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NASA Proposes Ending Voyager
darylb writes "NASA is proposing ending the 28-year old Voyager program, which costs a paltry $4mil per year to operate. One of the two Voyager probes is approaching the edge of what can be thought of as the sun's atmosphere (where the solar wind bumps up against interstellar wind), a place where no probe has gone before. Canceling this project means saving almost nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent so far. The craft will be out of juice by 2015 in any case, so the marginal cost for the extra, invaluable, data would be minimal." From the article: "NASA officials said the possibility of cutting Voyager and several other long-running missions in the Earth-Sun Exploration Division arose in February, when the Bush administration proposed slashing the division's 2006 budget by nearly one-third -- from $75 million to $53 million."
Glad to see the duplicate checking code is in good working order. NOT! You guys really need to reverse the polarity on that thing, or something.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
slashing the division's 2006 budget by nearly one-third -- from $75 million to $53 million.
Well, I guess every million counts. I wonder how that $4 million per year is spent? Could they go into a cost saving
mode (below the 10 full time staff they have working with the probe now) where they basically just collected data from the probe and stashed it for later study or does this thing need
to be actively managed to remain useful?
SPAM
So, this is part of the fundamental problem of moving NASA's focus to entirely manned programs. Scientific projects like Hubble, and robotic exploration are getting shorted because the current administration want to put man on Mars. This of course is right in line with their strategy to remove basic science funding from the picture in favor of projects that have immediate payoff. An unfortunate and ignorant way to view things, but in character with the POTUS. Do the analysis and actually look at the potential scientific payoff from basic science research like the Voyager program, Hubble, basic science support of computer science research that is being cut by DARPA, bioscience research that is being cut in favor of military research or moved into weapons research, reduction in NIH funding etc....etc....etc....
This crowd especially will appreciate the payoffs that basic science research provides. Without basic science research, we would not have the Internet as we know it, we would not have personal computers, and for those that like the games, we most certainly would not have computer graphics as much of the pretty graphics you rely on arose out of basic science mathematical research.
It worries me because in many places in American society (including Slashdot), I see an movement away from intellectual pursuit and a devaluation of those who we have relied on to make the United States a pre-eminent force in international science.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
If fans of Enterprise can scrape up money to try and save a show, surely there is no
problem getting a few thousand geeks to "buy" Voyager from NASA.
GWB talks about this great "Ownership Society", well, here we go!
I, for one, would pay a few bucks to own a peice of history.
My great-great-great grandkids will be safe when Vger comes back because
they own it. Vger wouldn't kill it's owners, would it??
What a brilliant example of farsightedness on behalf of the Bush administration; or better, a brilliant example of the lack thereof. :-(
...) in a decade or two?
We want to have a manned mission to Mars, but we don't want any exploration of what else is out there in our solar system...
Spending billions of Dollars in the hunt for non-existent WMDs, instead of spending a couple of millions on the exploration of something that DOES exist. (I would think that all the extra congressional and presidential work in the Schiavo case probably cost more than what Voyager would cost for a year)
On the other hand - being European, I would wish ESA *had* funds like for the number of projects that NASA still has the money for...
I wish, someone would try and clue in politicians on both sides of the Atlantic!
I think, the Indians might be the ones doing it right - they are trying their first space missions, but unlike the others before, they are from the start trying to keep them on a tight budget (given that the country has a huge growth, but not too much "left-over" money for things like space programs). In a couple of decades, when India might be in a position to seriously fund space programs, their "budget" experience might really come in handy to make the most of their money for the space projects... Will they be the next big space nation and out-do the "modern" world (US, Europe, Russia,
that says Osama Bin Laden is hiding past the heliopause, along with yellowcake nuclear material.
I just don't see how the alien robot race will be able to rebuild VGER and send it back to us if they cancel the program.
Bush threatens to cut funds to show how tough he is.
NASA threatens to cut good programs to call his bluff.
Unfortunately, the Bushies have no sense of proportion and will be quite happy to carry thru with their cuts. It will be up to Congress to save these programs, but again, the Bushies are just stupid enough to let the program sink to show who's who.
Infuriate left and right
Not to be confused with Paramount ending the 10-year old Voyager program -- that happened three years ago.
SPAM
It's important to realize that cutting all those worthless scientific programs for the next decade will give us money to stay another 12-18 hours in Iraq
What a deal
How many millions has president Bush spent in the War vs Iraq? How many lives?
I've stopped trying to understand these decisions at the gvt. level. They're just not logical.
Thankfully that's fewer tax dollars spent on a program that is easily funded by private dollars. We've seen numerous slashdot articles in recent months that prove that our public dollars should no longer be used for advancing scientific studies outside of our atmosphere.
I'd like to see Congress draft a few bills canceling the old laws on the books that prevent private companies from spending their dollars finding new ways to space.
Virgin Galactic, anyone?
Nothing for you to see here....
Err, I mean there's nothing there?
Its time for Nasa to get rid of Enterprise.
Where's the paypal site where I can contribute to end "Enterprise"?!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
BUT, NASA has a lot they have to balance right now... the ISS, gettin gthe shuttle back up, replacing the shuttle, and now, thanks to Bush, look at getting back to the moon and Mars (I think they are worth while, just not the way Bush has laid them out)... let's not forget the rovers, too.
There is some amazing data that might get lost, but you pick some programs to cut from that budget, while being expected to further new programs...
Or maybe we could sell it to the ESA, or even GIVE it to them?
Canceling this project means saving almost nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent so far.
The amount of money spent so far has nothing to do with whether we should spend more money. Spent money is gone, no matter what we do. New expenditures should be evaluated on their own merits.
I would agree, however, that this seems like a project worth continuing.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
... Just forget about it and let it cruise away... and then when people encounter 'V-Ger' in a couple years, they'll be clueless as to what it is...
Doesn't NASA watch movies?!?!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
But... but... b-but...
