Slashdot Mirror
Whisper Heard From Pioneer 10
Irishman writes "NASA has heard from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft for the first time since March. Unfortunately, it is too faint to get scientific data from the craft. CNN has the story here.
Considering that the craft is twice the distance from the Sun as Pluto is and that it has spent 30 years subjected to space, this is amazing! Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
"Khaaaaaaaan!"
sorry, I'll quit now.
The Pioneer 10 spacecraft was heard to whisper, "I can see my house!"
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
Too bad they couldn't decode the message:
"Hey guys, Veeger's here, and she's pissed."
Kill Trolls Dead. Here's
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
They can, you just don't want to pay for it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"Rosebud."
What could it mean? WHAT COULD IT MEAN?!
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Mame sent me!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
i hope it doesnt land on a planet full of silicon based life forms and return in the future with a different name and a no-nonsense attitude... what would its name be? pieer? pie? ponee?
Thier called macs.
:-P
And they are proudly called macs, of course they are only loosely called computers
In space, all the craft needs to deal with is the occasional decresing chance of a cosmic or solar ray, or perhaps a micrometeorite. Earth's changing climactic conditions and microbes are far more destructive to technology than is space!
The space stuff is actually far too fragile to work on Earth, and is designed from a payload perspective to be light, not Earth-durable.
Why didn't NASA send out repeaters behind it ? I'd imagine that a series of repeaters behind it would be able to get information back to us on earth...
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy
sure they do, just offer dell a couple million for a laptop that they can design from scratch for a special purpose task for only you and then put it somewhere where nobody can touch it for 30 years and i think it will prove just as sturdy.
four-oh-four
I've got a working C-64 that's been through a dozen moves, an infinite number of Jumpman inspired rages, and two boys' adolescensce. Space? Hah!
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
Good thing the US mint started printing those 10 million dollar bills. I'd hate to have pay for it in 10's and 20's.
BOSTON SUCKS!
...and still being productive. What is your excuse?
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
Manufacturers can make equipment this sturdy today. But are you willing to use an 8088 running at 4.77 Mhz? And if not, how much will you pay to get 30 years of service out of more modern processors and peripherals. Pioneer 10 cost $200 million to build in the 1970s.
FreeSpeech.org
I thought it got blown up by the Klingons?
In Soviet Russia, we have ways of making Pioneer talk.
But I'll be a lot of people wouldn't like the cost.
People here often slag Sun and Apple (maybe a little more deservedly for Apple) for example for being too expensive and brag about the white box held together with rubberbands and glue because a good case was too expensive.
Quality costs or else Lexuses (Lexi?) would cost the same as Pontiacs...
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
I'm scared, Dave.
Or, if you watch Firefly:
Well, here I am.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
has decided to give a exceptional bonus to the man responsible for the communication with the craft, due to a noticeable increase of his productivity ;-)
You raise a child, send them off, and they don't even call home that often, and when they do, they can't even understand them...
Why bother? A modern computer is obsolete within 5 years of its manufacture, anyway. You don't see many people clamoring for 30-year-old computer equipment, aside from reasons of novelty and nostalgia.
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
Who says they don't? I'd say that the fact that you won't be using the same computer 30 years from now has very little to do with reliability. In which case, why bother designing for a 30 year lifespan?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
It must be a man, it waited this long to ask for directions...and then it had to whisper.
From the Pioneer Status web page:
Pioneer 10 distance from Sun : 81.86 AU Speed relative to the Sun: 12.228km/sec (27,355 mph) Distance from Earth: 12.10 billion kilometers (7.52 billion miles) Round-trip Light Time: 22 hours 25 minutes
There was one more Pioneer 10 contact on 12/5/02. The Deep Space Station (DSS) near Madrid (DSS-63) found the signal but could not lock onto the receiver, and so no telemetry was received. The signal level was just under the threshold value. The uplink from DSS-14 at Goldstone, sent 12/4/02 at a power level of 325 kw, confirmed that the spacecraft signal is still there (Round Trip Light Time = 22 hr 24 min).
Project Phoenix also picked up the signal from Pioneer 10 at Arecibo in Puerto Rico.
LARRY LASHER, PIONEER PROJECT MANAGER
(Copyright NASA)
todays NASA was like NASA of yesteryear, and be able to launch a spacecraft without hitting that big round thing I like to call the moon.
I am fluent in over six million forms of communication, that's not an American code
Considering that the craft is twice the distance from the Sun as Pluto is and that it has spent 30 years subjected to space, this is amazing! No data and yet still amazing? Not to be an ass, but it somehow doesn't seem all that important/interesting enough for any type of discussion other than a faint accord of "Hmm. That's cool." CNN doesn't always carry thought provoking articles.
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
They can, and they indeed do make it when necessary, say for your neighbourhood's nuclear power plant, or for a space probe like Pioneer 10.
Problem is, you don't need such hardware endurance even if you could afford it. How soon will you want a newer video card to your supermegareliable PC?
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Where exactly is the Pioneer headed to. Is it intended to eventually make a circular path and eventually head home, or will it just continue to wander out into space? If we could start planting satellites in circular synchronous orbits, perhaps we could eventually have a transmission array that could gradually extend throughout the solar system.
Sending out probes is cool when we can collect info, but it's not really useful if the data isn't able to be processed. A probe that wanders away isn't really very useful, unless perhaps somebody picks it up and sends it home or comes to visit.
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
I'd argue that a CTC Datapoint 2200 is just as usable today as a P4 will be in 30 years.
Did we have this chat a few days ago?
We all got to see a model of Pioneer 10 in the 80's:
The probe wasn't so long-lasting in its first and only movie role, Star Trek V: the Final Frontier. A trigger-happy Klingon named Captain Klaa blasted Pioneer 10 to smithereens for target practice. Of course that was just a model of the spacecraft.
