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Voyager and the Coming Great Hiatus In Deep Space
MatthewVD writes "Some time in the next decade, the Voyager probes will run out of juice and finally go silent after almost a half century of exploration. John Rennie writes that the lack of any meaningful effort to follow up with a mission to interstellar space shows the "fragile, inconsistent state of space exploration." It's particularly frustrating since the Voyagers have tantalized astronomers with a glimpse into about how the sun's magnetic field protects us from (or exposes us to) cosmic rays. Have we gone as far as we're willing to go in space?"
VEEEE GERRRRRR!
“Without it, we might as well slide back to the cave, because that’s where we’re headed right now — broke.”
It's rather pathetic that we are willing to waste untold amounts of resources on mindless violence, and yet let programs which could further our knowledge of the universe sit unused on the drawing board.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
we have
The voyager spacecraft popping a plasma bubble and sending it to Earth, requiring a heard drinking high school physics teacher (played by Stephen Baldwin) and a heart-of-gold exotic dancer, but former Navy Seal (played by an anonymous starlet), to save the day.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
There is virtually no interest in space among the many people I interact with, my customers, my suppliers, the other parents at school, or my neighbors. My interest in astronomy and space is regarded in the same manner as my telescopes, as a curiosity or mild eccentricity.
I can't imagine that people like these will be willing to commit money, either as tax or investment, in furthering space research, not until they see something that affects them personally and requires return to space.
On the positive side, this something can be anything, even a surprise threat from North Korean FTL probe leaving for Alpha Centauri.
Not to corporations, who probably wouldn't be interested, but to individuals.
The Paul Allen Mars Explorer...
The Mark Zuckerberg Space Shuttle...
The Bill and Melinda Gates Asteroid Lander...
I respect Mr. Rennie's effort in encouraging further efforts in deep space exploration, but I think his argument may go a little away from principle. The Voyager probes were not designed to be deep space probes. As I recall having learned, the Voyager probes were designed to photograph the planets and record relevant non-visual data, during the recent "grand conjunction" phase in the solar system.
I'm afraid I must apologize for my evident lack of citations, here. As my own specator knowledge of it holds, and anyone may wish to correct me: It's been a pleasant suprrise that the Voyager probes have continued functioningm, for so many years since after they completed their assigned missions.
Personally, I think it also may serve in making a constructive comment towards the niceties of reliable manufacturing practice in the construction of space exploration systems. "But maybe that's just me" ;}
Given the long duration to get a probe to the edge of the solar system, and the rapid advances in instrumentation, I think we should be launching a Voyager type probe every 5-10 years. They needn’t follow a single path, in fact, heading off to different parts of the heliosphere makes more sense.
Launch windows will of course determine the schedule and affect the trajectory, but I think learning about the heliopause, interstellar environment, and eventually, the Oort Cloud is vital. Given current propulsion technologies, it will take many years to reach those areas. The best way I see to deal with that is “launch early, launch often”.
And, since each probe will need monitoring for decades, it would make sense to put them into a single, ongoing program, where much of the monitoring and development could be consolidated.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Quite true. We are existing the Age of Reason into the Age of Dark Ages 2. From the proponents of ignorance (ie. intelligent design) to people's tendency to bashing science as "unscientific" because it does not paint rosy pictures for them (eg. AGW) to simple fear of unknown (eg. nuclear). It has been rather sad last 20 years in terms of people's perception of science.
On another note, there is another probe racing for Pluto. It will then go on exploring the Kuiper belt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
Voyager 1 is moving a bit faster though so it will remain furthest measurement platform out there until it stops working, but still, new tech is on the way out there too.
After New Horizons, well, don't expect much for at least the next 20 years..
We're in good company judging by how busy the galaxy seems to be.
Yet another minor footnote of a species in the grand scheme of things that did not use their small window between having the technology to try leaving their home planet. And the next global disaster that wipes life off the planet.