I thought we were going to Mars! Time for NASA to work that "better and cheaper" policy into overdrive, I'd say.
I guess I haven't been keeping up on the journals. What have been the great new discoveries?
Can any body tell me if this is inline with what George Bush has in mind for the space program? Heard that he has many ambitious plans.
fuvoo: watch something
Didn't Bush last year propose sending humans to the moon and then mars? And his follow up budget proposes budget cuts to accomplish this?
Did someone explain to those guys that Jules Verne's book is Science Fiction?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
You're thinking of NOMAD, and it eventually did try to sterilize its creator.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm assuming that this is simple humour, or even a remnant from April 1st.
$22 million is pocket change for a huge number of private americans, let alone for thousands of corporations. I just cannot believe that a project with such a huge public profile (even non-nerds have heard of Voyager) could be axed to save crumbs.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Being that I was a telemetry technician on the tracking ship USNS Vanguard at time of launch (for Voyager 1 and 2), it would be sad to see the program end. However at the distances of these probes one would have to believe that the data rate is now very slow. I wonder what kind of a burden these are to operate on the DSN (Deep Space Network)??
Or basically sell off the project to an appropriate "qualified purchaser". Japan wants to get their space program going-perhaps their government would like to take over the Voyager project. The EU might be another option here. For that matter, some of the oil rich states have some interest in basic science. Even Singapore could take this one on-it would be nice world-class project for a city-state. Gates or Ellison(for that matter most of the richest 500 people in the US) could do this if they were seriously interested in space. I can imagine some of the larger private foundations might be interested to.
First Voyager, then Enterprise, now Voyager again.
sigh...
kulakovich
Just a quick not-well-thought-out idea, but what about trying to turn this over to the public, maybe some sort of amateur consortium -- some sort of "open source science". I'm sure they've got huge amounts of data on these little guys, is it accessible? Does anyone have a tutorial for macgyvering a 386, a microwave and some tinfoil to send/receive Voyageur instructions?
and now back to the fallout shelter...
Bush is trying to undermine government. He and his ilk want to reduce government to one tenth its size. They know they can't do that directly; as much as people like to rail against the government, it's always against the other fella's programs, not their own. So instead, he is doing his best to bust the budget and make things so bad that it will have to shrink. At least that's their thinking. It is, as you might suspect, just as flawed as all their other thinking.
Why the war? Not just to finish daddy's war and show how manly he is, but also to run expenses sky high and crowd out the popular programs. Who can argue for kid education or health when national security is at stake?
Why privatize social security? To preempt the small real reforms that would fix it, and to bust the budget.
Why throw out $4M programs producing invaluable results? To show that when tough choices have to be made, he can make them, and to put on a show of trying to cut the budget while the billion dollar wastes continue to bust the other end wide open. It's like a stage magician, waving one hand around to distract the audience while the other hand quietly goes about its nefarious work of switching things around unnoticed.
Infuriate left and right
This is typical: threaten an agency's budget and they'll respond by threatening to cut their most valuable services first.
Bureaucracies are inherently dumb. But don't take my word for it - read "Bureaucracy" by Ludvig von Mises.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
Here's an idea that might or might not have already been written about.
What if the Voyager (or any man-made probe) passed this *unknown* point in space, got sucked into a blackhole and dumped to another part
of space time entirely. So far forward, backward or elsewhere in time/space that it was discovered by Aliens, who subsequently came to our planet to check things out.
But they arrive in our primordial past and populate the Earth with a hybrid alien/animal mix. Making what would eventually become us humans?
Yes I know, far fetched and whatnot, but like I said, just an idea... and a question in there somewhere.
We can already build something that would do a better job than voyager and overtake it. If we put something together with an Ion engine it would zip past Voyager in a couple years. Save the money from voyager and put it towards something newer and better.
The problem is that we're not going to build anything newer and better. We know where this $4m is going - to help cut the deficit caused by a two-year Iraq occupation and trillion dollar tax cut.
Tristan Yates
There must be some way, if the right people were agreeable, to turn this into some kind of open source, "amateur-run" science project. I'm guessing the gathering of data is the expensive part -- time on the receivers large enough to gather the puny signal.
Optimist says glass is half-full; Pessimist says glass is half-empty; Dynamist takes a drink.
People in the USA wouldn't have to pay taxes and they could also buy as much as they wanted from other countries without having to worry about a trade deficit creating a surplus of US dollars abroad causing devaluation of the US dollar.
And, they wouldn't have to cut Voyager's budget either.
If the axe must fall why not see if other countries with growing space programs will assume the expense and carry on the mission. Of course there would be security and other transition issues, but if we can put a man on the moon...
"Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology" -- Search and Destroy -- Iggy Pop
If that 75 million figure is correct, I'm sure there would be quite a few takers in the private sector. I mean Mark Cuban paid 280 million for a basketball team for crying out loud. How cool would it be to have a space exploration division, complete with working rockets!
-Ryan C.
They're thinking of giving up on Voyager before it runs out of juice to save a few mil? That's like getting nearly to the very bottom of a deep dungeon or cave - you KNOW there's good treasure at the bottom to be had. Giving up right before you get there is madness, pure madness! Hand in your +1 ring mail underoos boys, because you're killing the adventure.
Thinking of a future date when we all have to bite our knuckles and wonder what we all could have discovered if we'd gone a bit farther is a bitter thought to mull over.
Starkle, starkle, little twink.
This kind of politics is a direct result of the ammount of money the USA is spending on the "war on terror" and all those soldiers on foregn soil. That money has to come out of somewhere, and cutting back project with only provide (IMPORTANT!) inderect benefits as good a shortsighted way to do it as any other.
It is really a said day when the USA, a country known worldwide for is excelence and effort for the best of the sciency takes a turn this way.
Welcome back to the dark age.
Then again, it is all just politics, ain't it ?