No Khan intended.
"On the rare occasions when astronomers have coaxed even sparse data from Pioneer 10 in recent years, they have used the readings to investigate everything from cosmic rays to chaos theory to gravitational mechanics."
Are we getting accurate data? Do we know that the data coming back is reliable? Should we trust Pioneer 10 and the data that it is sending us? Note: I'm glad it is still operating. That really is a feat. But, we should temper our enthusiam with a heatlhy dose of skepticism.
How to Download YouTube Videos
"First post from outside the Solar System!!"
Are you kidding me? Sure IBM and the rest of the pack can make computers this sturdy. The better question is are YOU willing to pay Millions of $$$ for it? Consider what NASA must have paid for this hardware and then adjust for inflation. I sure don't want to cough up that kind of dough for a computer that will most certainly be obsolete in 6 months.
GatoNow if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
Umm, the computer runs at like 1 mhz tops and is using like 3 volts of power. I'm sure you want a computer like that on your desktop.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Considering that the craft is twice the distance from the Sun as Pluto is and that it has spent 30 years subjected to space, this is amazing!
No data and yet still amazing? Not to be an ass, but it somehow doesn't seem all that important/interesting enough for any type of discussion other than a faint accord of "Hmm. That's cool." Surely there's something more thought titillating happenings going on right now.. CNN really doesn't seem quite the best place to shop for those, you know..
send out another multi-million dollar spacecraft out toward Pioneer 10 that will send a signal yelling "WHAT????"
Apart from all the moronic comments about sturdy computers (Nice going Irishman, trolling in the story), Isn't this a clue about the silence in space? You know, the Drake equation? How strong must a signal be, to be heard? Pioneer is only 2x orbit of Pluto away from the Sun, and already impossible to listen to. Nearest star is 4.2 light years away, and nearest galaxy is "just" 75,000 light years away. How strong signal would be needed to communicate these distances. I know the Pioneer signal is only a few milli (micro?) watts, but still...
J.
Of course, computer manufacturers could never achieve that sort of reliability. Pioneer 10's systems were actually designed and built by highly trained monkeys.
MSK
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
It's called the Compaq Nonstop Himalaya. Each processor runs every calculation twice, in parallel, and compares the answers when done--if they do not match, it tries again. If they do not match again, the processor state is saved then restored in one of the "hotspare" processors. The memory uses a special, extra high-reliability (and extra slow) ECC algorithm. The server itself has integrated battery backup, variable speed fans which adjust for the death of other fans, and each system is immensely expandable without ever being rebooted or shut down.
An acquaintance of mine works for a company which has a Nonstop with an uptime of nearly ten years.
Remember the Tandem?
Note that the Nonstop isn't much more reliable than IBM's Z series mainframes, which basically never die either.
Ironic, isn't it, that a company famous for making desktops which are essentially crap, makes one of the most reliable servers on earth?
Er, back on topic, isn't Voyager significantly farther from the sun than Pioneer 10?
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
I propose that if you spent the three billion or so dollars that pioneer cost, you could in fact make a sturdy ANYTHING terrestrial.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Macs have nothing on the Apple // series. I've seen too many with broken floppy drives (the original "SuperDrive") and burned out logic boards and power supplies.
The Apple // series was the pinnacle of 'Keep It Simple Stupid' computing. Maybe if NASA kept its newer probes to the Pioneer/Voyager KISS philosophy they wouldn't be crashing into Mars or simply crashing their programs.
Simplicity = reliability
"Can you hear me now?"
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
I'm sure that you can get almost anything you like as sturdy as Pioneer 10 if you're prepared to spend $300 million on getting it built...
(Pioneer 10 cost $75 million in the 1970s - which corresponds to something like $300 million today.)
Well, nothing you can see. The edge of the heliosphere (where the electromagnetic influence of the sun gets overwhelemed by background radiation) has long been a holy grail for astrophysicists. Pioneer 10 has the instruments on board to sense the edge, if only we could communicate with it.
" Hey guys let me outta this box..... it just is'nt funny any more.....guys?
People don't buy quality, they tend to buy the cheapest they can get away with.
The Pioneer project wasn't cheap, they got what they paid for.
Computers I don't care, they're so cheap, and advancing so quickly I only need it to last 2-3 years. I would like my hard drive to last a bit longer, but the rest who cares.
Not into shuttles and MKS...
Just like the lunar landings. We all know that Nasa is just bouncing a signal from a pioneer 10 like space vehicle here on the ground off a relay station they into an orbit twice the distance from the sun to Pluto!
(or at least they did)
They were called PDP-11's. I believe it was a story linked here of a PDP-11 that had been running a steel mill for over 20 years and was entombed in a brick room with no entryway. When the thing finally threw something they asked for replacement parts because if the thing had run that long without problems why replace it?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Now if only we could make /. this....
Oh, never mind.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
I don't believe that's actually always the case. I have a friend who works for the Surrey Space Centre on very small satellites - I was chatting to him down the pub about it one day and I was quite surprised to find out that it ran on an ordinary StrongArm Chip running at something like 133Mhz (Sorry - I don't recall the exact speed).
However, I suppose it's possible that the nanosatellite they built was sufficiently close to the earth to be sheilded from the radiation you speak of...
They are not stupid enough to make it, rather.
Imagine you're selling some piece of hardware, you'd rather make sure it breaks shortly after the end of its warranty, so that you can sell more of it, rather than have one that lasts so long you get out of business before selling its replacement.
Microsoft, despite working on software rather than hardware, has adopted a similar model of quick obsolescence of what it sells. It seems to work.
