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Voyager 1 Exits Our Solar System
eldavojohn writes "The first man-made craft to do so is now entering a 'cosmic purgatory' between solar systems and entering an interstellar space of the Milky Way Galaxy. With much anticipation, Voyager 1 is now 'in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system. Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back.' After three decades the spacecraft is still operating and apparently has enough power and fuel to continue to do so until 2020. The first big piece of news? 'We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now.' This process could take months to years to completely leave the outer shell but already scientists are receiving valuable information."
It is just freaking amazing that things electronics can still work after being exposed to such an environment for so long. Good job Voyager and good job old school NASA. Just don't come back home in a few hundred years with a chip on your shoulder!
Voyager 1 is travelling at just under 11 miles per second and sending information from nearly 11 billion miles away from the sun.
This reminds me of just how big space is. What absurd distances we're talking about now. I can't be but at awe and terror when I think of the stars.
It's really really cool that Voyager is still going, but this talk of crossing into the heliosheath, etc seems to be dragged out a bit (yes, it's a vague and slow transition, I understand...)
http://science.slashdot.org/story/05/05/24/2334240/voyager-1-crosses-the-termination-shock
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/02/0243246/voyager-probes-give-us-ets-view
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1451216/voyager-1-beyond-solar-wind
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/2314203/voyager-set-to-enter-interstellar-space
It's too bad so many people here were born or grew up after 1990, at which point most American industry had been decimated and sent over to third-world shit heaps like China, India, and Mexico.
You people will never realize that American-manufactured goods were once the best there were. They were durable, they actually weren't that expensive, and you could trust them.
Then globalization and so-called "free trade" happened to ruin all of that. Products that you could once buy from an American manufacturer and you'd know they'd work perfectly for decades could now only be obtained from third-world manufacturers. Of course, they skimped on just about every aspect to make the product as cheap as possible. American-made equivalents would have lasted for many years, while these third-world manufactures often break after two or three uses!
But since the American industry has been destroyed, it's not even possible to buy American-made goods even if you wanted to. You're stuck buying shitty foreign products.
The Oort cloud is still theoretical, if I recall correctly, but more evidence is stacking up for it. You might be thinking of the Kuiper belt, which is where most of the trans-Neptunian objects lie. The boundary they are talking about is where the solar wind is overcome by the cosmic (intergalactic) plasma currents. Think about the coma on a comet and you have a similar picture to how our solar wind particles look.
The Oort cloud, if it proves to exist, is speculated to extend quite a ways out -- possibly 2/3 of the way to the nearest star by some estimations. It's a much looser "full shell" of relatively stationary objects, where the Kuiper belt is more similar to a large asteroid belt.
Wikipedia has some good visualizations and links --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere
They are hoping to get data on spectral lines not visible from within the solar system, with Voyager 1 now outside the solar system, but they're running into power budget issues. The battery is very, very low on juice, and with AAA not operating that far out, there's no chance of it getting any more. Data collected will therefore be rather more limited than NASA would like, but since existent data is zero any data will be an improvement.
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)
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
The amazing thing (well, one of the amazing things) about the Voyager program is the communication link. Voyager's signal, as received on Earth, is almost unbelievably weak.
One can use the Friis Transmission Equation to see just how weak the signal from Voyager 1 is at the moment:
Pr = Pt * Gt * Gr * (lambda/(4 * pi * R))^2, where
Pr is received power, in watts;
Pt is transmitted power, in watts;
Gt is the gain of the transmitting antenna, relative to an isotropic source (a unit-less value);
Gr is the gain of the receiving antenna (one of the 70m DSN antennas), relative to an isotropic source (a unit-less value);
lambda is the operating wavelength, in meters, and equal to c/f, or very close to 300/fM, where fM is the operating frequency in MHz;
and R is the range (distance) in meters.
Pt = 18 watts (assuming this hasn't degraded over time and distance);
Gt = 48 dBi, or about 63100;
Gr = 74 dBi, or about 25.1*10^6;
fM = 8420 MHz, so lambda = 300/fM = 0.0356 meters; and
R = 17,545,000,000 km, or 1.75 * 10^13 meters.