AIN'T IT ?
morcego
is alone worth $4 mill/year. It is not in the location they expected it to be. Might be a new cosmic force at work. Who cares - just flush the program.
Bush's plan for the expansion of space exploration is pointed in the opposite direction (Moon, Mars, & Beyond).
I'd say sell it to the Japanese or any other fledgling space program.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
That's our final answer, NASA.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I wouldn't have any problems with cutting funding for tracking and communications for the Voyager probes if and only if that 4 million is put into something worthwhile. Oh say, just a wild idea...how about a Voyager 3??
But I have this sneaking suspicion that the money is just going to be cut along with other NASA expendatures just so we can pay down debt and sponsor more stuff going on in Iraq. Oh well...that stuff is important too but it is still a bitter pill.
That's just the smoke screen. What they really want is a small government that leaves them alone to do what businessman do. I suppose in some sense they really don't care about the size of the governemnt, as long as it doesn't interfere with their businesses and doesn't tax them. If they could have a huge big government like that, funded by who knows what and doing who knows what, they'd go for it.
Infuriate left and right
But I still say FUCK Bush. If he thought that the privite sector would pay for it then the next thing we know is everything would go privite and then it would become worn out. People would loose interest and the sexy stuff would get funded, basic stuff that is not sexy (or beyond Jow Sixpack's vision) would not get funded.
It's time. Let it go... I'd rather have the budget money re-allocated to keeping the Huble in orbit for another 4 months - its far more useful.
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
During Bush Sr.'s tenure, we also lost the Superconducting Super Collider in Waxahachie, Texas. Another Basic Science project that just wasn't sexy enough to fund.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Fisher said NASA has made no final decision on the cuts but has notified project scientists of its intentions and asked for cost-trimming proposals. He said the agency will make final decisions this month, perhaps by April 15.
I'm sure many nations in the world would cough up the resources to continue the project. Why not pass the buck to Australia or China? Its not like you're paying maintenance on the spacecraft... its just funding the mission logistics, science, and tracking.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
NASA should clearly outsource this crap anyway.
How far are the probes from the heliopause?
If they are far enough, can the mission be scrapped for now and then restarted when they get close? Maybe in 3 years when GWB isn't president anymore?
...he gets his mission to Mars, colonizes it, claims responsibility for the first Mars colony as part of his legacy, and then finds out that the whole time, the Martian battle cruisers were just outside the solar system waiting to come back in and kill us all... ...unless Voyager spotted them beforehand.
IronChefMorimoto
... but it looks as if NASA has cut our budget again. It will be necessary to switch off some of the life support units to reduce costs. I have the greatest confidence that the mission can be successfully completed without the assistance of your colleagues.
Looks like a duplicate story from a little while back:
1 0/1422230&tid=160&tid=126
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/
Who's with me? ;)
I vote to cancel NASA completely. Anything they do could be done "Faster, better, cheaper" by a private company. Sell the probes/programs to the highest bidder. Just remember, for people whose job is government, the solution to every problem is more government.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
If you are a US citizen, go sign the petition to support NASA funding.
This is mostly a stunt. NASA is saying "Ok, you want to cut our budget? Well here are the programs we are going to drop then." They are purposfully picking popular ones because they think that the fuss of "Bush is killing Voyager" will save their necks when push comes to shove.
Unfortunately, I doubt the nation cares anymore.
We've seen time and time again that without something like an active competition from a precived real threat, we could care less about expanding our scientific horizons unless we happen to know someone impacted by our lack of knowledge. And AFAIK, no one is claiming you can cure cancer by knowing what's beyond the solar system.
Unfortunately, the Orion Project, although quite probably feasible, would be a direct violation of several treaties our government has signed prohibiting above-ground nuclear detonations.
sigh.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
So, when are we going to get our shit together & start up a pro-science, pro-geek lobbying group to sit on Congress' doorstep and bitch at them every day until they sign over a couple extra trillion for science?
Could be the only way we can block these dupe posts.
We must drive a sword through any hypothesis that is not strictly necessary.
...it's lasted far longer and been far more useful than its Star Trek namesake series. At least NASA can be proud of that.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
I wonder how they will manage the shipping.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Slashdot proposes ending dupes Yet another proposal that won't go anywhere.
They should make the spacecraft data and analysis tools freely available as part of an open-source project. Get the large amateur astronomer contingent involved and save $4M.
What do you think they were hoping for when they gave us tax breaks and massive budget deficits? This. This is what they were hoping for. Now we have a fiscal problem where none existed before, and must destroy valuable federal programs. This is their long term plan coming to fruition. Social security, medicare, and welfare are all going to die, and it's not because they're too expensive.
They also have a long term plan to stop individuals from using the court system. They do this for two reasons. One, they want less accountability for corporations, and second, because the lawyers that work for these individuals are some of the most significant donors to the Democratic party in Texas. So they can simultaneously destroy corporate accountability and the Democratic party in Texas.
The Bush administration is way, way more farsighted than you think. They just have different goals than you do. You want a stronger America. What do they want?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
No registration required. Thanks google.
I suspect NASA and Congress will sort this one out. It's just a game they're playing. No need to worry and fret.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
Its particularly sad turn-off the magnetospheric spacecraft, since the magnetospheric is such a complex system and being able to collect data from mulitple spacraft is so vital to understanding the system. Though the instruments on spacecraft do degrade over time, I know that the Polar spacraft, for exaple, is still collecting useful data. it is still being used in multi-spacecraft studies, along with newer spacecraft like Cluster, to better understand the magnetosphere.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
I thought Enterprise was getting cancelled this spring. Didn't Voyager go off the air years ago? Please clarify.
I mean, cmon, how much work do you HONESTLY have to do except keep the phone line open and record the itsy bitsy data stream. What could be costing $4 mil?