Price, Performance, Reliability. Pick two.
This has long been the case. If you want performance and reliability, you pay through the nose. Computers ARE made this well. They're the variety made by Cray that cost $10M USD a pop.
Quality comes at a price.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
"But Pioneer 10, now more than twice the distance from the sun as Pluto, continues to serve a valuable scientific function as it approaches the edge of the solar system."
I don't understand this.
Is the solar system larger than the orbit of Pluto? If so, what defines it?
"ET smells, pass it on."
Oh, hang on a minute, that's chinese whispers...
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The transputer, for example, was mathematically proven correct, and cost $15 a chip. Given that a T400 was as powerful as an 80486, several years before Intel made any, it's pretty obvious cost isn't the reason.
(The transputer was a marvel, for its time - it was linearly scalable, regardless of number. 1000 of them would give you the same performance as a Cray 1, for 1% of the cost.)
The reason is complexity. Mathematical proofs aren't trivial, so few chip companies bother. It's simpler to ship defective goods, and hope nobody notices. Notice I'm saying "simpler", not "cheaper". Mathematicians aren't much more expensive than good VLSI engineers.
Why is simple important? Because of PR. If you can get a product out fast, or a new press release out fast, then that's Good Business. Taking your time to get it right doesn't fill newspaper columns. Nobody ever wrote an editorial on how so-and-so proved the ALU free of bugs. They =WILL= write plenty on Intel/whoever releasing the latest nth generation processor, even if their last release was the month before.
The cost of replacement is about the same as the cost of getting it right, but the PR life-cycle is much faster, and so gets more attention & higher stock value.
For those of you who have chosen "popular" over "quality" in any part of your life, you know the lure, even though you know the real price you'll pay in the end.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
I'm sure if you're willing to pay $350 million, most PC makers would be willing to work with you on that.
Considering I paid roughly 0.00000228% of that, I'm willing to deal with a reboot every month or so.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
I skimmed the article. It says that they were unable to lock on the signal using one of the largest radio antennae on the planet.
Any ideas if this was due to atmospheric distrubance (as well as distance, obviously...).
So, when are we going to see plans for building a relay on the moon? Surely NASA's got to be looking into this. I'm not an engineer, but surely they could build a permanent relay on the moon using solar panels for power. I know, I know, the moon rotates on its axis and around the earth (duh) but certainly there are ways to maintain signal between the Earth and Moon, especially with so many receivers on Earth.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Pioneer 10:
I sense a slashdot dupe.
Mods, and idiots, I know its about galileo, but if you read the actual post, it mentions (with the same link as this article): Meanwhile they also contacted pioneer 10 (64 bytes from pioneer10.nasa.gov: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=80700000 ms)" .
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
American Heritage Of Invention and Technology had terrific story on Pioneer 10 some years back. I found the text here on the personal web page of its author Mark Wolverton. Worth a read if you're interested.
I think we did this kindof expirament in gradeschool... Someone would say a phrase to one kid, it'd pass on through the whole class. By the end of the chain, the message was totally different. Supposed to teach us about gossip... anyway,
Repeaters sound cool, but you always have that one bot that'd change the message from, "hey, there's a new planet that's blue" to... "all your base are belong to us" just to be funny.
[root@nasa /root]# ping pioneer10.nasa.gov
PING pioneer10.nasa.gov (10.0.0.10) from 10.0.1.1 : 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.0.10: icmp_seq ttl=250 time=80640 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.10: icmp_seq ttl=250 time=80640 ms
From 10.0.0.1 icmp_seq=3 Ping timeout
From 10.0.0.1 icmp_seq=4 Ping timeout
From 10.0.0.1 icmp_seq=5 Ping timeout
Thanks for the handy references to the main web sites of NASA and CNN. I'm sure no Slashdot reader could have found those resources without your help.
C'mon, it's been out there for 30 years;
It must have bumped into the big black wall with starts painted on it by now.
The reason why it has lasted the test of time and space - and the reason why we don't have computer equipment this 'sturdy' .. IS BECAUSE IT COST UPMPTEEN MILLION DOLLARS TO PRODUCE!!! I'm sure if you sent NASA a few hundred million, they'd be more than happy to give you a machine that runs at 2mhz and lasts 30 years in space. Is it just me or is slashdot dummying down the majority of its information. It truly feels as if I am reading a local newspaper, written by the village idiot.
.. im just getting tired of lame asses. I think its about time to stop reading slashdot.
Sorry for the rant
I sense a disturbance in the force...millions of Slashdot "comedians" all crying out with bad jokes and ill puns and then silenced.
Does this mean that it hasn't been taken by alien's yet? Oh wait... wasn't that the Voyager probe?
My PC can spell better than your Mac. So thier.
Please note that any attempt at informing the moderators who and what they really are, will result in you being modded down. If you suspect that there is the slightest chance of getting modded down, post as AC. If there's doubts, there's no doubt.
"It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmospher, I'm all alone. More or less."
... in the Sun Sun Sun..."
"Let me fly, far away from here! Fun Fun Fun
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy Now if only slashdotters could decide weather or not to hate NASA. They're a dinosaur Monopoly, now they're cool. They're a dinosaur Monopoly, now they're cool. They're a dinosaur Monopoly, now they're cool.
First of all, "They're called Macs."
Secondly, we're looking for computers that do real scientific work, not just graphics design. *grin*
To be completely honest-- Macs aren't bad. They're just a niche market, the hardware is better than *MOST* pc hardware, however in pc hardware you have alot of say in what kinda of quality you get... in Macs, you really don't. Also it's nice to have entertainment software to use, which is the real problem with Macs... and with Linux for that matter.
Shadus
Were there 8088 chips back in 1972? Was the 8080 even in use then?
