't you be my my neighbor?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
since all light is made up of particles, wouldn't all of the light (particles) that we've created over the past 100 years have reached further?
It's not just being seen as a baby. I don't get embarassed at anyone seeing what I looked like at that age.
Having a picture of you naked in the tub is another matter.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
"Famed as the most remote object ever made by man, Pioneer 10 is now 7.5 billion miles away (Until 17 February 1998, the heliocentric radial distance of Pioneer 10 had been greater than that of any other manmade object. But late on that date Voyager 1's heliocentric radial distance, in the approximate apex direction, equaled that of Pioneer 10 at 69.419 AU. Thereafter, Voyager 1's distance will exceed that of Pioneer 10 at the approximate rate of 1.016 AU per year)."
-Shieldwolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
No possession to a verb. Thanks!
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While the Mars rover itself didn't generate electricity from a nuclear source, there were some small radioisotope pieces onboard acting as heaters to provide thermal regulation. It's been awhile, but I recall that they produced on the order of a few watts of heat.
Anyway, I think something called the AU should be measure something a bit more dinkum Aussie. Like the size of Ian Thorpes feet.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
You only need to watch one or two epesodes to work that out.
Why else would they have flux capacitors, a warp manafold, two naselles and a big blue glowing thing in the engine room?
I was only off by a factor of a thousand...
The trajectory still needs to be taken into account, but even then I concede it's going fast enough to escape. This applet shows I & II's flight plans in 3d, and it looks like I is heading more directly away from the sun than II, so a larger component of its speed is actually contributing to that escape velocity.
Your ignorance is charming assuming that you're still in elementary or secondary school. If you're older than that, then it's not so charming.
Ignorance is not a bad thing as many assume. Withholding knowledge from those ignorant is far worse than the generally assumed evil associated with being ignorant.
I am interested in the problem posed in this thread, but instead of a simple link to a site that focuses on it, I see arrogance.
By not providing any further insight to the matter, your post could just as easily be the output of a random-flamebait generator. The odd thing about this is that the lack of details seems to be very inconsistent with your typical posts.
This is not my sig.
Hey I thought obligatory Simpsons quotes always got modded at least 3 Funny