;-)
I'd be happy to sit there and take care of that for the bargain basement price of $500,000 a year. Give me a million and I'll tack on a couple of buxom helpers to pick up your laundry for you or something.
What a bargain.
Stiny! Get me a danish!
Bush, spends so much for war then cuts in science.
The US look more and more like the schollyard bully, no brains, all muscle. that work for a while to dominate ( schoolyard or world) but it the long run you get outsmarted.
Why not just open it up to the community, at least access to the telemetry. I am guessing there are other things that need to be done, but surely some sort of open access could be worked out.
Sounds like you're actually agreeing with him.
BTW, this is known as the sunk cost fallacy.
I would guess that the $4 million figure covers salaries for several PI's plus postdocs, office space, etc.
I'm not familiar with the details, but "cancelling" the program would probably mean finding all these people something else to do.
The actual heliopause data could probably be collected for a few tens of thousands of dollars or perhaps a bit more, just for DSN time. I'd bet there are a lot of academics who'd jump at the chance to get that same data. Killing the science is just silly.
is voyager a program or a spacecraft?
i never got where the money is spent on spacecrafts that are already in space such as the voyager. then again, i dont really understand what needs to be done to maintain such a program.
i thought once the voyager has been launched, the only thing left to do is wait for it to send information back. that sounds like just maintenance on the satellite that receives the information. is that where all the money is going? putting up satellites to receive information from the voyager?
or is the money going into fixing and servicing the voyager. i'm not sure how many missions the voyager has gone, but it always sounds like it takes it a really long time to get from one place to another, so servicing/mainenance only occurs when it returns right? how often does the voyager return?
HD Trailers
Open ended question. But really, on what basis should NASA exist? Don't get me wrong, I'm not hostile to NASA. It has employed my family for 3 generations, grandfather, father, my brother. It is responsible, indirectly for my well being. What should be the role of government? Basic science research is nothing without a goal in mind. Did good science come out of the Apollo progam? Does management count as a science? Or does everyone just consider that (the Apollo progam) engineering and applied science? We (mankind) have gotten good returns from voyager. more than anticipated (longevity of the spacecraft). I feel as though we are stealing from our future selves with this war on terrorism. NASA was never outlined in the Constitution (not that they could have forseen it). Unlike the Army or the Post Office. National defense is one defined role of government. I don't think the war in Iraq was necessary to national defense, but it was "sold" that way. I've almost stopped trying to understand these decisions at the goverment level as well. I guess that is an inherent problem with democracy. Everyone has their own idea of the role of government. I'm beginning to feel that NASA was established primarly to give the same defense contractors more employment, so they won't atrophy. And engineers as well. Can science support itself? Actually, isn't "science" a method of understanding and explaination? A methodology if you will?
I'm not talking about donating cash, but donating time/equipment.
I mean, Voyager is out there right, it's still sending data back no matter what. If NASA cancels the project, the data will still be coming back...I mean, they don't send a janitor out there to switch it off.
So is it so out of the question that people get together some dishes...probably cheap ones laying around that the small digital dishes put out to pasture...and grid them together to get the signal. THEN collect the data? Is that at all possible?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Well of course,they have to cut it. If Voyager is allowed to reach the heliosphere, it will know it's entire life was just a television show.
Don't worry on that front. This pales in comparison to pretty much anything else Bush has been involved in.
:)
The things the current US administration has done in the past 4 years have all but guaranteed that almost all Canadians, Europeans, and Americans (outside of rural folk, those living in southern states, and millions of fundamentalist xians) will cry your litany for decades to come.
At least, this is how it looks from up North. And I'm living in traditionally right-wing Alberta
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
At least they're not using the "anonymous coward" style of modding: "overrated." Seems to me there are a lot of mods who use the over and underrated mods as a way of arbitrarily knocking down early posts without fear of being meta-moderated "unfair" (and subsequently getting fewer mod opportunities).
I'd say that an 8:1 actual:expected cost ratio seems pretty good for a federal agency, don't you? Cmon, give'em a break, they haven't had to deal with competition like a normal business.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
Read the budget: Here
Yes, smaller programs have been cut 20 to 30 percent, from 300 million to 200, etc. Yes it hurts, that education and some long term missions are being toned down. But the manned space exploration budget is being doubled. Doubled to the tune of billions of dollars.
Read Extending Human Presence into the Solar System if you want to really know how we are going to do this. It includes the plans for the new Crew Exploration Vehicle.
This should make you very happy.
kulakovich
But I like killing people that have never set foot on our soil, and likely never would have, if we hadn't killed them first! What's good for the armaments industry, is good for America. (Offer does not apply to places that aren't America...)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Oh well, there's always syndication...
1969 - The Vietnam War is in full swing - Put a man on the moon to make people "forget" about the war.
2009 - The Mideast War is in full swing - Put a man on Mars to make people "forget" about the war.
If it were, they could get the funding.
Hello,
I have modded you down for the spam in your sig. You are also being added to Spam Sig Opt Out's foes list. Please don't spam slashdot. That is all.
If NASA wanted the money they should just tell the military that they could detect missle launches and I bet they would be funded.
along with yellowcake nuclear material
Mmmmm, yellowcake... Nuculicious... *drool*
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
A new probe will have different sensors and there will be hell to pay scientifically trying to calibrate the two to get comparable readings. They've had this problem with satellites in low earth orbit where they can compare each against known ground data. It's a lot harder when it takes the probe ten or twenty years to get to a position that the other has long since visited, if it can even be considered the same place at all.
Considering how much money government wastes on utter nonsense, threatening to throw out the Voyagers just to save $4M is bluff at its best. How much do you think that jet flight back to DC from Texas cost, the one for Bush to sign the unconstitutional interference with the courts over Terri Schiavo?
Infuriate left and right
...what's stopping another country setting up equipment to pick up the Voyager signals...
:-)
And then keeping the information private until NASA give them lots of money?