More generally, is there a timeline on the web somewhere that shows when various chips and technologies were introduced? What search terms would you use to find it?
"Just finding it is useful information. From this, physicists can map its path and start to make observations of what space is actually like out there. They have used the some sparse readings in the past to investigate everything from cosmic rays to gravitational mechanics. "
You obviously didn't study quantum mechanics. We can either know where it is, or where it's going. We can't know both.
Indeed, even by discovering where it is, we have changed where it's going. It might even now be headed on a collision course for earth, and every measurement of its position just sends it faster and faster in the direction of Slashdot's servers...
--- My dad's political betting
"in pc hardware you have alot of say in what kinda of quality you get... in Macs, you really don't"
Yeah, it sucks ass not being able to get low quality components.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
It actually said: "What do you want Poindexter?"
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
I wonder how long before it comes back as a giant ship with a female robot on board that keeps wanting to talk to it's creator?
Ave Molech Setting
True, radio communications just aren't going to cut it. We can pick up radio-type signals from stars, but these are... well, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking stars.
I seem to recall reading that Earth outshines the sun in certain radio bands. Citation lost to the mists of time.
You could beamcast signals to another star easily enough, especially with a (very large) space-based dish. The problem is aperture size, not source power per se (you want the beam to have low divergence). While optical transmission doesn't require as large a dish for a given divergence, it does require far more energy to be detectable. You have to be bright enough to put a minimum of about 10 photons per $sample_period per $detector_area at the destination star system to be detected, and visible photons are many orders of magnitude more energetic. (I'm assuming we're doing detection by correlating many samples, instead of trying to dump enough energy to outshine the Sun in one pulse).
Broadcasting instead of beamcasting, we'd need vastly more power to be detectable at all.
Taco Bell announces that it will give away 2 free tacos to every person in the United States if the message is found to be "new life form detected".
Strangely enough, the odds are strikingly better than those of previous contests.
You're nothing; like me.
I wonder what this new transmission said...
"All These Worlds Are Yours, Except Pluto.
Attempt No Landings There."
Jenova_Six
Wow, maybe NASA should quit launching stuff and just talk to you, since you obviously have the inside track on exactly what all is out there.
They say it's currently about twice the distance from the sun as Pluto. I wonder how far it will get before.... we go and retrieve it. I read a book a while back, can't remember which one, but I'm pretty sure it was an Arthur C Clarke, possibly "3001". Anyway, in the story space travel has advanced to such a stage that craft can travel many orders of magnitude faster than the likes of Pioneer and Voyager. They decided that having primitive spacecraft travelling through space forever, possibly being picked up by other civilizations, was not a good thing. So they simply sent craft out, picked up the "trash" and brought it back. I wonder if this will ever happen. Arthur C. Clarke has made some very astute observations and even predicted technological advances such as geostationary satellites, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if we did retrieve these craft one day, albeit not in our lifetimes.
Vogon hyperspace bypass construction notice received.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
Ba-dump-pish
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Yeah, and the fucking PC too. Get a gamecube if you want to play games. Hell, a deck of cards would be more fun that Doom2k3 or Warcraft: Micromanaging Edition. In the future Warcraft will be available as an Excel add-on.
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
Barring the radiation from space and other warranty-voiders, PC hardware has (except for the occasional bad capacitors) been very sturdy. My PCjr still runs, my Leading Edge XT still runs. What is so unreal that I cannot even fathom it, is that the software has run on this thing for as long as it has, without getting corrupted, always booting fine when they need to reboot, etc. Only now in this late hour are major companies starting to remember the K.I.S.S. Principle that led their forefathers, and in doing so, counting on linux. The fewer variables, the more dependable the result.
You'll hear...
Would it be worthwhile for Nasa to put a few communications satellites capable of relaying around some of the more distant planets? Obviously the number and which ones would depend on where the planets were relative to earth and the objects you wanted to relay from.
They could be used for deep space probe communications or even for SETI-like stuff.
... "I'm not dead!"
and NASA answered: "You will be soon!"
Shadus
It shows that none of them are really suitable for a probe launched in 1972. The 4004 was only introduced in 1971, and the 8008 in 1972. The 8080 came in 1974, and the 8086 and 8088 in 1978.
is a chart of all the major families, but it doesn't go into so much detail as the Intel link.
There is an interesting (older) article linked from this one regarding the fact that both Pioneer probes (10 and 11) are closer than they should be based on the laws of gravity and Newtonian physics. JPL scientists postulate the existence of some sort of "hyper-gravity", as the effect has been shown equivalent on both probes, although each was sent in opposite directions.
//Nanoox
It would be interesting to find out whether this effect has also been observed on the Voyager probe which surpassed both Pioneer probes as the most distant man-made object in 1998.
Why should they? Do you have any practical use for a 30 year old computer? Are you going to port linux to your Altair?
Ok, im not from the US, and i havent watched too much American TV lately, so my (really naive i guess) question is this:
What's the deal with all these "In soviet russia" jokes? where did they all come from? is this a secret plot to bring it back? ridicule it?
Sounds like a South Park type of joke to me, but i would really like to know.
Thanks!
Everybody has a purpose in life, maybe mine is to lurk in slashdot.
Houston, we have a duplicate.
Ha ha! Get it: remotely this sturdy. It's a space probe...
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
At least the higher end hardware. My x86 Linux firewall has been running for a year and a half. We haven't had to reboot our SPARC20 since it was set up like 5 years ago. Granted 5 != 30, but I see no signs of it crapping out any time soon (jinx!). Also, bear in mind the pioneer 10 probably didn't do all that much in the way of computing. Perhaps it used processor intensive formula for calculations, but it wasn't running your Word processor, a web server, 20 browser windows, and most importantly it wasn't running Windows.