Gamma ray burst, comet, meteor, supervolcano, germ, pole shift, nuclear/chemical/bio war, toxic air/earth/water/food, solar flare, global warming, ecosystem collapse, rogue black hole, particle accelerator mishap, nanotech accident, and many other things we can't even predict.
We backup our computer data. But not our species.
Unlikely? Nah. We know at least most of those WILL happen again at some point in the future.
But it would be hard, and expensive, and take a while to even attempt to create a new human location..
So lets just not do it. Lets continue keeping all our stuff in one place. Screw space! Planning ahead is for suckers.
Lets go watch tv. I've got popcorn.
There is a finite amount of money You can either spend it on space exploration or on welfare for octomoms and other people who don't want to work.
Really? Only those two choices?
In my dissenting argument, I cite the work, NewSpace Nation, by Jeff Krukin (Kindle editiion). Krukin cites a significant number of companies becoming involved in the emergent phenomenon of NewSpace development - two more notable names of which include Virgin Galactic and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SPACEX), both of which were involved in the relatively recent competition for the Ansari X Prize. Certainly, those companies are interested in continuing space exploration. It's a part of their corproate bottom lines, after all - not even to comment to the scientific and more philosophically interpretive qualities of the work.
There's business in space, occurring already. (It's not just about epic moonshots any more)
My 2 cents on the turnip....
Say,
1. Mass produce the science instruments. At least have common designs so that they can be quickly fabricated.
2. Common OS, instrument bus and communications sub system.
3. A common power plant and chassis design.
4. A common Earth orbit departure stage.
I know that the instrument specs for each mission is unique and the propulsion and communication requirements all depend on the probe's trajectory, but I'm thinking that they can do a lot more prefab-and-assembly than they are doing now.
Man. I totally didn't know there were only those two choices. Good thing guys like you have their ear to the ground, looking out for the acceptable people.
What he should have written is that there is a finite amount of human effort and resources. Money helps us allocate effort and resources.
But there certainly is some kind of trade off. Effort and resources directed towards ocotmoms and the idle must come from somewhere.
How many years already the Voyager spacecraft kept sending us valuable data?
And it does all that without any of the super-gigaherz chips nor gigabytes of RAM nor terabits/s connection devices
On the other hand, do you think your iPad will last 5 years?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
In spite of this limited funding, like so many other NASA project, it met and exceeding objectives. As such it is strange that we are complaining that we have no deep space program when we really never had a deep space program. What we have had are basic program that have been extended as able. We have, for the first time, a defined boundary of the solar system. Now that we know, a formal intersteller mission can be planned. But, as mentioned this is world project, so it should be funded by others in addition to the US.
The problem with the space program is US funding. Increasingly citizens in the US want their entitlements without any strings attached. The progress we have made has been costly, and I thank past generations for shouldering the cost that has made the US a great place to live. It is sad that the current generation is so self absorbed that they cannot think of anything beyond the dollars they have to spend to keep the US great.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The government needs that money to kill a few more brown people and to create more enemies to keep us distracted so our leaders stay in power.
Keep in mind that New Horizons will arrive close to Pluto in 2015 and it's he fastest probe ever, it will likely reach much further distances than Voyager while still operative, so I am optimistic after all.
We simply don't have the resources anymore. And since our silly economic system that is based on constant growth is collapsing what little we have is allocated elsewhere.
Barring a revolution in solar or fusion power or a discovery of another very powerful source of energy, our space exploring days are firmly behind us.
Again, only two choices? Sensationalizing the most extreme of social contract obligations as the only reason we're not funding more deep space research? Puh-leeze. The reason more deep space probes are not being launched is because people don't give a crap. And CISPA will be passed because (IMHO) the Internet blew its collective social activism wad fighting SOPA and everyone has gone back to Minecraft, WoW and Berk memes because they think their effort as 1's and 0's superheroes for a day crushed the special interests (and at least at this point, no one is telling otherwise). The only reason Apollo made it as far as it did is because NASA hired the best and brightest on Madison Avenue to make it an all-consuming interest for Americans. Not a day would go by without something reminding you we were in a race with the Russians and we had to win. As soon as we got there, everyone lost interest. Why? Because NASA sold the first men on the moon as the goal (Kennedy was a tad short-sighted, apparently), not the continued exploration of the moon. As soon as people give a crap and fight for what they want (or what they're told what they want), and if deep space exploration is what they're told they want, then we'll have more Voyager-like probes than you can shake a stick at.
