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Interstellar Pioneers Facing Termination
marcel-jan.nl writes "There are plans to terminate the interstellar missions Voyager 1 and 2 and the solar mission Ulysses in October to save money. The Voyagers alone need $4.2 million a year for daily operation and data analysis. Scientist say this cut is "an extremely foolish thing to do": the Voyagers are approaching the edge of the Solar System and Ulysses is observing the Sun coming to the end of a 22-year magnetic cycle."
Once the probes are built and launched, and the bulk of the diagnosis and repair of early malfunctions is taken care of, the rest of the probe is cheap to operate by comparison. By contrast, how much does the U.S. spend on gasoline or diesel for military vehicles within the borders of the U.S.? How much does the U.S. spend to allow congressmen to use government-paid-for television studios to film whatever they decide?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Forgive my ignorance here, but I thought I remembered reading a few years' back that everyone was looking forward to Voyager getting way out beyond the solar system because we might learn something more about the Oort cloud, source of all those nifty global killer meteors people got so worked up about after "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact."
Or is the instrumentation on Voyager just inadequate for finding that little matter in that much volume?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
We apparently can't afford $4.2 million per year for discovering the origins of universe and having a presence beyond our solar system, but $1 million per year for studying wild shrimp is apparently a needed project.
I know that pointing out frivolous spending is the easy way to attack spending cuts for what one considers important, but this is just goofy.
I'm a big tall mofo.
This is insane. Sure some money will be saved, but nearly 30 years of funds will have been wasted. Do the math.
Why do we have to shut them down. This is kinda like the remote computers that I leave up in a closed office. Yeah, no one is using them anymore, but I keep them running all the time, because eventually I may need to get to them. Once they're shut off, turning them back on is Hell for me, impossible for NASA. It doesn't take any effort for me to ignore them, they're in condition that no one else can mess with them... Who are they bothering? JUST LEAVE THEM ON AND IGNORE THEM. That's a lot better than shutting them off.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
That money's needed for faith based initiatives, abstinence-only education and 'my-granpappy-ain't-no-monkey' stickers for textbooks. Question; can they save money by shutting down the analysis portion and just collecting raw data until more generous hands are on the budgetary purse strings?
Why does everyone insist on making every boneheaded decision by a government department the fault of george bush himself?.
Wow you must be really putting a lot of stock in his abilities to put his nose in every pie like that, so really what you're doing is saying how intelligent he is. He has to be if he can run everything!
I know this is an unpopular view, especially in the geek community, but it has to be said: I think this is a good thing.
I don't know, maybe I wasn't given too many model spaceships to play with as a child, maybe I didnt sit slackjawed infront of the TV watching Star Trek enough and maybe the firey passion that lies in some people about reaching the edges of our universe just isn't alive in me.
And it is quite possible the bleeding heart in me is just too overwhelming to recognize the significance, of spending millions on these space projects in part of billions of a NASA budget, while [for example] the US still doesnt have universal health coverage.
Bush's "starve the beast" mentality has the chilling effect of drastic cuts everywhere. I would much rather see NASA's budget get slashed to bits than any other program that deals directly with life on *this* planet.
Face it, NASA's whole begining was a technology ego fueld race with the USSR and perhaps its continuing existance is simply a "leftover" phase or just more ego building.
As far as that goes, why not see if a few big universities would want to take them over for prestige reasons? Pros: keeps scientists around the project, attracts new graduate students, looks good in recruiting. Cons: Star Trek convention relocates to your campus, local CS majors holding a hacking contest to see who can be the first to overclock or install linux on an object outside the solar system, university webserver melted by /. everytime a new discovery is made
But weirdly enough, Joe Average seems to be pretty fond of spending billions to slaughter some evil ragheads in the mid east. Would you be so kind and explain this to a non US-citizen?
Actually he demanded that the budget be restored but was overridden by the congress. I tried to get THAT article posted here, but was oddly rejected.
Gee, we would have missed out on Anomalous acceleration if we had pulled the plug the first time they wanted to. (Have they adequately explained that yet?)
Considering that during the current fiscal year we have spent $ 151,351,702,275.20 just on interest on the debt, it seems that $4.2M is a very effective use of tax dollars.
I am Jonathan Vos Post, formerly Mission Planning Engineer on Voyager 2, for the the part of the mission called "VUIM": Voyager Uranus Interstellar Mission.
a cePu blications/210Ways.html
I worked for Charlie Kolhaase, Mission Planning Director, and Ed Stone, Chief Scientist.
So far as I'm concerned, NASA is telling me that I wasted my time (except for those nice screensavers of Miranda, which was a part of mission under my responsibility). Now they want to kill me, bury me, and desecrate my grave.
That's what this feels like, anyhow.
The interstellar part of the mision is extremely serious science, as others have said. We only have 4 interstellar probes right now, two Voyagers and two Pioneers.
Kill the still-working half of the fleet, and we're back to square one.