If you really want to extend the life of your boxen, just follow some simple rules.
-NO Overclocking.. no none.. at all..
-No Smoking around machines
-No crappy hardware (A crappy power supply can ruin all of your top of the line equipment)
-Don't let dust build up
-Provide sufficient cooling
-Keep away from Children and Windows Power Users.
Perhaps my view may be unpopular, but I think alot of hardware is made plenty sturdy still, and as long as we have companies that care about quality like 3com, Asus, and other leaders of the market, we will have the potential for cheap, reliable, high performance machines. And as long as we have companies that don't care about quality like D-link, Netgear, Soyo, and countless generic brands, we will have people whining about computers being unreliable.
"Can you hear me now?"
http://www.club977.com/ - The 80's Channel!
Your source for commercial free 80's music!
"Now if only computer manufacturers^W^W Nasa could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
--jdp Maintainer of VisEmacs
What if they bombarded it with a very powerful signal telling it to send back messages piece by piece in a very predictable way, that way when it sent back something NASA would know what piece of the message that it was and then could decipher the message piece by piece instead of trying to interpret the whole. sorta like a slow TCP/IP network. just send it back a bunch of yes/no type messages confirming what it sent. better yet, what if they instructed it to bounce the message off of other bodies in space, used them as repeaters?
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
I've no doubt in my mind that they can do it, if they put their focus on such a goal and really put the effort into it....the problem is, is that you wouldn't want to pay for it. Add to that, the fact that you won't be using that machine in 30 years due to advancements in technology, and I've kinda gotta wonder why you'd want a computer that would live that long.
Mostly, it's price though. People like cheap electronics...like the article about how low quality consumer electronics have become from a few weeks ago. Now that they want and 'need' to have everything...they don't want to or cannot pay top dollar for it all.
You want to be running a 1.6 gHz computer in the year 2033? That is, you really would care if you were still able to run a computer TODAY that 1k of ram?
(yes, I do know he didn't mean it that way, but it still sounds weird the way he put it...)
If we can only pick up signals of the magnitude of stars, then how can we hope to look for other "alien" signals with the same technology. WOuldn't they have to be broadcasting with a signal that powerful?
Also, I guess the television signals we've been sending out don't go that far. That makes me sad.
My theory is that it was hijacked by This Guy and from the looks of it He seems like a hard ass and we had Better start praying to him for forgivness!
... Spaces probes works 30 years BEFORE launch.
You know, the one with the guy and the phone...
Can you hear me now?
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.
I have some computer equipment that is now 25 years old and is working perfectly. (Atari) and some more that is 22 years old (commadore Vic 20) They are in perfect working condition and I wouldn't be surprised if they hit the 30 year mark without a problem. (these have never even needed repairs of any kind, still all original components)
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
I have this terrible pain in all the diodes on my left side, but no one ever listens...
A picture of DSS 62: The dish that picked up Pioneer 10d ss62.htm
p ioneer/PNStat.html
h tml
t ml
http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/div/vlbicor/pic_htm/
PIONEER 10 AT ARECIBO
http://www.seti.org/science/ao-p10.html
Pioneer Home page
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/
Earth (the dot in the middle) as seen from 3.7 billion miles away by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, on 6/6/1990:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/pale_blue_dot.
A Ride Under the Arecibo Radio Telescope
http://www.seti-inst.edu/science/under_the_mesh.h
A pringles can was attached to the antenna.
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy." They did... 30 years ago.
gorilla asks:
6 8.stm
2 5thSep02/ gravity.htm
>Why bother?
Because you never know where new knowledge may appear. Effective tools should be maintained as long as they are useful.
Specifically, it was data from the supposedly now 'retired' Pioneers 10 and 11 that alerted scientists a couple years ago that there may be some problems with our current understanding of gravity.
After tracking the faint signals from the probes, scientists were able to determine that neither probe had traveled as far as it should have by a substantial margin, and they have now been able to eliminate most proposed explanations for this sun-ward acceleration, including nearby large undetected masses (Pioneers 10 and 11 are headed out of the solar system in nearly opposite directions), unaccounted effects in the the propulsion systems, space debris, solar wind, etc etc. Recently, this same anomalous acceleration was measured for the Galileo and Ulysses probes. The ESA is designing a series of missions to look into this anomaly and others related to gravity.
Mystery force tugs distant probes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/13323
ESA to look for the missing link in gravity
http://www.globaltechnoscan.com/19thSep-
That's exactly what the American automotive industry used to do. The cars were designed to last a relatively short period of time, and foreign cars had trade restrictions on them. The US car manufacturers are still trying to recover from it (they missed out on decades of research into longevity, and lost the trust of non-patriotic consumers).
GL
"If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and dial again..."
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
I will pull my IBM 8088 with dual 5 1/2 inch floppy drives (yes NO HARD DRIVE) out of the closet in another 15 years and you tell me if you want to use it.
This is an awful expensive way to investigate Chaos Theory. All they really need to do is check out my living room. Talk about Chaos Theory!
Life is like an elevator, sometimes you get the elevator and sometimes you get the shaft.
It used to be that the satellite manufacturers had to run through a very serious set of instructions for testing their satellites and the careful handling of them. (issued by the Govt)
I heard Lockheed (or someone) recently dropped a satellite from their loading dock (oops!) because they were not following those steps -- they were doing a gov't satellite, just a commercial satellite.
Step 75. Do not drop satellite.
A 40 year old radio still receives today's AM/FM broadcasts.
A 30 year old car still uses today's gas, roads, and parking lots.
A 20 year old television still receives VHF, UHF and standard cable transmissions.
A 10 year old VCR records today's television.
