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?"

Comments

Indeed

[Creedo]

In regards to funding such efforts, Neil deGrasse Tyson recently said:

“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.

Re:Indeed

[similar_name]

In an almost perfect world people wouldn't give up on a perfect world. Luckily as a whole we don't. While history has its ups and downs the overall trend seems to be up.

Re:Indeed

[cusco]

Space exploration doesn't make rich people richer **TODAY**. Wealthy people used to think in terms of dynasties, founding colonies and funding explorations that they knew would never pay off until the time of their grandchildren. Today if it doesn't pay off in under a decade it isn't seen as worth investing in. Funding solar power satellites for example with a financial break-even point of 20 years are essentially unthinkable, even if the payoff were enormous.

Re:Indeed

[neonv]

Mindless violence has unfortunately been the fuel for space exploration. The Germans in World War II developed the rockets that gave rise to putting satellites into orbit. The Cold War drove spending on space exploration out of fear of being destroyed from space. Men walked on the moon only from fear that the other super power would get there first. Now that there is no threat of war between super powers, there's no more fear that drives spending on space exploration. Though Space X and Virgin Galactic give some hope that things will change, it won't be at the same rate of development in the forseable future.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mean to minimize any urgency to continue space exploration--it's important to lobby and press for pushing the envelope however we can.

However, space exploration isn't dead.

For many years I've been waiting, and continue to wait, for New Horizons to reach Pluto (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/). Assuming this goes on as planned, it will be amazing to finally see Pluto and Charon -- something that, if I'm alive at that time, I can say I'm glad I lived to see. The fact they plan to continue the mission into the Kuiper belt is even more impressive. If anything's carrying the torch of Voyager and Pioneer at the moment, it's New Horizons. The way I feel about it now is similar to how I felt about Voyager meeting Uranus and Neptune in the 80s when I was a child.

Another thing that's fascinating to me to see unfold is private spaceflight. The fact that there is a realistically burgeoning private spaceflight industry in the US is pretty damn amazing if you ask me, and I'm excited to see it continue.

I'm all for large federally funded space exploration research (and research of all kinds) but I sometimes feel like there's a sky-is-falling narrative that's not quite right. Give credit where credit is due.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Define amazing.

To say that "sticking a little RC car on Mars" isn't an achievement is frankly incredibly insulting to the people that designed it. You want bigger? Look at the Mars Science Laboratory which is being dropped via rocket crane because it's so heavy. Quite honestly, sending things to the Moon is easy. Sending stuff to Mars is incredibly difficult and the staggering cost of developing human support systems to do it outweighs the enormous amount of robotic science you could do with the same amount of money.

Oh and let's not forget that Voyager was never meant to end up in outer space. Initially it was meant to explore Jupiter and Saturn, but the mission was extended, extended and extended a bit more. And why not? The hardware was still functioning perfectly. Look at Spirit and Opportunity, they have massively outstayed their welcome on Mars thanks to the engineering that went into them.

So what's out there now? Well, New Horizons is on its way to Pluto as I type with a presumed extension to visit the Kuiper belt afterwards. If they don't send that out of the solar system afterwards, I'd be very surprised. The mission is supposed to end in 2026, but who knows. The way you do something like this is have a mission in the solar system and then find a way to use the satellite after it's done doing your science.

Oh and we're not slouching on launches either

http://claudelafleur.qc.ca/Scfam-science.html#2011
http://claudelafleur.qc.ca/Scfam-planetary.html#2011

We're actually launching a lot more than we used to. The difference is we've got other things we're interested in rather than finding out what's in interstellar space - cool prospect as it is.

There will always be new innovation in science and there will always be nostalgic people. What actually happens is somewhere in-between, science marches on, but the visible effects diminish. When we look at space science, you're comparing things that happened over a period of around 30-50 years ago. Think about life 50 years in the future. We will be recalling the days when we went from 2D graphics to 3D graphics, a time when the world wasn't connected via the internet, when a cellphone went from being bigger than a brick to smaller than a deck of cards. In 30 years what will have changed? Probably lots, but will anything in these fields ever rival these first steps?

Re:We've probably gone farther

[PsychoSlashDot]

There virtually no interest in anything that isn't personally and obviously of benefit to Joe Average these days. If it isn't a new iPhone app or a new GPS option in their car, or a simpler way to get bigger breasts, or an indisputable cure for baldness, crow's feet, or liver-cancer, Joe Average doesn't want to hear about it and CERTAINLY won't want to pay for it.

Ignorance is bliss, and as long as the digital TV signal carrying Jersey Shores is nice and strong, that's all the technology most people care for.

It's the specials, the freaks, the weirdos who insist on dreaming and asking "what if". We read science fiction and speculative fiction, and we play games that model hypothetical situations and we desperately want to know MORE about many things. Even if human teleportation devices can't be invented in our lifetime, we want to see the steps as the precursor technology is built. But we're not normal.

It's ok.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:We sure don't make stuffs like they used to

[davydagger]

consumer products != space grade industrial products.

before you start talking about modern consumer electronics which are the best they've ever been, think about consumer grade hardware in the 1990s.

boot times where 5+ min. never worked right. plug and play didn't work, no standards on HW.Drivers sucked.

sheet, we got it easy today.

Re:choices

[I_am_Jack]

But there certainly is some kind of trade off. Effort and resources directed towards ocotmoms and the idle must come from somewhere.

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.

Obligatory but equally depressing xkcd

[kevingolding2001]

I'm surprised nobody else has posted this yet.
65 years

Re:Blame the b*tards in Congress...

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians are a reflection of the people they "serve." We're the problem.

Re:We sure don't make stuffs like they used to

[camperdave]

Did the ipad 3 cost hundreds of millions of dollars?

Yes, in all likelyhood.