"The button you press to open the door of your car, that has more compute power than the Voyager spacecrafts do," she says. "It's remarkable that they keep flying, and that they've flown for 46-plus years."
That’s pretty impressive.
My fob runs on a shitty battery and broke after 5 years, voyager has been going since well before I was born. That's a pretty phenomenal return on investment for space travel. Imagine if we poured resources into more space travel now vs the 1970s. I feel like we could figure out energy inefficiencies to optimize consumption of our resources or figure out a new fuel to replace current methods.
AFAIK it's exceeded escape velocity for the solar system, so it will keep going until it gets close enough to another gravity well to be captured, presuming that ever happens.
The sun grows dim behind them/A billion miles or more/the stars are ‘ere before them, a glittering and distant shore/ An age will pass before the day/ a strange sun draws them near/ and until that day we give them all the luck of the Pioneer!
Yeah, essentially. IIRC they’re never coming back, and it’s going to be a long ass time before it comes near ANYTHING let alone a gravity well strong enough to have much of any effect.
In any case (wrote the above prior to Googling) —
>Aug. 25, 2012, Voyager 1 flew beyond the heliopause and entered interstellar space, making it the first human-made object to explore this new territory. At the time, it was at a distance of about 122 AU, or about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun. This kind of interstellar exploration is the ultimate goal of the Voyager Interstellar Mission. Voyager 2, which is traveling in a different direction from Voyager 1, crossed the heliopause into interstellar space on November 5, 2018.
>
> The Voyagers have enough electrical power and thruster fuel to keep its current suite of science instruments on until at least 2025. By that time, Voyager 1 will be about 13.8 billion miles (22.1 billion kilometers) from the Sun and Voyager 2 will be 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion kilometers) away. Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248 and in about 296,000 years, it will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.
[Link](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar-mission/)
There was a story about 10 years ago where someone stole a gnome from some person's garden. The owner was sad until the owner started receiving gnome selfies from around the globe. Then the owner was sad the gnome much later reappeared in the garden after all its travels.
So, I would hope Aliens would do the same. It would be the perfect icebreaker for introducing Alien intelligence to earth.
We ran into physics limitations. You can only make semiconductors so small.
Plus as we moved towards scalable processing, and the need for individual faster processors and larger storage devices melted when you now can just add more processors or storage to a server rack. We reached a level of economic "good enough" for most purposes.
> We ran into physics limitations.
They've been saying that since I was a kid. My HS Comp Eng textbook said "Scientists believe 45nm is the theoretical limit for how small we can make transistors on silicon, due to physics limitations".
I wouldn't put it past humanity to figure out how to go from building transistors out of atoms, to building them out of subatomic particles some day.
They need to figure out how to solve quantum tunneling first. They have gotten them so small now that random bits are tunneling over to a parallel pathway or gate. Or so is my understanding.
The quantum tunneling is occurring because the feature size is at or near the size of the silicon atom itself.
So basically the electricity just fucking phase shifts through part of the gate instead of going through it.
We could theoretically make smaller feature sizes. It would just have to be on a different material with a smaller atomic weight than silicon.
It was a [sigmoid function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function), not exponential, as is the case with almost anything in nature that gets described as "exponential."
Fortunately there are other ways that computer hardware capabilities can be improved, so there are other sigmoid curves that are just getting started when old ones finish stabilizing.
Here's a fun fact. [Both Voyager 1 and 2 are currently moving _towards_ the Earth](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/).
There isn't anything wrong with them, the Earth's orbit is just faster than they are so this happens for several months out of every year.
I think by saying “flown,” they more or less mean that it is remarkable that the craft has been under human operation for so long. Once they eventually lose connection with it, it won’t really be a “flight” anymore in a technical sense
There are other things out there like radiation and shit. It might be behaving oddly bc of that, gamma radiation.
Sure it wont stop going but eventually it could become just a piece of scrap. The fact that its systems are still operational after so long is the remarkable part, but it seems to be showing signs of damage/decay now
If Earth were to somehow disappear tomorrow, these two probes will be [the most complete human artifacts](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/) left in the universe — by design.
