I remember when they were launched, I saw an article saying somehow the engineers added better components some functionalities even when they were forbidden. Somehow they hid it.
I forgot exactly what the articles said, but it indicated this was done due to a once in many centuries of the alignment.
[1] Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJT8AW0wYw , Free with ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIP1p5gAoak
Cheers to NASA and to all teachers!
I would love the elation of success, but 48 hours of sitting on the edge of my seat, idk
For every Climate Orbiter "we made an oopsie converting metric to imperial" story, there are three "we figured out how to get the crew of Apollo 13 to fit a square peg into a round hole and they can breath now" miracles.
I mean, sure, there's Apollo 1's "we put people and a bunch of wires in a pressurized can of pure oxygen", but there's also the Perseverance Rover's "we made a crane that holds itself aloft with rockets and lowers a one ton rover gently to the ground on a tether."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...
The Apollo flights in particular were interesting. For example, in the case of Apollo 14, when Houston was literally reading new machine code to the astronauts over radio who were punching in POKE instructions by hand to change the code.
And Challenger.
Every now and then we watch/read in the news that # of workers died while building that bridge/road/building/etc. We don't stop making bridges/roads/buildings. We just make it safer. Will people continue dying unnecessary/unnatural deaths? Unfortunately, yes. Let's minimise this.
Unfortunately I just can’t leave this whole “Imperial vs Metric” thing alone so here comes a tangent.
> "we made an oopsie converting metric to imperial"
US Customary*. The United States has never used the Imperial system. It didn’t even exist at the time of the revolution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_a...
Also since I’m already being pedantic Mars Climate Orbiter was not lost to a conversion error. US Customary units were provided by Lockheed software to a NASA system that expected SI units. It would not have been lost if either system was used consistently.
That’s what happens when engineers are allowed to engineer things, rather than being forced to “move fast and break things”.
We could just all agree that exploitation of others is wrong and unacceptable and severely punish those that try to exploit vulnerable people. But no, defauding Granny for her entire retirement is acceptable behavior now.
They were so thrilled when he launched a car into space with a manakin playing music. Like, who does that?? But it is simply inspiring to children. The next generation of engineers are going to see him as a hero.
I think Musk never lost his boyish wonder at the universe. Not even extreme wealth could take it away from him. I’m very thankful to have him as a role model for my children. Does he do things I disagree with? Yes. But I’m not going to destroy their hero because he is having a very positive, enabling influence on them.
It is so fulfilling to have my child say “Daddy can I show you my plans for building a train?” and hear them connect that curiosity and wonder with “like Elon Musk’s rockets, daddy.”
I looked into its Viking Computer Command Subsystem (CCS), but there's little documentation out there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Pictur...
Such a human experience this probe is having
If anyone was curious where residue comes from in hypergolic fuel systems, the answer is it's SiO2 (silica) from decaying rubber components,
"After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft’s fuel tank".
┕ https://science.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-program/voyager-1/...
An HN commenter tracked down relevant documentation on NTRS,
"They expel the Hydrazine(N2H4) fuel out of a spherical Ti tank by inflating a rubber balloon that involve Teflon inside the tank using helium supply. I guess N2H4 was potent enough to degrade even those space age materials."
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19810001583/downloads/19...
Ummm, no thanks
there is a lot more to learn about planets than what is outside the solar system so there is much point in a dedicated misson out. We still won't reach any other star for thousands of years, and have no power supply that will last that long. (there are things to learn out side our solar system, but most of it we can learn with a telescope from earth)
The point of the alignment, and the point of the Voyager program, was to visit the outer planets.
The alignment permitted unique trajectories that facilitated close fly-bys of each planet in order to collect a maximum amount of data with each visit.
The alignment was merely a very opportune moment to jump on the gravity-assists. The extra velocity was icing on the cake.
Without the alignment and without gravity assists, you could probably reach a direct escape velocity. Gemini (the LLM) tells me that that's about 42.1 km/s. More than would get you to the Moon, for sure. But a special planetary alignment is not strictly necessary to bail out of the solar system, just some powerful rocketry. But ask yourself, who or what would leave the solar system without visiting our planets first? That seems a silly way to go!
Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 are out there as well, and New Horizons has only been launched in 2006.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_lea...
(The conspiracy theorist in me could argue that since not much is happening in outer space, perhaps no one would notice if they started synthesizing responses from it. If they could do it so convincingly with the moon landing, surely this would be easier? /s)
Still quicker than my last offshore team.
Once you apply vibe-engineering to everything how we can even keep anything working beyond 1 year warranty. You can't RMA space probes.
But maybe we should send 50000 cheap (fr)agile probes like Starlinks into deep space and push updates randomly. Maybe just one makes it over 50 years mark.
Ah, and we should call it Starsperm. I think I should add "/s" here.
> StarChip is the name used by Breakthrough Initiatives for a very small, centimeter-sized, gram-scale, interstellar spacecraft envisioned for the Breakthrough Starshot program,[1][36] a proposed mission to propel a fleet of a thousand StarChips on a journey to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, about 4.37 light-years from Earth
Would have liked to have been there while this was going on! Hopefully I can get lucky again, but funding is in trouble these days.
So my impression is that we were incredibly lucky that Voyager worked out so well in spite of its chaotic existence from its earliest developmental stages to now. I suppose there are some leadership lessons, but survivorship bias must be accounted for as many projects didn't make it off the drawing board.
Seems like a sign to me that we are nearing the eventual end of life of the probes, despite all the incredible achievements.
mrbluecoat•8mo ago
gerdesj•8mo ago
Proper job.