Who cares how the sun interacts with interstellar medium? Who cares if anomalous acceleration of the Voyagers tells us something about Dark Energy?
Let's go invade Iran, or shoot another Italian journalist, or detain a few hundred more people at Gitmo. Yeah, that's what our wonderful government wants to do with the money saved.
The gentleman from the Voyager Navigation team with whom I worked most closely still at JPL (promoted to management) -- I won't mention his name to spare him retribution from above -- correctly described himself as "The other interstellar navigator, besides Sulu."
My credentials on the subject are at
http://www.magicdragon.com/ComputerFutures/Sp
But no manned vehicle will ever get out to where the Voyagers and Pioneers are, so you're comparing apples and hand grenades. How does excitement about manned space travel translate into continued funding for the Voyagers?
Guess what? The Voyagers (and SIM, and TPF, and LISA, and Con-X, and JIMO, and Hubble) are all taking budget cuts even as I type this in order to pay for your manned space travel to the moon and Mars.
Congress allocates $16B to NASA and Bush says "Go to the Moon and Mars and pay for the Shuttle and the ISS."
Guess how the money gets allocated? PHBs or short-sighted bureaucrats aside, NASA is doing exactly what your elected president and congress are directing them to do, and it's the PHBs and bureaucrats who are scraping enough money from the bottom of the barrel to keep the science programs going.
Or not, as I go to deliver my last talk on a science program later this afternoon. See, the budget has been cut for the third time this fiscal year to pay for manned space flight.
That's why Bush was pushing for a Mars mission, right?
Yep. Bush will go for silly not-gonna-happen-and-no-point-if-it-did stuff rather than science any day.
NASA's internal beauracracy
Just as a data point, NASA is asking for $77 million next year just to fund changes to their financial reporting systems. Ie the noise in the flapping around the edges of the work of the people who couldn't find $4mil for Voyager would fund it for nearly 10 years.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Even if the program is cancelled there may still be some data observerd. These guys still get occasional data from the Pioneer craft even though the missions ended in '96.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Sell the damn thing to China. Or better sell NASA to China. US is busy with Irak and stuff anyway.
This frightens me... first Columbia crashes, conservatives in the White House, and now cancelling our deep space programs? Eerie.
Now, how much of the budget goes to the (albeit stupid) programs you mentioned?
(speaking of faith based initiatives, abstinence only education, and "my granpappy-ain't-no-monkey" stickers for textbooks from the grand parent post)
Bush has said that last year the government distributed$2 billion in grants to faith based organizations for social welfare purposes. His budget for the upcoming year includes $206 million for abstinence education, an increase of $39 million over last year! And the monkey stickers, that's a state issue; but you can be sure that some states have spent quite a lot of money on stickers that suggest creationism and evolution stand on the same level of scientific footing.
The point is that while its true that the government spends most of its money on Medicare and Social Security, Bush is also blowing ALOT of money on socially conservative programs. The $39 million increase in abstinence education this year would have been more than enough to keep these clearly worthwhile science programs going at NASA had it received those dollars instead. But no, we're going to spend it on programs that have a clear history of producing and disseminating false, misleading, and distorted information about reproductive health. There's your Bush science right there, people.
Giving money to NASA doesn't get a representative re-elected but it can affects things that can.
IANAL but the way I understand it is a privated citizen or corporation can donate money to a government project and a portion of that donation is either a tax credit or a tax deduction. When this is done properly that money is ear-marked for that project's budget and can't be used for anything else. So if it's deductable, and your at the 17% bracket, your congress-critter just got 17% of your donation removed from the funds available to his pork-barrel prodject!
If a print letter is more impressive to your congress critter than an Email, imagine how impressed he/she'll be when you've cut a check! Next you want to tell him/her, that your descressionary funds have been reduced due to your donation to NASA and therefore he will'not be getting a campain contribution from you this year! Additionaly you can tell him that we've invested 30 years into the voyager projects and throwing this a way, just when we about to get the next batch of intersting data, will set us back at least a century; so if this isn't rectified not only will he not get a campain contribution, neither will his children, grand childern, or great-grand children!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Does anybody on this site actually know anything about space science?!
Yes. If your question is, does everyone here work with/at NASA and know all the facts, then no.
Does anybody have any idea what sort of science payload the Voyagers are carrying?
10 instruments supporting imaging, radio, magnetic, and spectral analysis. Some of the instruments have been deactivated to save power. Not great, but still the only thing we have that's 13 light hours out.
How long should we support these missions which have such diminished value? That money can do a lot of good in the space science community. I know the mission I'm working on (also a deep space bird) could use that money for some extra QA and the like.
If you can give me a probe that will overtake Voyager in 10 years, carry a more sophisticated science package, and be at least as durable and cost effective, then I say kill the Voyager program. If you are just hoping to get a bit more funding for a program that won't do anything near the same thing, then I say leave Voyager in operation.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"silly not-gonna-happen-and-no-point-if-it-did stuff"
He's shooting for the stars, I agree... but that's the point!