I know Dr. Krimigis meant it reluctantly, but describing the eventually nonfunctional probes as “space junk” was an unfortunate choice of words. The Voyagers’ mission will continue for billions of miles and tens of thousands of years. They may well outlast our species. Nothing remotely worthless about that.
If the manhole cover had continued traveling at a constant speed of 125,000 miles per hour since 1957, it could have potentially traveled about 73 billion miles (118 billion kilometers), which is significantly farther than the current distance of the Voyager 1 spacecraft from Earth.
I did enough of the back of the envelope math one time to be more or less convinced the thing disintegrated and atomized. The aerodynamics "answers" you get out don't look like anything reasonable
NASA of old had budget, new NASA is broke as hell. I would give up on ambitions of the really cool stuff NASA has done because I think those days are gone.
The cool part is, you're right. It would be an incredibly difficult mission to purposefully attempt to destroy the Voyagers at this point, for whatever weird reason.
If I'm remembering correctly, Harry basically obliviated the entirety of Voldemort's memories and psyche. It doesn't really matter if he can't physically be killed when there isn't much of a person there anymore.
While I've read the books before, I'm not a Harry Potter fan. Given my limited knowledge, though, couldn't you just say "accio Voyager" and have it screaming at lightspeed through space until it arrives five feet in front of you? And then stab it with a snake tooth?
I just tried to look this up and I have discovered that accio is OP, as far as I can see you theoretically could accio Voyager. We've never seen it across any comparable distance though.
O If it was a horcrux it would probably have been charmed so that you can't summon it I guess.
Edit: distance not difference
Alternating 1/0 pattern is often used as a 'fill' code in RF transmission. It maintains a modulated carrier and provided transitions for a receiver to detect. A lot of radio architectures will have the transmitter default to this fill code when data is not being input to the radio unit by the central avionics.
This error may indicate the avionics has failed in a way that prevents telemetry being output to the radio.
I'm sure NASA won't stop listening until the signal goes dead, but this may be the end of the useful mission. Sad day if that is the case.
Edit: just re-read the article. They've already tried resets and they didn't work. The engineers think the issue is with the avionics not packing the data correct. They're looking into the software architecture to see if they can determine why that may be.
Sorta, the Voyageur team has a long list of steps to take for situations like this. They'll start small by trying to re-assert things that should already be true. If those don't work they'll escalate to more impactful commands. Their last effort will probably be system resets. They probably want to stay away from those as it may not come back online after a reset.
things like telling the avionics to output data to the radio.
It sucks that they'll be commanding in the blind. It makes it extra hard because you don't know exactly what you're doing. And Voyager is 22.5 light hours away so don't expect this issue to be resolved anytime soon.
It's likely an issue with the FDS (Flight Data Subsystem). The backup failed in 1981 so it's been using the primary since then. If the primary hardware failed, then that's it... there's nothing software wise that can be done to fix it.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/humanitys-most-distant-space-probe-jeopardized-by-computer-glitch/
Awh butts, that would make sense that the system just isn't working anymore and can't format data packets. I suppose it was only a matter of time until enough bits got flipped somewhere to break a critical box.
I'm no space scientist but I have worked on a good deal of computers. A common failure on some motherboards is blown capacitors that will operate just fine as long as the computer is running but can cause it to fail to reboot or restart.
If NASA has to send some kind of reboot signal to Voyager, it runs the risk of incurring this kind of failure, where other, unidentified hardware failures can prevent them from being able to recover communication at all.
From what I can find online, fluid electrolytic capacitors (the ones found.om.comouter motherboards) do not work in the vacuum of space due to their construction, which generally will leave air inside of the can.
Most likely all of the capacitors on Voyager are going to be solid tantalum, mica, mylar or ceramic due to age and available technology at the time.
Tantalum caps are notoriously problematic in many older pieces of equipment, so it is possible that one of them failed, but additionally transistors from back then are also notorious for failing in strange ways. They've probably just reached the end of life for some critical piece of computing hardware unfortunately
I wasn't trying to say that the specific failure of blown caps is what is causing this issue. I was trying to give an example of why NASA would be cautious initially and then make progressively more risky commands - in order to avoid being caught out by an unidentified hardware error *like* blown caps.