But a 5 year old computer doesn't have the speed, memory or disk space for a minimum Windows installation.
Everything they build is so flimsy, cause they have all those tenured liberals building this stuff...
Oh, wait...
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
If your computer cost $200 million, I'm sure it'd be just as sturdy as Pioneer 10.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What does it think it is...V'ger?
My 30 year old Chevy 396SS uses premium leaded gas.... I had to install steel valve seats in order to use "today's" gas.... And even then its not optimum, because I think the manual recommended 96 octane or something like that. (I'd check, but the manual has faded so bad, you can barely read it) Some of the later model SS's actually called for 102 octane if I remember... (The 496SS variety) Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.)
That 20 year old television probably won't work, when the FCC mandates digital HD TV broadcasts in the future... (was it 2007?)
Where an I buy a betamax tape again? I've also had a VCR go out a while back, and the VCR repair places are pretty much all belly up, because they said its cheaper to just buy a new VCR.
And that 50 yearold smith and wesson better have been taken apart and cleaned once in a while, or good luck pulling the trigger without it jamming, etc.
I see dead people.
See corrected subject above...damnit now I'll use that preview button! :p
Here's a graph which includes the logarithm of the temperature Voyager's reading of the solar wind plasma which surrounds it. Converting back from the logarithm, this temperature displayed here varies from about 5000 K to about 50000K. Of course, in such high vacuums the heat transfer is minimal. Another source for more detailed data is here.
Placing most electronics in 1 atmosphere of air at those temperatures would boil them, but that's as irrelevant as the 5 K comparison as this is high vacuum.
It's very hot... in space. KHAAAAAAN!
the thing has a heisenburg compensator on it.
For those that are scratching their heads:
In Quantum Mechanics, Heisenburg Theory says you can ONLY know the direction or location of a subatomic particle, but NOT both. This is why the teleporters in Star Trek have "Heisenburg Compensators", so they can beam and reassemble those subatomic particles. They mentioned this in one of the NextGeneration episodes as well, when the transporters were on the fritz.
Since when is 1974 30 years ago?
I know I'm getting old, but damn I'm not 30 yet!
second society
I used to have a Pioneer stereo receiver. It was so weak that it sounded like it was past Pluto too....from the other side of my bedroom!
I recently saw this article http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/21/gravity.m ystery/ from cnn on how both Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 have not covered nearly the distance that conventional physics said they should have.
It seems that something is decelerating them both with equal force towards the sun.
"Something is slowing down the spacecraft. And we have not been successful in finding the source of that. There is more slowing than you would expect from Newtonian gravity," said John Anderson, a senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
This is somewhat of an old article, has anyone heard whether there has been an update on the cause of this?
-David
Here's an idea, how bout NASA Creating equipment this sturdy. I don't think they have, since... Pioneer 10
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
... and ...
:D
"22 hours later, from 79.4 AU, DSS 63 acquired the downlink on time at -183 dbm. After peaking the signal to -178.5 dbm, they locked the telemetry at 16 bps with SNR of -0.5 db."
Sounds JUST like my 56k modem
I have a Wang VS mini in the basement, with workstations in a few spots in the house.
That's Wang VS mini - not mini wang.
This space available.
The article mentions the pioneer contains a plaque designed as a greeting for other civilizations.
If an object like pioneer 10 was to come close to our planet, would we even know about it? Or would it just fall and burn in our atmosphere, receiving as much attention as the averge small meteor?
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
...
I have a Microsoft mouse that came with my new computer about two years ago. Since it's made out of nonreactive plastic it could likely survive for millions of years out in space.
Oh, whoops, I just read the article (what're the chances of that?). Although it would exist for a long time, it already lost its function a month after I bought it
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Sure they can. 2MHz, 8-bit CPU anyone?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We don't need manned flights anymore. Just send out probes. Great concept. We should build one and include it in the payload of the next shuttle.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
They do, but when you're given the choice between the 2Ghz or the new nvidia board or the 386 or the TGA, (bad examples, I know) you go for the brand new buggy equipment. This thing hasn't been upgraded in 30 years! Stick with the old good equipment and you won't get too much work done. =)
The greatest question of all time is: "Are we alone?"
...and yes I know the dark side of the moon isn't always dark, but we'd want to cut down on earthshine too probably... ...and imagine a beo [smack
That's really the other ultimate goal of space exploration, isn't it? (The first goal is to find us a new place to live after the earth is used up).
But there is such a simple way to answer the question: Take all the cash we are using on rediculous stuff like the ISS and:
BUILD A GIANT TELESCOPE IN SPACE OR ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON.
And I mean BIG.
One so Hugeomegagigantic that it can actually SEE the surface of extra solar earth sized planets in detail to pick out cities, roads, and lights.
And then, if we saw with our own eyes that there was another civilization -- imagine the space program we'd start to have then.
If the asteroid (or spacecraft) isn't too old, it outgasses, and the outgassing rate depends strongly on temperature, forming a weak natural rocket engine. Even for refractory materials (or old asteroids that have outgassed all that they are going to) the photon pressure from the warm side can have a significant effect over millions of years.
I haven't done the calculation myself, but I've discussed it over cocktails with Bill Bottke, a leading asteroid scientist, and he seemed to think it was a plausible explanation for the Pioneer 10 orbital drift. P10 is a spinner.
This is just plain not true. While the sun (and solar-type stars) will outshine any Earth-type civilization in the broad-band radio bandpasses, terrestrial signals can easily outshine the sun within narrow bandpasses (e.g., radio stations and radar installations). Check out the Project Phoenix webpages if you want a refresher on this topic.