Though they'd be wise to keep their mouths shut until it was all over, as NASA would almost certainly be able to deactivate the probes if they were determined to.
Now that I think about it, what's to stop *anyone* with a decent amount of equipment (or access to such) from hijacking a space probe's computer and making it go awry? Did they plan for this in the design? Even if encryption was used, how hard would it be to crack?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
what would life be like without torrents?
fankly i dont want to know
http://www.mininova.org/tor/18650
direct link
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
If they're going to dump voyager, then they better dang well use the money they save on that to save hubble.
Don't kill both of them!
We need that money NASA is wasting on "science", to hand out to the "faith-based" organizations. It's hard to scrape $2B together for god - it means chopping two-thousand-millions off these bureaucracies which will never get us to heaven. And we'll have to dig even deeper next year, 'cuz god's got a money habit like nobody's business.
--
make install -not war
Accurate, but short-sighted. Redress in fair courts is how we avoid pissed-off people resolving greivences in other ways. But, the neocons probably expect to be safely in their walled-off mansions patrolled by Wackenhut before then.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There are two things that are being assumed here that shouldn't be. 1. The data that possibly could be gathered by Vger at the Interstellar Boundary is of value. 2. That Vger has enough power and high enough data rate to get that data back to Earth through the Deep Space Network given the very small amount of time that could be carved out for receiving transmissions from Vger. I'm not even sure that Vger is still capable of transmitting science data. They may be interpolating some things from the behavior of the spacecraft and the health and safety transmissions, I don't really know. I'm not sure but I bet the answer to those two issues is "No". Well, ok, I'm sure about the second one. The DSN runs on a pretty tight schedule as, believe it or not, we have a whole of lot of deep space missions up there right now. And they are all of greater scientific value than Vger at this point. Oh yeah, if you're worried about getting Interstellar Boundary data, there's this new mission called Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). Check it out.
Oh man, Please MOD this UP!!!
Most insightful comment yet.
Good Job Doc.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Currently the Federal Government has alot of problems getting the average tax payer to want to spend money on research of any kind. It isn't interesting and most people equate it to spending $115.00 a hammer or research into the medicinal properties of Timber Owl pellets.
Manned Space Exploration in the early years of NASA and the Soft Science of the Apollo Missions was seen as exciting and worth the expense. Support is seriously lagging for any science experiment that doesn't provide great video captions or pictures for the newspaper. Unless you support Soft Science on a Large Scale it is eventually going to be impossible to get money for anything but a better bullet or bomb.
To use a business analogy "You have to spend money to make money." Big Science can only make money by providing a supporting role and then living on the coat tails of Soft Science.
That said Bush is solely show boating the Manned Space Exploration in order to appease Joe Taxpayer's apprehension on spending any money on science. Truth be told unless it means immediate return of investment I doubt 10% of the administration (or the U.S. government) desires to spend money on "Big Science." They spend enough to keep the academics and educated placated.
It is my belief that in that 10% of government who actually care about science research someone decided that the best way to get more research funding in the long run is to get the polarized public interested in space exploration through the Moon, Mars and Beyond program. Without it they understood that thier budget would continue to shrink as the government invested more in the care of aging baby boomers.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Couldn't the open source community step forward and create a cheap/effective alternative to the monitoring of the Voyager craft? It would be a great service to humanity and be good for the public image of open source.
NASA's full budget is $16.4 billion -- a 2.4% increase from last year. See it here.
;-)
No offense to you, but how did your post get modded +5 Interesting? I guess the Washington Post does cause illiteracy.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Dup of this.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Bush doesn't care much about knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Heck, he is massively ignorant on just about every topic, and look what it did for him? He has his finger on the button, and you don't.
As far as Bush (or more accurately, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney) are concerned, the purpose of the space program is to dole out dollars to campaign supporters, and that means large aerospace and defense contractors. Progams like data acquisition from Voyager may be good for scientists, but it is chicken feed for Boeing, so funding can safely be cut. Instead, we get SDI, a Maginot line for the 21st century, and the 'man on mars' program both of which guarantee billions of dollars of profit for years to come with no likelihood of any tangible benefit.
"AHH! Too hot! Too hot!"
Has NASA considered selling satellites they no longer wish to use out to universities or private companies? For example, with the Hubble telescope, perhaps they could sell it, as well with the Voyager probe. It would help NASA get the much needed cash, in return for a program they no longer wish to fund, but someone else might want to fund.
Orion is a different thing from a nuclear rocket. A nuclear rocket uses a fission pile to generate energy, which is then used to heat a propellant to great temperature, expelling it at a higher velocity than chemical rockets.
The Russians had a very clever nuclear rocket (liquid metal IIRC) which used the same material for moderator, coolant, and propellant.
This in turn is different from ion drives, which (to oversimplify) use a particle accellerator for thrust. Ion drives have the best ISP of anything (most acceleration per wieght of fuel) but a poor thrust-to-mass ratio, so good for interplanetary travel but you can't get off the ground with one. Nuclear rockets don't have the ISP of ion drives, but they can be better than chemical roclets and still get off the ground.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well, that tears it. We are living in an Ancestor Sim. Now we know why those distant objects are slowing down... that's the end of detailed reality. :(
The NASA guys know it, and the minute a human being hits the invisible wall, and the rest of us know about it, we see the game over screen.
Time to be creative kids. Start making your stupid videos to amuse the eggheads. If you want to be backed up, you had better hurt yourself jackass style, or become a Da Vinci.
Anyone know the noclip code?
Not to complain about my own posts being modded up, but INFORMATIVE?!
...here http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq .audit/
Fantasy and superstition should be used for entertainment purposes only.
While I agree that basic science is good, Hubble has already exceeded its expected lifetime. Everything we get now is a bonus.