Grinding all this out, one is left with a received signal strength -- at the terminals of a 70-meter dish, mind you -- of:
Pr = 18 * 63100 * 25.1*10^6 * (0.0356/(4 * pi * 1.75 * 10^13))^2 = 7.45 * 10^(-19) watts, or 745 -- wait for it -- zeptowatts.
This is equal to -181.3 dBW, or -151.3 dBm. (I don't know how many Libraries of Congress that is.)
In the year 2020, when the probe's power generator is expected to expire, the probe will be about 2 * 10^13 meters away from Earth; using the same calculation the signal will have weakened slightly, to 5.73 * 10^(-19) watts, or 573 zeptowatts, -182.4 dBW, or -152.4 dBm.
(Unless I've made some trivial calculation error, of course.)
otherwise, the only thing we would ever spend money on is bailing out big corporations and bombing people.
Of course, it would travel well with a name like 'Voyager'. It is not like we had called it Phobos-Grunt. I mean, come on, phobos means 'fear' in Greek. And grunt, well, that just does not sound good.
Voyager are not the only ones.
Pioneer 10 and 11 were both launched with sufficient velocity to escape the solar system. They were launched before Voyager, but did not have as large a velocity, so were passed by the Voyager probes in the 1990s as the furthest from the Earth.
I'm pretty sure this was planned, since the Pioneer probes has this really cool plaque on them (designed by Carl Sagan), in the event they were found by alien species:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
While that's true for many types of things, ABC News has been doing a Made in America series for most of this year. (I've only seen a few of the reports when reaired on World News Now.) They've found lots of things made in America, and some was cheaper than the foreign made stuff. I don't remember all of the examples, but toys, furniture, cooking implements were some of them. (The most recent report I saw was a followup where the Bundt pan factory hired a few more people, at least partially because sales had gone way up since the last report.)
As others have said in past discussions of this type, what do you call a Toyota made (assembled/built) in Kentucky? Is that an American car or a foreign car?
I disagree with your main premise, but if you want "American made", you can find it, at least for many things.. but you'll sometimes have to pay more, and definitely will have to look harder.
You people will never realize that American-manufactured goods were once the best there were. They were durable, they actually weren't that expensive, and you could trust them.
Any facts or figures to back up this hyperbole of a statement ?
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Voyager will define where the edge is. Or rather, returns enough data so we can decide where it is.
Really, it's past what was thought of as the edge of the solar system when it was built.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
You are not facing facts. The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing. Consumers selected goods based on one and only one criteria: retail price. When presented with a high quality US made product and a less expensive foreign made product the US consumers overwhelmingly chose the foreign made good. It wasn't the CEOs, the 1%, etc. The 99% did it to themselves. Corporations don't care where things are made, only that they sell, and consumers chose what sells and what does not. Corporate greed can lead to domestic manufacture just as easily as it can lead to foreign manufacture, it just depends on US consumers favoring domestic production over retail price. Assuming you are a US citizen and you need a flashlight for your car, there is a $20 US made Maglite next to a $7 chinese made brand, what do you chose? What does your choice tell the Maglite CEO to do?
Unions knew this too. There was no shortage of "Save a Job, Buy American" bumper stickers in the 1970s. US Consumers didn't care, a classic example of tragedy of the commons.
Fortunately the internet has made it easier to find US made goods than one might expect by browsing local brick and mortar establishments.
Then by that logic, products made by American companies in other countries should count as "American made".
The successor to Voyager I was built a few years ago -- it's called New Horizons. Launched in 2006 and halfway to Pluto right now. Proudly Made in USA. Tell me about superior Chinese tech when they send something to Pluto.
"The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing" The US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world.
Stats that make that claim usually compare dollar amounts. So extremely high priced products like jet liners, heavy caterpillar tractors, etc distort the numbers and do not reflect huge number of manufacturing jobs that have been exported. These products merely represent the heavy high tech manufacturing which is the last to go and is currently targeted for the next round of job exporting.
These dollar based stats also show that we are just about to fall from that #1 position. You should look at the historical trend and not look at the current stat out of context.