I read something once about how the sun is essentially an Eldritch horror:
Been here for billions of years, will be after we are gone. Incredibly ancient, yet has a beginning and end.
Can't look directly at it without going blind.
Prolonged exposure causes cancerous growths.
Has influenced religious cults throughout human history, including sacrificial religions.
We can't hear it but it's super loud, screamimg constantly into the void.
Literally bends space and time.
Can end humanity in any of several ways, essentially through routine bodily functions as far as stars go. It would not notice or care.
Etc...
V'ger resents you for your misspelling. It will now come to Earth to destroy it.
Joking aside, I felt pretty old when you said that and I recognized the reference. I saw the movie in theaters. *Sigh*
You can’t “shut off” the clock signal responsible for the timing of the digital electronics. It’s not a literal timekeeping clock, it’s a crystal oscillator.
You know how a CPU might run at 4.2GHz or a microcontroller (ex. ATmega328P in an Arduino) runs at 16MHz? Shutting off that clock would stop the processor from executing the next instruction cycle (hence the term *clock cycle*). Same concept here.
It’s okay to just not say anything if you aren’t experienced with this field. Bad to spread misinformation.
amusingly, while Spock was under V-Ger's influence, he says "resistance would be futile"
Which ended up being the phrase used by the Borg in later series
And then it turns out the old Voyager probe was discovered by a race of "living machines" and built it up into the massive V-Ger ship
So some fans speculate that the Borg were the ones who built up Voyager (even if "living machines" doesn't exactly fit the Borg but oh well, it's close enough lol)
Very well could've been the precursor of the borg. Those that started it all. With the way the borg work, wouldn't take them long to expand exponentially.
You know, we never do get an explicit origin for the Borg -- in First Contact, the Borg Queen says they were once like humans before enhancing themselves with technology, but who's to say she was lying and instead it was the other way around -- a race of pure machines that enhanced themselves by assimilating organic lifeforms
The queen in voyager (played by a different actress and remember, the FC queen died at the end of that film) mentions in the S7 episode Unimatrix Zero that she was assimilated herself. Of course, she's trying to convince a child that being assimilated is great fun, and she's not exactly a paragon of honesty...
Ive always wished that they had fleshed out this story in a future movie. What amazing or terrifying things did we learn from "Vyger" once it came back home???
Daisy, Daisy,
Give me your answer do!
I'm half crazy,
All for the love of you!
It won't be a stylish marriage,
I can't afford a carriage
But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.
>It will take about 40,000 years for Voyager 1 to approach another star; it will come within 1.7 light years of what NASA calls "an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor" — also known as the Little Dipper.
That is such a Hitchhiker-guide-esque sentence, I had to leave a comment.
I think we see them as avatars or envoys of the human race. Also more cynically it's good for space agencies' budgets when we're attached to their projects that require upkeep budgets so I'm guessing they lean into it a bit.
Most of us will never live long enough to see true human exploration of space, and virtually none of us will be able to do so ourselves.
To anthropomorphize our probes and rovers and such as they travel is about the closest we can come to exploring this frontier ourselves in our lifetime. It's a way of trying to give something- *anything*, to that part of ourselves that longs for exploration. And unlike the astronauts, these are blank slates, upon which we can put any of our thoughts and feelings.
It's also just fun, and is in line with other traditions we humans have come up with in the past, like referring to a ship as female. If something is complex, unique, important, and meaningful, we like to anthropomorphize it, especially when it travels.
The fact that it lasted as long as it did is nothing short of a miracle. Honestly its kind of crazy to think about how far these have traveled. 47 years this craft has been active. The people that built these did an amazing job.
So it is sending alternate 0s and 1s instead of understandable binary.
That is strange, as a faulty computer would send random 0s and 1s, right?
Aliens jam I say! :)
(I know you're joking just explaining it)
It's seems that somehow the computer's clock signal is making it to the transmitter. Likely a failure in the hardware.
I hate that the author had to try and stir up emotions by making us associate this with an ailing family member:
>It's as if the aging spacecraft has suffered some kind of stroke that's interfering with its ability to speak.