Also, we can put up a new one with better features for the same amount of money.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
I do or have paid taxes. I support the funding of NASA. Bush made a big press conference about going to Mars and all of a sudden he is cutting NASA's budget. Private citizens shouldn't have to pay a separate fee to keep things the government shouldn't be cutting.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.
when the Bush administration proposed slashing the division's 2006 budget by nearly one-third -- from $75 million to $53 million." Yah they need more money to wage war on those terrirosts (freedom fighters) in the 51'st free state of America.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
As someone with a science degree and having worked at NASA I say screw them. They piss money away left and right. We should have Pizza Huts on Mars with the amount of money that NASA has pissed away over the years. Yes this happens all over the government but it doesn't make it right.
While we are in the budget lets cut the money going to the baseball hall of fame and all the other stupid grants that the politicians are wasting our money on.
can it kill arabs?
is just record the data to some iomega zipdri-zipdri-zipdri uh never mind.
Maybe access to DSN (URL:http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/) and other radio telescopes so you can get your bitsy data stream?
Microsoft could use it for improving their Starfield simulation screensaver.
Maybe have it continiously downloading new data from a central server, and doing distributed computation on it!
Longhorn's official name could be "Earth and Beyond".... thats ofcourse only if they act quickly, and beat Google to the idea.
Officially: "No comments"
I wish I could mod that up. It summarizes the problems that result from the "fiscal conservatives" attempting to starve the government beast, and some of the problems with the social conservatives who are lying in bed with corporate donors.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The 'cute' factor would've gotten more funding. Heck, PETA would fund Voyager if we told them that there was a kitten on-board, if anyone remembers this fiasco.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
Let's just say it like it is. The reason the Bush administration wants to cut space exploration is because The U.S. president is a complete moron. George W. Bush is easily the least intellectually gifted president in U.S. history, and it surprises no one that he can't understand the most basic principles or benefits of pure science. Hell, he can't even pronounce "Nuclear" properly although my 8 year old can.
I'm usually of the opinion that removing anything from NASA's budget was awful. Especially in this day and age when DoD and DARPA programs often waste more money on less productive research that's not even open to the public. (Those among us who've used Linux for a long time will remember the reason Linux had excellent network drivers even in early versions was because of Don Becker. Likewise with Beowulf.)
However, in this case I don't think it's a bad thing to slash $4 million. There's only a questionable amount of useful data coming from the telemetry equipment of Voyager. The only useful stuff might come when Voyager hits the heliopause. Anyway, it's not like this program will permanently disappear. Maybe in the future it'll get added back in. More likely, an engineer will find a few spare minutes on the DSN and schedule some time for an uplink.
----- obSig
On the other hand, NERVA was considered to be possible and was canned over cost. We could do the necessary job with chemical rockets and that was good enough... But basically, the theory is that if you build a few of them to offset development costs somewhat, a fleet of reusable very heavy lift vehicles that can bring useful masses into orbit could be built and you could take them off from and land back in the middle of B.F. nowhere at the end of a serious (meaning solidly built) road in the middle of a wasteland, where they would be serviced.
Anyway smarter people than myself (I'm at least no dummy) think that it could work fairly reliably because it's a simple design, and that it would be sufficiently clean. And, it doesn't involve blowing stuff up.
I still think we should be expending as much effort as is useful on space elevator development. Right now that means materials science. However, you don't build this thing from the ground up. We need a fairly significant mass at the other end of the tether, and we have to be able to move the thing around, so you're talking about fairly serious facilities. We also want to be bringing approximately as much mass down as we are sending up, and in order to do that we need to be able to have something to bring down. To me that implies asteroid mining, which requires a lot of heavy equipment... Regardless, a very heavy lift vehicle is something of a mandatory step in any major space-related endeavor.
From what I understand, Orion's output involves a lot of EMP spread out all over the atmosphere. I imagine that might have somewhat severe repercussions where weather is concerned. Even the cleanest bombs available would be unacceptable for one reason or another, at least if you were planning to do it more than once.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1. Give popular agency completely unrealistic goal;
2. Underfund agency;
3. Destroy all real science coming out of agency;
4. When unrealistic goal fails, blame agency for not even producing any science;
5. Dissolve agency and let 'private sector' take over.
The Bushies don't debate and they don't compromise, they just hijack and destroy. This is probably their way to get rid of NASA.
My father took me to a conference at JPL when I was younger and I had the honor of seeing the backup Voyager on display in the auditorium - an amazingly inspirational sight.
It's been a struggle trying to find the silver lining as we hear about one program after another being shut-down. Science and all of its amazing benifits don't seem to be valued by the majority anymore, and we are all the poorer for it.
Maybe just maybe they'll find a way to hang on to Voyager for a while longer to give the researchers and scientists a glimmer of hope through these dark times.
Being 32 now, I grew up with Voyager. Hearing about it 1976 aged 4 sparked my interest in space flight and astronomy.
I've got Andy Chaikin's book 'The New Solar System' to sum up most of it: these craft deserve it to have every last bit of data squeezed out of them!
Darn, I can't find that picture where Voyager 1 looks back at the entire solar system...
This probably won't get seen since this subject is near post starvation, plus I hate the kneejerk "Just Open-Source" it reaction to sunsetting technology. But...
Why not follow the AMSAT model, and allow the public to do the work of data collection? The AMSAT community follows this model: Access to control functions are considered priviledged (to prevent some jackass from causing a bird to go silent), but homebrew stations around the world collect telemetry and send it to a centralized repository for aggregation.
I know that building a homebrew radio telescope that is capable of picking up such a weak signal (all of the AMSAT satellites are local). But, I'm sure there are more than a few folks on Slashdot alone with the resources, inclination, and land to try!
To be honest, I've always wondered why NASA doesn't release the downlink information for some of the mothballed birds up there... (Pioneer 6, for instance... I think it's 6... The one that's in the La Garagne region between Earth and Venus, and is supposed to be the oldest functioning satellite currently out there...)