We can pick up radio-type signals from stars, but these are... stars
And the fact that we can detect them proves that we have the capability to detect alien civilizations, of a technological sophistication roughly similar to our own, within a relatively small region of neaby space (about 10 parsecs, for those of you who are counting).
The Project Phoenix Parkes Observatory run of 1995 had narrow-band sensitivity down to a few tens of gigawatts (10^10 watts) for the 19 solar-type stars within that radius that they observed. There are several military-radar emplacements on Earth that exceed that threshold.
Next-generation radio antenna arrays will increase sensitivity by a factor of roughly 1000. Are you sure you still want to bet against radio-wavelength SETI?
-renard
formed from the beta decay of U238. However U238 usually alpha decays first, so generally there is not much Pu238 in a uranium sample. Either way, the result is the same, U234 is formed after 1 alpha decay and 2 beta decays.
It was called the IBM PC. It was available in 1981. Dam things were way overengineered.
P10 was laggy as hell in last week's quakematch.
- undoware.ca
Find a c64 or Apple emulator for Linux, and find the Apple or c64 images.
Not sure about the c64 part, but for the Apple emulator and ROM (Or should I say image?), look here. You should be able to find the Apple II for Linux emulator if you look on Google.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I think one of the bad moves wich cut down lifetime of Computers was to use mechanical components such as fans or Harddisks. I use a lot of old hardware and the parts that die are always the ones that moved. On the other hand i have to admit that using a fan to cool an uberfast CPU has some benefits giving the typical time of a 2-3years lifecycle on hardware.
cu,
Lispy
Instead, I'm guessing we'll bump into one or both of the Pioneers in an alien museum of some sort thousands of years from now. The aliens will be like, hey hello, nice to meet you, and by the way we've got some of your stuff.
What would really be crazy is for the Pioneers to mysteriously head back to earth, as if something 'volleyed' them. Maybe the plaques will have been replaced...
The summer I worked there, they had a group working around the same area as Validation, doing mathematical proofs of the chip designs. This group was relatively new at the time, and had been so successful at finding bugs they were given a huge vacation (to Europe? something like that). This was in 1999, so I don't know if it's still a big thing, but proofs are still considered worthwhile.
-k
yours,
kbs
see, the thing is that the CS guys don't take many business courses, so, they don't know that your product MUST have failure built in. car companies have been doing it for 30 years. Boeing does NOT do it because they would kill people. what good is it to dell or hp if you don't buy a new computer every couple of years??
Thanks, that's very useful. I might have thought about looking at Intel's site if my caffeine stream wasn't suffering from overnight ebb when I wrote my query.
An interesting quote from the site:
The first processor was the Intel 4004 with a 4 Bit data bus [introduced in 1971]. It wasn't powerful enough for a computer, but some early pocket calculators based on this chip.
So Pioneer 10 was developed before even the predecessor of the first CPU chip was available. That's something, huh? That bird is way, way out there, still trying to talk, with a CPU of discrete pieces that would maybe be a double handful of parts.
Wow. Those guys back then were smart.
Wow, cooled by space! How fast could my CPU by overclocked? I'll refrain from 'imagine a Beowulf of these' comments.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
Yes, so they could instantly go out of business, or have to raise prices so that you pay $3k for a video card and $1500 for a hard drive.
Thanks, but I'll stick with cheap, disposable hardware. By the time it fails, it's time to upgrade anyway.
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
Actually, it would be impressive if modern-day NASA could make equipment remotely this reliable.
I worked for 10 years in a facility that built custom ICs for NASA. Most of the ICs in almost every historic space mission was produced by this facility. When I was there we used a lot of 6805 varients. They were NOT the same parts that you could buy off the shelf. First, the die we started with was processsed specificly for the application. Second the construction techniques are far different then commercial parts. Third, we screened the *** out of them, as in start with 40 parts for a deliverable of 4 units. The StrongArm is a industrial device to begin with. It is not a commercial grade part. Industrial grade ICs are already part of the way there, to level S.
Any ways, the real killer for space craft, besides being able to survive launch, is temperature. It is not just the extreams, NASA parts work from -55c to +125c, it is the tempurature cycling. Tempurature cycling stresses wirebonds, package seals, and even the integrety of the substrate. Temp cycling can even drive out chemically bound water that can react with ionic contaminates to produce corrosives. This can degrade bond wires, the substrate metalization, and on one occasion, a resistor on the die itself.
Building a spacecraft from parts from Radio Shack is like fighting a modern navel battle with bass boats. Though a bass boat and a destroyer both float, have GPS, radios, radar, and sonar, there is a lot of differents in construction. I'd but my money on the destroyer.
In LEO, there are the remenants of the earths atmosphere (a few excited particles knocking around). Further out there is the solar wind with significant numbers of charged particles. These can and most certainly transfer som of their heat. As there are not many of them, it would take some time to heat up to 5000K, but they still have that order of temperature.
See my journal, I write things there
... but if it ran windoozzee it would crash!! unlike Linux!! I bet you all did not think of that!
From CNN.com "...Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which took off in 1974..." so... umm, if it's 30 years old.. I think I must have the wrong year in RL. (it's 2002 right?) I have no problem with rounding it up.. but it won't really be such a big deal to say "It's 30!" when it actually becomes 30.. instead you might be like.. it's still 30?
Imagine, please, that you have a pipe 1m in diameter stretching from just past Earth's atmosphere to the Alpha Centauri system. (Ignore the engineering difficulties, please.)
Can you guess how much all the contents of that pipe would weigh?
Less than a kilogram.
Considerably less than a kilogram.
I would tell you just how tiny, but you wouldn't believe me. I'll let you do the math: the observed density of the universe is 2.1 * 10**-29 kilograms per cubic meter. From here to Alpha Centauri is about 4.5 lightyears, and each lightyear is 9.5 * 10**15 meters.