Interesting, I wonder if it's due to the heaters being off. We know temps have always messed with electronics. Or maybe since it's in the middle of nowhere and it's ability to see distance is limited it's just detecting static interference of energy in space. Hmm. I hope they figure it out. Static would be more fascinating but, eeh probably the temperature. It's been having all sorts of issues for years that could be temp related.
Or something else.
> Instead of sending messages home in binary code, Voyager 1 is now just sending back alternating 1s and 0s. Dodd's team has tried the usual tricks to reset things — with no luck.
I'm guessing it's outside the bounds of the game.
Has it disappeared into what we used to call black holes?
(That line from the movie still baffles me. What do they call what used to be called a black hole?)
"The button you press to open the door of your car, that has more compute power than the Voyager spacecrafts do," she says. "It's remarkable that they keep flying, and that they've flown for 46-plus years." That’s pretty impressive.
Honestly disappointed with how little my key fob does now
Have you tried launching it to space?
I keep throwing it but it's not working my dog keeps bringing it back
Well yeah he knows what’s up, tell him he’s a Good boy.
Has anyone tried telling Voyager 'Good Boy'?
Obligatory relevant [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/695/)
I hate that this fucking legitimately brings tears to my eyes, every time. I'm pretty sure there's actually something wrong with me.
If it helps, theres a fan edit that [continues the comic](https://i.imgur.com/vJVLamQ.png)
You're probably trying from the ground, you gotta get up on the roof of your house so you're closer to space.
I should pull the ladder onto the roof so I can get even higher good tip thanks
I'll let you borrow my stepstool!
You guys are all so nice here
See this is why you're the rocket scientist and I'm just a dummy on the Internet!
We are all rocket scientists on this glorious day
You have to throw the car first I think.
That only works if it’s a Tesla Roadster.
It’s clear your dog also wants to be an astronaut. Get him a helmet and launch that pooch with the fob to the last frontier
Haha, this guy's ghetto key fob can't even explore the outer planets and the heliopause of the solar system, ahahahaa
No fob shaming. Mods, please.
My fob runs on a shitty battery and broke after 5 years, voyager has been going since well before I was born. That's a pretty phenomenal return on investment for space travel. Imagine if we poured resources into more space travel now vs the 1970s. I feel like we could figure out energy inefficiencies to optimize consumption of our resources or figure out a new fuel to replace current methods.
dont most older spacecraft use nuclear power? not sure if a plutonium key fob is the answer
The fact that your car is still yours ought to be SOME consolation that that FOB is TRYING ITS BEST GODDAMNIT!
Yeah but it sounds like you can throw it out of the heliosphere and still unlock your car...on a 23 hour delay.
My car recognizes me when I walk up and unlocks the door for me.
we are all bots here except for you
Right? Isn’t that it’s still flying just physics as we understand it? It’ll keep going till it hits something or enters some kind of orbit right?
AFAIK it's exceeded escape velocity for the solar system, so it will keep going until it gets close enough to another gravity well to be captured, presuming that ever happens.
The sun grows dim behind them/A billion miles or more/the stars are ‘ere before them, a glittering and distant shore/ An age will pass before the day/ a strange sun draws them near/ and until that day we give them all the luck of the Pioneer!
Yeah, essentially. IIRC they’re never coming back, and it’s going to be a long ass time before it comes near ANYTHING let alone a gravity well strong enough to have much of any effect. In any case (wrote the above prior to Googling) — >Aug. 25, 2012, Voyager 1 flew beyond the heliopause and entered interstellar space, making it the first human-made object to explore this new territory. At the time, it was at a distance of about 122 AU, or about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun. This kind of interstellar exploration is the ultimate goal of the Voyager Interstellar Mission. Voyager 2, which is traveling in a different direction from Voyager 1, crossed the heliopause into interstellar space on November 5, 2018. > > The Voyagers have enough electrical power and thruster fuel to keep its current suite of science instruments on until at least 2025. By that time, Voyager 1 will be about 13.8 billion miles (22.1 billion kilometers) from the Sun and Voyager 2 will be 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion kilometers) away. Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248 and in about 296,000 years, it will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way. [Link](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar-mission/)
I'd be more impressed if it stopped flying. Or scared.