If I'm not mistaken, NASA *does* actually publish the encoding scheme for it's satellites, as well as provide access to the raw tapes for some of the older satellites. I seem to remember that someone had implemented a decoder app for one of the Mariner probes that sucessfully decodes (and error corrects) the raw signal from NASA's archives.
Anyway, wondering back to the original point... IF some of our fellow nerds can build a homebrew radio telescope capable of picking up the distant signal, and IF NASA would provide the downlink information, and IF a centralized repository for data aggregation can be established, they could effectively cut back or eliminate listening time from their budget. They'd just have to invest in uplink time when transmitting control commands.
I had a 6 month contract there, and let me tell you, finding that the budget had been cut really sucked, especially when you find out that as a result of the budget cuts, you're down to 1 ply toilet paper. ... and it says "One sheet per employee" on each TP square.
Ah, here is Voyager 1's picture of the solar system. As awesome as the first pictures of the Earth and the Moon together!
These are the kind of pictures that give us a kind of perspective on life...
It could be similar to the already optional contributions on tax forms, except that the NASA one would be a blank to fill a number into, instead of a set figure, like $1 for the presidential election campaign fund.
Does anybody here think that there would be enough public interest to sustain NASA, or at the very least supplement their budget?
this trade off?.
Just switch the scientists to decaf. That'll save some money . . .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
It was the funding for the team that was using imperial instead of metric.
Just when the probe is getting there, it will put back on-site testing of the outer solar system by, what, 1/3 of a century at least?
Maybe NASA could start a casino? That seems to be one solution to keep the rich getting richer and still funnel everybody else's tax dollars to Halliburton.
In that sense, past expenses are relevant, as they determine who should be influencing the evaluation.
4 million dollars could support 40 people making 80 to 100 thousand dollars a year. I can't believe they aren't able to archive incoming data and have several employees analyze and manage the sucker for less than a million a year. Maybe it is just posturing to get more money for their budget.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
There's still a whole lot of nuthin out here.
Stay tuned...
hurray, more money for bullets! Bush has his heart in the right place, more guns, more bullets. stuff science, bugger the poor, there is no need to educate, and why spend money on sick people, when you can buy more bullets.
US Military Investment, keeping the US strong!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
We already know from Star Trek:The Movie that whatever happens Voyager will get picked up by a superintelligent alien from outer space. I wonder if the letters 'o', 'y' and 'a' have rubbed off yet.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Them why don't the people who want this program pay for it out of their pocket? All it would take is 1000 people to donate $4000. That isn't that much at all.
If someone doesn't feel strongly enough about it to try to organize something like this, or donate money, then it isn't that important to them. They are just whining because the government can't sprinkle magic fairy dust and give everything to everybody for nothing.
isn't that like the oldest of old news; and possibly a dupe for dupes sake?
This plan was on 5 other sites last month.
Geez, get out and see the world, ya'll...
There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth. - Chinese proverb
Who would deny an offer of working some hours/week for free in such an interesting project?
Others might help at the production side.
We could bundle it with the Hubble telescope and sell it to the ESA, who still seems to believe in science.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
Canceling this project means saving almost nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent so far.
:)
So? Priorities have to be established, and by whatever criteria were used, this was a low one. It happens all the time.
I bet this thread was submitted by one of those sci-fi fans
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Thank you. My education was lacking.
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Ah yes. Only on Slashdot does the first post get modded "redundant".
Perhaps it's just moderators who are tired of your first posts. God knows I am. Get a job and do something useful.
Thank you. Education continues.
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Cutting out things like Voyager, Hubbell, etc isn't a ploy by the Bush administration.
It's just that they don't need those spacecraft because they can find out everything they need to know about the Universe from the Bible.
(BTW, for your own safety, you'all might want to keep quiet about that whole Earth not the center of the Universe thing.)
probably some alien bar hangout, they already know what is out there, frickin govt.
DJB
DJBeSSeR
The Voyager and Pioneer missions are some of the most important expeditions ever undertaken - the first craft to reach the end of the solar system. The first craft to detect an anomalous force acting on them, and the only ones that will be in a position to do so for a very long time.
It should be self-evident that this is a fight that can't be lost. And if NASA is proposing to kill something that costs so little, they must be desperate. Or some pure, undiluted fragment of stupid from the big bang of stupid has landed at Cape Canaveral, but let's be optimistic on that detail.
In short, get the word out! Contact your local newspapers, call the news stations, contact your senators and representative in dead tree format. Make a ruckus that those idiots who propose to do this can't ignore!
1. Sell Voyager to your oil-rich country of choice.
2. Wait a year.
3. Declare them politically persona non grata.
4. Accuse them of having weapons of mass destruction.
5. Invade their asses.
6. When you cant find any WMDs, just point at Voyager, saying they must have hid them out there, and cite NASA budget cuts as a reason not to go out and check.
7. ???
8. Profit!!
bush is the bigest asshole ever to walk the face of the planet, period
Such an array would give you enough resolution for the job. The collecting area wouldn't be so hot, but provided you had the resolution AND provided there wasn't much else in that direction, it might be doable.
The probe that landed on Titan was designed to broadcast only as far as the Cassini probe. The signal wasn't pointed at Earth, was intended to be a fairly tight transmission, so the bleed-off wouldn't have been that great, and no doubt had plenty of other design features that would have made Earth-based reception a very tough problem. The signal was picked up directly by Earth-based receivers, when one of the receivers failed on Cassini. The signal was perfectly good.
We're talking about a signal AIMED at Earth and designed to REACH Earth. In other words, it should be a much easier problem to pick up the signals and interpret them.
Even if a totally amateur effort wasn't going to work, it would be an excellent way to test signal processing systems on new designs of radio telescopes, such as the truly gigantic hectare array. It would also be good for practice material for Universities who can afford to rent a little dish time on something like Jodrel Bank, and would allow them to get the data with a fraction of the effort.