Most people here want a follow up probe, but this took 40 years to reach there. The initial goal was the outer planets, this was an afterthought. We need to reach the heliosphere earlier. What engine do you think would be the best? Personally the VASMIR engine seems best to me but there are many other options.
Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Seriously, what are you gonna do to persuade the average human of the critical importance of space exploration and colonization? They can neither see nor reason past the ends of their noses. They would rather argue about abortion and gay rights and whether so-and-so 'had work done' and what sort of debauchery they have planned for Friday night. That's on the 99-percent end of the scale; on the other end you have people who can't see nor reason past their own bloated bank accounts and genitalia.
Yet another over sensationalist bullshit editorial from the shitbags at trashdot.
The Space Race was military dick waving between the US and the Soviet Union. It was also the source of a lot of useful spin offs, like Tang, delicious Tang.
The Internet was also at military program (ARPANET). It was also really useful for other things, like pr0n, delicious, pr0n.
As soon as we got to the moon, everyone lost interest. Why? Because there's really nothing there and it's too far away for a vacation.
Oh, and what are you fighting for? Probably that Epic Staff of Self-Emasculation in some MMORPG. Have you ever served in the military or even been in a real fight, with real pain and blood? Don't use words you don't fully understand.
And yes, I know that Tang wasn't created for the Space Race.
New Horizins is on it's way there now. The article seems to contradict the summary and the headline.
and other people who don't want to work.
I don't want to work, I have better things to do with my time. Unfortunately they don't pay the bills.
Do you really, truly, rise each morning and want to go to work?
I'm 46 and I grew up with Star Trek, the World Trade Center, the Concorde, and the space shuttle. How's that working out...
Your comment sums up quite a lot. The fuck-ups started with defunding of Apollo in the early 1970s, and manned spaceflight has barely progressed since then. The shuttle made for a lot of nice launches and a couple of spectacular failures, but it only went to low Earth orbit. Programs like Hubble and Voyager and so on greatly expanded our knowledge of the universe, but damned little progress was made in manned spaceflight, despite pouring fortunes into a succession of boondoggles (Shuttle, Skylab, ISS, 'nuff said). Recall that even Voyager was just a scaled-back cheaper substitute for the Grand Tour.
I'm only a few years older than you, but vividly remember the Apollo missions. As a kid in Europe, I stayed up weird hours to catch live transmissions from Apollo 8 to Apollo 17. I saw almost every single one of them, and if there had been consumer-level recording technology like today's, I and many others would have copies of those transmissions. I don't recall the Apollo 1 disaster (too young, I guess), but was riveted by the Apollo 13 near-disaster. The decision to cancel Apollo 18 to Apollo 20 was baffling to me then, and remains so today, 40 years later.
Commitment was lost or lacking at a high enough level in U.S. political circles after Apollo reached its stated objective. After that, it was just a question of how soon the money could be diverted to political pork. And that's how NASA's budgets have been allocated ever since. Pork as the real objective, more pork as the means of attaining that objective, even more pork as the main spin-off, and a bit of science or space exploration as an unavoidable but incidental side effect. The objectives (pork) were always achieved successfully, even if the cover stories (science, space) ended in failure.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The US and Russia have funded almost every foray past Low Earth Orbit. Russia might keep going in a very small way, but the US is far too dominated by bean counters and corporate whores.
In 10 or 15 years, the "language of space" will probably be Chinese.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
As long as NASA keeps safety first, nothing neat is ever going to happen there, astronauts will still die but by old age, boring. Nothing safer then sitting on the ground. The current director tied to change the goal to "teaching the Arabs how important their culture was"; no matter how successful that was, it didn't make a rocket go up.