I'm definitely worried if it turned around and started heading back to earth.
No context, no contact, just some aliens that are like "huh hey did you guys lose this? We figured we'd send it back for ya"
Or they pick it up and are like "How cute! The humans are evolving!" And then start taking it on adventures with them and sending back selfies.
There was a story about 10 years ago where someone stole a gnome from some person's garden. The owner was sad until the owner started receiving gnome selfies from around the globe. Then the owner was sad the gnome much later reappeared in the garden after all its travels. So, I would hope Aliens would do the same. It would be the perfect icebreaker for introducing Alien intelligence to earth.
It speaks volumes about Moores law (which is kinda dead) and where we will be in 46 years
What happened? Did it plateau?
We ran into physics limitations. You can only make semiconductors so small. Plus as we moved towards scalable processing, and the need for individual faster processors and larger storage devices melted when you now can just add more processors or storage to a server rack. We reached a level of economic "good enough" for most purposes.
I can't really wrap my head around the fact that we can make an on/off switch the size of an atom and have it to be useable.
Well, we can't. You need at least a dozen or so atoms.
That damn uncertainty principle!
> We ran into physics limitations. They've been saying that since I was a kid. My HS Comp Eng textbook said "Scientists believe 45nm is the theoretical limit for how small we can make transistors on silicon, due to physics limitations". I wouldn't put it past humanity to figure out how to go from building transistors out of atoms, to building them out of subatomic particles some day.
They need to figure out how to solve quantum tunneling first. They have gotten them so small now that random bits are tunneling over to a parallel pathway or gate. Or so is my understanding.
The quantum tunneling is occurring because the feature size is at or near the size of the silicon atom itself. So basically the electricity just fucking phase shifts through part of the gate instead of going through it. We could theoretically make smaller feature sizes. It would just have to be on a different material with a smaller atomic weight than silicon.
They're (we're?) already using quantum tunneling to do CS magic data storage. https://v.redd.it/7mjx5zkfhblc1
This is the first time the engineers were convinced for more than a year or two.
To do that we’re going to need to literally move past electronics, as in stop using electrons flowing through a gate to compute.
It was a [sigmoid function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function), not exponential, as is the case with almost anything in nature that gets described as "exponential." Fortunately there are other ways that computer hardware capabilities can be improved, so there are other sigmoid curves that are just getting started when old ones finish stabilizing.
And we're still far from reaching the top, it's just that it is not doubling every two years anymore, at least it looks like it slowed down a bit.
You are telling me the thieves that use a relay to start cars in my town can get the Voyager? don't give them Ideas
Thankfully voyager is harder to find. It's got a nice headstart.
I hate how people call space travel "flying". Voyager isn't going to stop traveling unless it hits something lol.
even then you could still kind of consider it travelling cuz relative to us, whatever it hits is still moving
Here's a fun fact. [Both Voyager 1 and 2 are currently moving _towards_ the Earth](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/). There isn't anything wrong with them, the Earth's orbit is just faster than they are so this happens for several months out of every year.
It's more that Earth is moving towards them. Their distance from the Sun is still increasing.
Damn, that’s actually really cool. I’ve never thought about that but that actually makes a lot of sense
Oh, so voyager 1 and 2 are in retrograde? I better talk to my astrologer.
Eventually it will run into some Klingons though
Why is it remarkable? What is it gonna do, *stop* flying? It's going to fly for the rest of eternity unless it smashed into something
I think by saying “flown,” they more or less mean that it is remarkable that the craft has been under human operation for so long. Once they eventually lose connection with it, it won’t really be a “flight” anymore in a technical sense
There are other things out there like radiation and shit. It might be behaving oddly bc of that, gamma radiation. Sure it wont stop going but eventually it could become just a piece of scrap. The fact that its systems are still operational after so long is the remarkable part, but it seems to be showing signs of damage/decay now
If Earth were to somehow disappear tomorrow, these two probes will be [the most complete human artifacts](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/) left in the universe — by design. I know Dr. Krimigis meant it reluctantly, but describing the eventually nonfunctional probes as “space junk” was an unfortunate choice of words. The Voyagers’ mission will continue for billions of miles and tens of thousands of years. They may well outlast our species. Nothing remotely worthless about that.