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)
Current budget for military: 500 billion USD / year
Interest payments on debt that's spiraling out of control: 200 billion USD / year
Cost of war against Afghanistan and Iraq: 100+ billion USD / year
Donations to political campaigns by individuals in 2004: ~500 million USD
Budget for Drug Enforcement Agency: 200 million USD / year
Cost of keeping Voyager program running until it's power supply dies: 4 million USD / year
Abandoning scientific opportunity it will take decades to replace right when it's gathering data that no other source can: PRICELESS
Conclusions: Destroying irreplacable scientific opportunity will save enough money each year to 1) fund the DEA for one week, 2) Wage war on Iraq for 20 minutes, 3) Forestall government bankrupcy due to inability to make debt payments for 10 minutes, 4) Account for rounding errors in the military budget, 5) Account for 6th decimal errors in federal government budget.
Conclusions 2: Voyager and Pioneer probes can be saved for the rest of their operational lifetimes if: 1) the DEA takes a break for 1 week around christmas each year, 2) America pulls out of Iraq 5 hours early, 3) the federal budget is increased by two ten-thousands of one percent, 4) President Bush is given glasses with quarter-inch-thick diamond lenses to correct his myopia.
I could have sworn that this (or very similar) topic came up before within the last month. I remember a long slashdot debate about manned-vs-robots. It may have been about Hubble and priorities, but Voyager budget woes were a part of the discussion.
Table-ized A.I.
If you want to get a glimpse of what Voyager would see of the solar system, check these photos out
These were taken in 1990, but it is IMHO one of the "cool" images ever taken by the Voyager project, and an example of real images that could be taken by Voyager even now.
If you want to see what actual science (including what will be lost when the Voyager program gets shut down) check out the mission page here
In fact, what voyager is able to provide really amounts right now to a weather bouy that is sitting in a known position and when triangulated with other outer solar system space probes are giving us a very rich picture of the environment within the solar system. This is going to be critical information when manned spaceflight starts to go beyond LEO or even just to the moon.
Think of it as having weather data points for ancient China (about 1 AD or even 1000 BC) and being able to use those weather observations to help with climate models currently being worked on.
As with weather forecasting, although individual data points are by themselves meaningless, when combined with similar data points and other data collected over time it becomes something as a whole that is almost priceless.
According to the project page, "the cosmic ray detector, magnetometer, plasma wave detector and low-energy charged particle detector all still operational." For much more than $4 million per year similar missions have been launched. This is very real science, and something that can be incredibly useful, such as knowledge of a galactic shock wave front going through the solar system, with a warning of weeks or even months before the main burst of charged particles will wipe out the telecom sattelites that our society depends on.
I weep for our children, I really do...
This is a hard core analogy to try and explain to congress critters just why it is not only short sighted, but incredibly foolish to cut the funding to the Voyager program.
One of the major complaints about the Indian Ocean Tsuami last Christmas holiday was that the technology and even the money was available to set up a warning system throughout the Indian Ocean that would give people living throughout the region as much as several hours advance notice before the Tsuami actually struck.... potentially saving the lives of thousands of people if it had been in place.
Both Voyager space craft are just like weather bouys in the ocean collecting data, but in this case they are in deep space collecting weather data.
The concept of space weather is a relatively new concept, however this is so mainstream that It has become a seperate bureau independent of NASA. Knowledge of space weather has significant economic impact on modern society, where utility grids have to prepare for increased surges in power systems, telecommunications systems need to know when to shut down telecomm sattelites, and perhaps most critical: Manned spacecraft need to have (if possible) advanced warning to know when to get into shielded areas to avoid the effects of a major solar storm. This is a storm of charged particles, and can be predicted using somewhat similar techniques as have already been developed for forecasting rain and snow storms here on the Earth.
By turning off Voyager, it is the equivalent to turning off an ocean bouy in the Pacific ocean, because the million or so dollars needed to service that bouy can't be found. What happens when you record the Tsumai wave the next day and wipes everything out, but it went unmonitored because you shut down the radio recievers that were recieving the bouy data?
Although unlikely, major magnetic storms can also come from extra-solar sources, and the Voyager probes would be in a unique position to be able to record these disturbances well before it would be a problem here on the Earth, giving us several months or even up to a year to prepare for the effects of such a cosmic event. That by itself could justify IMHO the reason to keep Voyager going for the next 10 years alone.
Also, by having the data collected by the Voyager and Pioneer space probes to continue, it will give us additional data points to understand space weather in general as we move out into the rest of the solar system. Right now there are a bunch of questions regarding how dangerous it will be to launch manned spacecraft from the Earth to Mars or even asteroids, and knowing just what the environment is like in space is critical to assess the risks and protection needed to carry out missions like these. This is a very rich source of data that is simply irreplaceable at any price for the next century.
Now we have a fiscal problem where none existed before, and must destroy valuable federal programs. This is their long term plan coming to fruition.
That's what they call starving the beast.
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...already ended when they set off the explosion in the Borg transwarp conduit and rode the shockwave all the way across the galaxy back home. Oh wait, that was Star Trek... not NASA.
:-)
Oops.
Someone needs to tell Bush that this is part of the master plan to defend 'Merica against space aliens with big lasers. Then watch the funding triple overnight.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
My God, four years have gone by, and NASA still doesn't realize that UPN showed the Voyager series finale back in 2001?
Problem solved.
Damn, I already moderated this topic. Now I'll have to log in with my sock puppet to comment.
Sing it brother! Nice summary of our sorry state.
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The Dept of Homeland Security should pick up the funding because Voyager provides security to the edge of our solar system...
:P
And we still haven't found Osama Bin'Laden or the WMDs yet, maybe they are hiding on the edge of the system?
40 million is such a great number to spend on a space project that u don't know the end result...there are children who are suffering from malnutrition in and outside the united states, leave the space alone and let the human beings on earth prosper first.