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Voyager 1 - Living Up To It's Name


Knight of Clear Skies

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Yes, it is, isn't it. Must be one of the most successful missions there has been, in terms of exceeding initial expectations and outright achievements.

It will run out of power in around 2025 apparently, but will carry on going pretty much indefinitely unless it hits something which is unlikely I would think.

Stu

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A real testament to 1970s engineering.

Who needs Duracell when you have Plutonium!

This bit is bad news for me as it means I am 7 years older than I thought I was..

Sorry, that should have read 36 years.

Do you think we, as a race, will ever manage to build a spaceship and catch up and even recapture voyager 1? Or 2 for that matter?

It would make one hell of a museum piece.

Ask XKCD covered this a little while ago. The problem with rockets is you have to carry your own fuel, which in turn requires a bigger rocket. This graphic shows the difference between what was required to send Voyager on its way and what would be required to bring it back.

voyager_comparison.png

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Who needs Duracell when you have Plutonium!

Sorry, that should have read 36 years.

Ask XKCD covered this a little while ago. The problem with rockets is you have to carry your own fuel, which in turn requires a bigger rocket. This graphic shows the difference between what was required to send Voyager on its way and what would be required to bring it back.

voyager_comparison.png

Those who might find this almost unbelievable might find this interesting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Refuelling.plan.black.buck.svg/300px-Refuelling.plan.black.buck.svg.png

From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck

It's about the very daring Vulcan Bomber raid on Port Stanley during the Falklands conflict.

Obviously there is the added complication that each aircraft required enough fuel return safely and couldn't just be abandoned as an empty tanker enroute!

But still an outstanding amount of fuel and redundancy was required to fulfill the mission.

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Fantastic achievement, all the same it has taken 43 years to reach the beginning of interstellar space. Unless Man discovers a way to travel at speeds, which are at the moment beyond his comprehension, his dream of flitting among the stars, "to boldly go where no man has been before", will remain just a dream. Factor warp 7 please, engage :)

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What we need is constant 1g acceleration/deceleration to get to the stars. Or at least for a single generation of crew to get to the stars. Us lot back on Earth would be long gone.

I found this page: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/one-g_spacecraft.html

Just look at the differences elapsed time on board ship and back on Earth!

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I'd like to think that future generations, given the ability of interstellar travel, would leave it to go on its way, carrying the hopes and imaginations of their forebears with it...

True. I didn't think about that.

D.C

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It always reminds that the old tech never dies. I still have a few working computer parts knocking around from the 80s from some scientific instruments, One circuit board is almost twice the size of an ATX motherboard, and it was dedicated to run FFT transforms, that could take up to 20 minutes, IIRC, the number of data points were around 500,000. One LP size floppy disk tray that stored 128k or it may even have been 64k, don't recall exactly, post punch cards, very modern at the time. Anyway, I don't want to bin them at this stage, who knows they may be collector items in time, they sure don't make them like that anymore. :)

Watching those vids seeing voyager glide through space gives me sense of awe, but at the same time fills me with emptiness and loneliness, glad I am not on it :D

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According to the BBC it is moving away from us at 47Km/s, which means every second the transmission from it takes 0.156ms longer to get to earth. It is moving at 1/6382th the speed of light, glad I am not on it, at the speed you would never keep your teeth or visor clean of bugs.

That just has to be about the fastest thing we have ever made, certainly sustained speed. A low orbit satellite circles in 90 minutes and has a speed of 7.5Km/s. A Geostationary satellite is much further out, but orbits every 24 hours so only equates to 1.5Km/s.

Apparently Helios 2 was faster at 70Km/s, the fastest man made object, but as that was in fairly low elliptical orbit around the sun, it possibly no longer exists.

Robin

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It's interesting that this came less than 2 months after Astronomy Now did an article on this thing leaving the solar system. Voyager has got to be the most amazing mission in the history of space travel (except perhaps the Moon landings), taking us far further than we've ever been before. Well done to everyone involved!

David

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Electronics reliability is trully amazing. I have a portable radio/cassette from 1977, a Sankyo (yes, with a "K" in the middle so NOT Sanyo) my dad bought me for my 10th birthday. Its been running none stop for the last 20 years as a music on hold device. Consumes about 2w and has never missed a beat.

Voyager is truly one of the greatest feats of mankind IMO.

They should send a Nokia 3210 up on the next probe, those things will bury us all.

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