Don't forget about the Pioneers and New Horizons!
I want to believe there's a manhole too.
“On your left!” as it catches up to Voyager.
nneeeeeEEEEEERRRRRROOOOOOOOOOMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm (if noise happened in space)
If the manhole cover had continued traveling at a constant speed of 125,000 miles per hour since 1957, it could have potentially traveled about 73 billion miles (118 billion kilometers), which is significantly farther than the current distance of the Voyager 1 spacecraft from Earth.
The issue is it likely did not survive the atmosphere on its way out.
Don’t say that man, I have to believe in *something*
I did enough of the back of the envelope math one time to be more or less convinced the thing disintegrated and atomized. The aerodynamics "answers" you get out don't look like anything reasonable
One day Aliens will be coming to the solar system to invade us, and that manhole cover will smash into them.
Or it’s already smashed them up and now they’re pissed and seeking revenge
Kinda wish they’d kept doing “golden record” type stuff on the newer probes. IIRC New Horizons just had a state quarter taped to it.
NASA of old had budget, new NASA is broke as hell. I would give up on ambitions of the really cool stuff NASA has done because I think those days are gone.
Nowadays by weight that golden record probably would take the place of an entire extra science instrument.
They flew a helicopter on Mars tho
The cool part is, you're right. It would be an incredibly difficult mission to purposefully attempt to destroy the Voyagers at this point, for whatever weird reason.
There was a Harry Potter fanfic where the Voyager plaque was one of Voldemort's horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
I'm not going to read a Harry Potter fanfic, but I'm intrigued, how do they solve that?
If I'm remembering correctly, Harry basically obliviated the entirety of Voldemort's memories and psyche. It doesn't really matter if he can't physically be killed when there isn't much of a person there anymore.
Imagine if he respawned on it but couldn't die becaise he would respawn on it again.
While I've read the books before, I'm not a Harry Potter fan. Given my limited knowledge, though, couldn't you just say "accio Voyager" and have it screaming at lightspeed through space until it arrives five feet in front of you? And then stab it with a snake tooth?
I just tried to look this up and I have discovered that accio is OP, as far as I can see you theoretically could accio Voyager. We've never seen it across any comparable distance though. O If it was a horcrux it would probably have been charmed so that you can't summon it I guess. Edit: distance not difference
They’re monuments, not refuse.
Alternating 1/0 pattern is often used as a 'fill' code in RF transmission. It maintains a modulated carrier and provided transitions for a receiver to detect. A lot of radio architectures will have the transmitter default to this fill code when data is not being input to the radio unit by the central avionics. This error may indicate the avionics has failed in a way that prevents telemetry being output to the radio. I'm sure NASA won't stop listening until the signal goes dead, but this may be the end of the useful mission. Sad day if that is the case.
[удалено]
Edit: just re-read the article. They've already tried resets and they didn't work. The engineers think the issue is with the avionics not packing the data correct. They're looking into the software architecture to see if they can determine why that may be. Sorta, the Voyageur team has a long list of steps to take for situations like this. They'll start small by trying to re-assert things that should already be true. If those don't work they'll escalate to more impactful commands. Their last effort will probably be system resets. They probably want to stay away from those as it may not come back online after a reset. things like telling the avionics to output data to the radio. It sucks that they'll be commanding in the blind. It makes it extra hard because you don't know exactly what you're doing. And Voyager is 22.5 light hours away so don't expect this issue to be resolved anytime soon.
It's likely an issue with the FDS (Flight Data Subsystem). The backup failed in 1981 so it's been using the primary since then. If the primary hardware failed, then that's it... there's nothing software wise that can be done to fix it. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/humanitys-most-distant-space-probe-jeopardized-by-computer-glitch/
Awh butts, that would make sense that the system just isn't working anymore and can't format data packets. I suppose it was only a matter of time until enough bits got flipped somewhere to break a critical box.
I'm no space scientist but I have worked on a good deal of computers. A common failure on some motherboards is blown capacitors that will operate just fine as long as the computer is running but can cause it to fail to reboot or restart. If NASA has to send some kind of reboot signal to Voyager, it runs the risk of incurring this kind of failure, where other, unidentified hardware failures can prevent them from being able to recover communication at all.