I'm surprised nobody else has posted this yet.
65 years
"Voyager and the Coming Great Hiatus In Deep Space"
Coming? The Great Hiatus has been upon us since May 23rd, 2001.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
The reason for not building interstellar probes is that there is nothing interesting between stars. A good telescope can tell us much more than a deep space probe.
I get a different result with telnet. Maybe it was simplified for people who use wget. At least they're keeping up with the server.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What we need is another good scare. The Chinese are well on the way to their own orbital research station (entirely built by them...no comment on where the tech may have come from) and a follow-on exploration of the moon, the Indians are getting their space program going and will probably partner with China in the near-to-mid term, and the ESA and Russia are continuing with the Mars mission planning without us (thanks, Congress!).
Once we start getting left behind...again...it will freak the right people out and we'll get money once more. I just hope it happens before I'm too old to enjoy the new data and pictures.
Well, our "finite" resources are absolutely huge. What if the governments of the world set aside a small fraction of their military budgets, and trained half the unemployed populations of the world in aerospace technology *and* have them the means to work together on furthering the human space program?
We're not talking about just the US, or any single nation. Cooperation under a single multi-national leadership. A leadership like a single corporation funded by all nations. If it was done as a cooperation of various independent agencies (like the ISS is now), you'll end up with huge budgets spent on meetings and planning, and another large chunk wasted on incompatible designs.
The unemployed population (out of work, retired, etc) would give the knowledge base and manpower to accomplish virtually anything.
Tell me why we don't have the bigger, better space program going yet? Fuel is expensive? Now you have the employees to manufacture it. There's no money for it? The same money that goes towards welfare and unemployment would now be part of the employees salaries. But (oh my gosh) we can't trust other countries. They'd get access to our secrets! Secrets that we quietly sell to our allies this year who become our enemies in another decade. {sigh}
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
When most of our budget is "non-discretionary spending" I think the choice actually does frame the question well. It's certainly begging the question from a strict sense, but given the background, it truly is a that black and white. Do we pay for exponentially growing "mandatory" spending, or do we pay for science? Let me give you a nasty hit. Most of our applied science budget is in the DoD. Obama just fucked it hard with the FY13 budget request. And yes, that would be the president, not congress, who's responsible for and submits the executive branch budget request to congress.
Just get some probes on Europa already! If you want to find extraterrestrial life, that is your best hope, probably by a wide margin. Unlike Mars, where we'd be lucky to find single-celled organisms, Europa seems to harbor the possibility of multicelluar life, in my non-expert opinion (although the Wikipedia article pooh-poohs this). I think the discovery of life on Europa would rekindle interest in human space exploration since some biologists is going to want to go there in person with a specimen jar. We might even find a monolith or two on there somewhere!
Like paying unproductive crack whores to breed more unproductive crack whores to get on the dole and bankrupt the taxpayer.
More like as far as we are able to afford to go.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So yes, we have gone more or less as far as we are going to go. It will likely be up to the Chinese, Japanese or Indians to carry on IMHO. Any politician who supports something perceived as expensive, like space exploration won't get elected. Keep in mind most people think money spent on space is somehow being thrown away into space itself and thus lost.
Corporations are not going to go there until they can turn a profit doing so, and I doubt we have the tech to make it profitable yet, so without government shouldering the load to develop the required tech, it ain't gonna happen any time soon.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
On July 20, 1969, man took his first footsteps on the moon. They were carried there aboard the Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever built, a record which stands to this day. It was the culmination of a challenge set forth by John F. Kennedy in his landmark speech on September 12, 1962: "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
Why the history lesson? President Obama's 2011-2012 budget effectively ends the U.S. manned spaceflight program by cancelling Ares/Constellation/Orion and providing for no successor (the designed-only-on-paper SLS does not count). The shuttle is currently being retired to various museums around the country. We will remain at the mercy of the Russians to launch U.S. astronauts into orbit to the ISS, unless/until SpaceX manages to accomplish a series of safe launches. While some may argue that NASA received a nominal budget increase, they also have no real program and no real goal. And we all know how well such plans work in successive presidential administrations.