So we're looking at a total distance of about 4*10**16m to Alpha Centauri. Multiply that by the cross-sectional area of our pipe (.6m) and you get... 2.4 * 10**16m**3 of volume.
Multiply that by the observed density of the universe and you get...
5 * 10**-13 kilograms.
Yeah. Like I said. Considerably less than a kilogram.
Your post shows a severe lack of understanding about space. One, it's freaking cold. Two, once you get past Saturn you can pretty much write off solar flares and activity. Three, sure, there are energetic cosmic rays--but they're here on Earth, too, so Earth's no better off. (No, our atmosphere doesn't protect us in any substantial way from cosmic rays.)
If you were to stand on Pluto and turn on a cell phone, the radio signal from your cell phone would be the brightest electromagnetic signal in the sky--by orders of magnitude.
Space is overwhelmingly small, dark and quiet. Yes, there is the occasional bit of matter which can be a real royal pain in the ass... but the odds of a collision are, well, astronomical.
I don't think you understand a damn word of what you just posted, and it astonishes me that you can get a +4 moderation for being totally flipping wrong.
Considering the distance this is realy good for about 10 watts of RF. I would say that the difficulty in hearing the signal is a combination of path loss (well over -130dBm), man made noise, as well as the noise generated by nearby stars and planets.
Of course, if we used computers that lasted this long we'd still be CLI only...
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Not really interstellar until it enters another star system, is it?
Here is the parent's URL hyperlinked for the lazy...
Puzzling hyper-gravity proves weighty mystery
Excellent tie in, by the way.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
Or would a return address be bad - they come and find us and destroy us or rape our planet of all our Pez despensers.
I'm assuming this isn't adjusted for inflation in today's dollars?
-ted
Plutonium is pretty safe unless you ingest or inhale it. This isotope is an alpha emitter, and alpha particles are a joke to shield... a piece of paper would do it.
Small amounts of Pu in (tiny) batteries would probably be very safe. But, some dick could by zillions of them, crack out the plutonium, and release it into the atmosphere for people to inhale. If you inhale some particles of exactly the right size, it can be deadly by irradiating a single spot in the lungs for years & causing cancer. (The risk is hard to assess, though, because it is very hard to do a study of the effects of very low doses of radiation.)
Note, though, that these power plants are extremely safe to launch. The are built so that they won't release plutonium into the atmosphere if the rocket blows up. (They will survive the explosion.) Flying them by Earth at extremely high speeds (on a gravity assist, say) is more risky since the RTGs aren't designed to survive a reentry at those speeds. So, that should only be done if extreme care is taken.
I imagine someone somewhere has examined whether the measured deceleration of the Pioneer probes might correspond with the predictions of MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics)? This is an ad-hoc change to Newton's second law by Mordehai Milgrom, designed to explain the observed rotational motion of stars and galaxies without having to invoke dark (non-baryonic) matter. It does this surprisingly well, and it's main flaw is lack of a theoretical basis to date. Since MOND is different from traditional Newtonian dynamics only concerning "slow-moving" matter, Pioneer 10 might be an interesting test (or, it might just be too small - I'm not physicist enough to know :).
Anyone read anything on the subject? A quick google search doesn't turn much up.
Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy.
They used to. My Commodore-64 was WAY more stable than anything I've used in the last ten years.
Firmware, simple enough to debug, is better. How often do cellphones crash?
If you have a perfect magnetic dipole in an ideal universe with no other material in it, then the field falls as 1/r^3 throughout space.
But, here in reality, there are many charged particles and currents. Among other fields, there is the solar magnetic field and the Galactic (interstellar) magnetic field. Those fields superimpose, and the net result is a dipole near the Sun, and the interstellar field far away. The fieldlines match up with each other (roughly speaking) at the heliopause.
Just because you took freshman physics doesn't make you an authority on physics.
He means interstellar as in, travelling through "interstellar space," which is the space between stars.
(But, your definition of interstellar is a valid one, too.)
The fall-over capabilities of the NonStop systems are unmatched.
Try this The URL for this search is http://lanl.arXiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/abs:+pioneer /0/1/0/2001/0/1
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
...got as much free (as in stolen at gunpoint from taxpayers, not as in beer) money as they wanted to do things I'm sure they could create components just as durable.
Stop glorifying NASA. They're second-handers.
The odds of it ever being found are, well, pretty damn long, but the map is there.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The really weird thing is, the Februrary issue of Analog has a story called "Distance" by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff which deals with exactly this subject: an unexpected, unsolicited message from Pioneer 10. And the story must have been written at least six months ago, right?
Coincidence ...? You decide.
(Sorry, but since it's in the February (print) issue, it's not up on the web site yet. Go buy a copy and say Kaddish for a tree.)
The brilliance of humanity is not reflected in the distance that Pioneer 10 has traveled, despite the effort we expended to get there. Someday, however, it will be... when we go and get it back.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Many customer service e-mails are routed via Pioneers onboard computer.
too bad I used up my mod points...
-- From Denmark
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
We could all be using a 200 KHz 60,000 instruction per second, 16K of adressable memory 8008 CPU!!!
16K is enough for anyone, maybe?
I'm sorry but in 30 years when computers come with 47,906 THz processors and 1024 TB of RAM I really really don't think a P-4 3.06 GHz with 4 GB of ram is going to be satisfying.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Vuja Da?! (last part of the story)
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I'm sure that manufacturers will consider making hardware which lasts that long as soon as the great unwashed consider using hardware for that length of time. Why not start asking now for that extra 2k of RAM?
"I took the red pill. Ha ha. You can't have it now."
Check out VoyagerRadio.com, where Voyager is still transmitting to Earth.