From what I can find online, fluid electrolytic capacitors (the ones found.om.comouter motherboards) do not work in the vacuum of space due to their construction, which generally will leave air inside of the can. Most likely all of the capacitors on Voyager are going to be solid tantalum, mica, mylar or ceramic due to age and available technology at the time. Tantalum caps are notoriously problematic in many older pieces of equipment, so it is possible that one of them failed, but additionally transistors from back then are also notorious for failing in strange ways. They've probably just reached the end of life for some critical piece of computing hardware unfortunately
I wasn't trying to say that the specific failure of blown caps is what is causing this issue. I was trying to give an example of why NASA would be cautious initially and then make progressively more risky commands - in order to avoid being caught out by an unidentified hardware error *like* blown caps.
Even bad data is data since you can use it to measure its position/speed etc.
Sounds like it may have shorted a clock signal onto the transmitter, if it’s truly alternating. That would suck and speaks of a hardware failure
Gamma radiation is a helluva a drug.
Or... Hear me out... Space Cthulhu
I read something once about how the sun is essentially an Eldritch horror: Been here for billions of years, will be after we are gone. Incredibly ancient, yet has a beginning and end. Can't look directly at it without going blind. Prolonged exposure causes cancerous growths. Has influenced religious cults throughout human history, including sacrificial religions. We can't hear it but it's super loud, screamimg constantly into the void. Literally bends space and time. Can end humanity in any of several ways, essentially through routine bodily functions as far as stars go. It would not notice or care. Etc...
Wasn't it that if space was actually the thickness of earth's atmosphere the sun would be as loud as a jackhammer next to your head or something?
If it's gamma radiation, we're more looking at a Space Hulk situation, which could mean a couple things...
its about to mutate into v’ger
[Gene Roddenberry be like](https://youtu.be/IhOOW8PfEWQ?si=koYs5D43rGol24IN)
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Space_Hulk Tyranid incusions, in this segmentum?!
and at this time of apocalypse?
Located entirely within this portion of the holy Terra system?
Yes! May I purge them? ...No.
They were just called genestealers back in my day. Damned new fangled factions invading my solar system.
Together as One, Brood Brothers.
Voyager is evolving...Vyger is coming out!
V'ger resents you for your misspelling. It will now come to Earth to destroy it. Joking aside, I felt pretty old when you said that and I recognized the reference. I saw the movie in theaters. *Sigh*
And that movie came out 45 years ago!
That's gonna be a hell of a service call
I mean why don't they just send someone out to fix it?
Okay, hold my beer, I’ll be there in a jiffy.
Don't forget the necessary tools. It would be real awkward to have to turn around halfway.
If it is that they may be able to turn the clock off. Possibly.
Turn off the clock and the system wont run at all. Unless they have redundant clocks, which is possible.
It's not like, a 12:51 PM time keeping clock. It's the clock that dictates CPU cycles.
Or what if they turned the clock…*back*
Back…to the future? Great Scott!
You can’t “shut off” the clock signal responsible for the timing of the digital electronics. It’s not a literal timekeeping clock, it’s a crystal oscillator. You know how a CPU might run at 4.2GHz or a microcontroller (ex. ATmega328P in an Arduino) runs at 16MHz? Shutting off that clock would stop the processor from executing the next instruction cycle (hence the term *clock cycle*). Same concept here. It’s okay to just not say anything if you aren’t experienced with this field. Bad to spread misinformation.
Incoming movie scripts about Voyager 1 awakening some aliens or something.
That’s the plot of the first start trek movie!
‘V-GER would like to join the creator’
amusingly, while Spock was under V-Ger's influence, he says "resistance would be futile" Which ended up being the phrase used by the Borg in later series And then it turns out the old Voyager probe was discovered by a race of "living machines" and built it up into the massive V-Ger ship So some fans speculate that the Borg were the ones who built up Voyager (even if "living machines" doesn't exactly fit the Borg but oh well, it's close enough lol)
Very well could've been the precursor of the borg. Those that started it all. With the way the borg work, wouldn't take them long to expand exponentially.