I was not born in time to see the first moon landing, and it appears I will be long dead before another American lands on the moon, or Mars, or anywhere else in the solar system. How is it that the United States is willing to concede that for years to come, and possibly decades, we've simply given up on manned spaceflight? In 1969 we could land on the moon - and in 2012 we've just lost the ability or the will to do it? Ares I and Ares V may not have been the perfect answer, but at least we were still on track to have manned access to space. Maybe once the Chinese or the Russians start colonizing the moon, or traveling to Mars, the U.S. will see the error of its ways - and by then it will be too little, too late. We will be the ones trying to play catchup, having relinquished our lead in all things related to manned space exploration. Case in point - a large part of the cost of Ares I was attempting to reverse engineer Saturn parts, because while we have the blueprints, and we have production parts and samples, the reasons WHY parts were designed the way they were has been lost - the engineers are long dead, or retired. Things such as why valves had certain diameters, or why pipes had certain bend radii - all lost to dust and history. And now the cycle is again set to repeat with the retirement of the shuttle with no replacement on the horizon.
The ultimate future of mankind is off this rock. All of humanity's eggs cannot live forever in this fragile little basket we call Earth. And circling the Earth in LEO at the mercy of another country's launch schedule is not progress, but madness.
Here we go again. I remember how eagerly my church watched and prayed for the moon astronauts when they launched on their missions. Many of those astronauts were in fact Christians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8_Genesis_reading
From your post I suspect your belief system is worse.
I like how the great intelligence that managed to build the probe didn't think to take "V GER" to the carwash.
I hope heavy lift gets killed off, but support in the Senate is strong. Heavy lift is not essential for landing on the Moon. While Saturn V needed only a single rocket, smaller rockets could have been used to loft the different items separately, and linked together in orbit for a lunar trip. I believe that commercial rockets, including EELVs would be sufficient for a moon landing. Some, including myself, believe that man rating rockets is not essential for older rockets. Europes' Ariane V has had 20+ consecutive successful launches. The Delta IV and Atlas V rockets have a >95% successful launch rate. The Apollo Lunar Descent stage weighed a little over 10 tons, in the range of EELVs.
Obama's decision to spend money on developing technologies is better than Hutchison's and Nelson's. Don't worry. Mitt Romney will bring Mike Griffin back, and Ares V will be reborn! Just hope Ron doesn't pull off an upset and eliminate all of NASA.
Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation." -- Johnny Hart
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
"fragile, inconsistent state of space exploration."
Time to dissolve NASA. Time for these bureaucrats to return to the real world. But if they can finance and implement their own extra-stellar expedition, more power to 'em.
The ground teams have already disabled several instruments, either because their purpose has been fulfilled or to save power. Presumably they can disable still more, eking out the scraps of power the RTGs put out for a few more years. Unfortunately, as far as i know, the Voyagers don't have anything like a bank of capacitors or secondary batteries that can be slowly recharged with the diminished output of the RTGs while the rest of the system sleeps until it has enough power to wake up and phone home again.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
I mean, why is everybody so obsessed with the role of Voyager in deep space exploration? Voyager has not given information about any extrasolar system, and when (and if) he arrives at one someday, it will be dead long before.
Instead, space based telescopes are investigating other solar systems and discovering planets each week, right now.
Given that:
*) We do not have a technology that would endure the years of travel, let alone send back information.
*) Probably anything in the near-medium future able to do it will be way greater/heavier than Voyager.
*) We really do not know where to point those probes.
I am not terribly worried about not sending more probes so they just become garbage in the interestellar void. At a later stage, it might make sense, but not right now.
Why can't
As usual it is the Pork (i.e. Houston and mannned space flight) that wins over Science (JPL and robotic missions). And 10 years from now there will be nothing to show for the billions wasted on the porky manned missions while planetary missions starve...