It's the right idea. Any research into manned space travel should be the top priority of the PLANET. We have forever to observe the solar system. If we don't get self-sufficient colonies off of this rock, humanity itself could be extinguished when the next big disaster strikes.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I am a sysadmin, so maybe some of you writing programs can say "yea or nay" to this...If the problem is money for data analysis, why not a program like SETI at Home to crunch it? I would be willing to run something like this to see that they keep the missions going...I am afraid the day after they quit analyzing the data, they will find life!
The expenses really add up quickly. What's a scientist cost per year with benefits? Let's guess $150,000 (scientists everywhere are laughing and weeping at this number, probably). Hire five of them to do nothing but analyze the data. You're up to $750,000 a year. Add $250,000 a year for assistant's salaries and other overhead. You're now at $1 million.
Now build the scientists a state-of-the-art lab filled with the latest equipment that's used exclusively for this project. Figure $3 million and you've spent all of your money.
Oh, the other $200,000? That's for demolition of the lab at the end of the year so you can build a new one the next year.
How else can you manage to burn through $4.2 million a year listening to a couple of satellites?
Insert witty sig here.
Space.com article discusses that these satellites aren't in predicted trajectories.
If they are really short of the $4m per year to fund this project, put the mission up for tender...
I am sure that there are other countries whose governments would love to have a deep-space mission
And for $4m per year, it's a bargain!
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
I would be interested to know how they've been costed. Would ending the missions actually reduce NASA's operating costs by $4m, or is that simply the share of their costs allocated to Voyager et al?
I disagree with the idea that without manned spaceflight, the entire space program is doomed....The Mars rovers, Galileo, Cassini-Huygens have all been huge successes....We could be littering the entire solar system with probes if we'd stop spending people up to film themselves drinking spheres of Tang or working hard raising spiders in microgravity in the experiment submitted by Mrs. Wachowski's third-grade class in Salina, KS. Bang for buck.
"The conquest of space is worth the risk of life....Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because, in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men."
-Gus Grissom
Grissom was talking about the moon, but it's true about any location. We go because that's what we do. Exploration salves the spirit.
Robot probes have their place, and it is a vital one, but you underestimate the power and importance of having a person there, whether there is the moon, Mars, or wherever else you're going--because until we're there, we'll not have been there.
What we need here is a little out-of-the-box-thinking. Why not turn it into an all volunteer project? Here's our chance for one of the greatest open source hacks of all time. If we can create multiple operating systems and associated software with only ad-hoc means of funding, I think we can do the same with this project. Surely we could reverse engineer the transmission protocol which communicates with the spacecraft (even if the data is encrypted, its 1970's based encryption which we should be able to break). In fact what we are dealing with here is all 70's based technology. Moore's law to the rescue. But we'd also need a large antenna right? Well I have not done any signal-to-noise calculations, but what if we used 1,000+ smaller antenna distributed throughout the country? You know, like those large dishes from the analog satellite TV days. Okay, maybe the recievers would have to be sitting in a bath of liquid nitrogen. So what? It's cheaper than milk. And we might have to be syncronized in time and know the precise locations of each antenna. Hey, that's what the 'Net and GPS are for. There are a thousand other reasons why the pessimists might say this couldn't work, but pessimists never accomplish anything anyway, ignore them.
Having worked for NASA TWICE in my career, once in the late 80's and again in the late 90's NASA is ALWAYS underfunded. However, NASA wastes a LOT of that money they do get. They can't even determine if they get overcharged for a pencil. NASA is in dire need the kind of contract and expense reform the DOD had to do after the $2000 hammers were revealed. Also, scientists at NASA want missions to do EVERYTHING and they have zero concept of what it costs, then they continually polish things, underestimate timelines and then the projects take 3X as long as planned and eat the budget for the next 2 missions. It's not that NASA has bad ideas or bad scientist or bad engineers, it's bad managers mostly on the financial side. Along with a great case of not saying "NO" to new projects so that things like building maintenance can occur!! If everyone wants to continue to listen for Voyager (which is a very weak signal and hard to pick up out of background noise of the Universe) then they can start a private foundation to listen. After all, Bill Gates and others give many millions for things like AIDS research so I think they could give a few thousand for Space!
If SF fans can donate millions of dollars to a corporation, why can't we take up a collection for the 4.5 million dollars to keep these missions going? 1 dollar from 4.5 million people would be enough. I'd give 10 bucks and at that rate we would only need 450,000 people to keep it going.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Quite so, which illustrates the point I was making - even though the Pioneer mission has been over since '95 or so, they check in on them once in a while. Until '03 in the Case of Pioneer 10. They only stopped checking because Pioneer 10 wasn't talking.
So, even if the Voyagers are not an active mission that doesn't mean we won't ever hear from them again.
I bet when set up a massive array telescope at a LaGrange point we'll use them for calibration.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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