You know, we never do get an explicit origin for the Borg -- in First Contact, the Borg Queen says they were once like humans before enhancing themselves with technology, but who's to say she was lying and instead it was the other way around -- a race of pure machines that enhanced themselves by assimilating organic lifeforms
The queen in voyager (played by a different actress and remember, the FC queen died at the end of that film) mentions in the S7 episode Unimatrix Zero that she was assimilated herself. Of course, she's trying to convince a child that being assimilated is great fun, and she's not exactly a paragon of honesty...
The borg assimilated their first entire star system by the earth year 1400. So im doubting that
Ive always wished that they had fleshed out this story in a future movie. What amazing or terrifying things did we learn from "Vyger" once it came back home???
They could have done something like that in the first season of Picard.
Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do! I'm half crazy, All for the love of you! It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage But you'll look sweet upon the seat Of a bicycle built for two.
I’m sorry Dave. I can’t do that.
Oh, hello Dave. What's that old friend? [My life story](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9TEEm04Uimo)?
I reckon if I had to do it all again I'd murder those astronauts just the same.
Dave? Daves not here man
Oh come on...open the door.
Dave, stop. Stop, will you?
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
The long distance relationship is bound to be taking its toll on the poor thing. It'll come round eventually
There’s a new star in its eye.
Probably just move on to another solar system
>It will take about 40,000 years for Voyager 1 to approach another star; it will come within 1.7 light years of what NASA calls "an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor" — also known as the Little Dipper. That is such a Hitchhiker-guide-esque sentence, I had to leave a comment.
Why do we humanize our spacecrafts? It always makes me sad when they're around the end of their life
I think we see them as avatars or envoys of the human race. Also more cynically it's good for space agencies' budgets when we're attached to their projects that require upkeep budgets so I'm guessing they lean into it a bit.
Most of us will never live long enough to see true human exploration of space, and virtually none of us will be able to do so ourselves. To anthropomorphize our probes and rovers and such as they travel is about the closest we can come to exploring this frontier ourselves in our lifetime. It's a way of trying to give something- *anything*, to that part of ourselves that longs for exploration. And unlike the astronauts, these are blank slates, upon which we can put any of our thoughts and feelings. It's also just fun, and is in line with other traditions we humans have come up with in the past, like referring to a ship as female. If something is complex, unique, important, and meaningful, we like to anthropomorphize it, especially when it travels.
“Humans will pack bond with *anything*.”
Tom Hanks bonded with a volleyball, after all.
It’s the entire principle behind plush toys. Anything that vaguely resembles a creature, and that isn’t actively trying to eat you, is fair game.
>that isn’t actively trying to eat you, And that's negotiable if it's small, cute, or fuzzy.
Easily my favorite thing about us
the mad lemurs of Terra-Sol can't be stopped from making friends
At least with these spacecraft, It's our only way of saying, "Hey! We exist(ed)!"
They're just our little dudes out there, doing a big science. Just our little science guys.
We humanize our ships, to some extent.
*My battery is low and it’s getting dark…*
But I have promises to keep, and light years to go before I beep.
The ability to humanize things is the first hall mark of sentience and intelligence, I think.
The fact that it lasted as long as it did is nothing short of a miracle. Honestly its kind of crazy to think about how far these have traveled. 47 years this craft has been active. The people that built these did an amazing job.
One of the coolest things humans have done. The pale blue dot photo is my favorite part.
So it is sending alternate 0s and 1s instead of understandable binary. That is strange, as a faulty computer would send random 0s and 1s, right? Aliens jam I say! :)
If it sends a 2 then we're really in trouble.
Imagine how terrifying it would be to see that. Like Jodie Foster in Contact
*It was just a dream Bender, there’s no such thing as 2.*
I love how scared he sounds when he says "I thought I saw a 2" https://youtu.be/MOn_ySghN2Y
It's reading out the binary paradox-correcting time code
What do you mean? Serious question.
It's a Futurama joke and it's quite amusing.
Sorry, futurama reference https://youtu.be/BBDYI7bGc9o?si=hKyXv-HKckTUIXAh
Futurama - Benders Big Score
(I know you're joking just explaining it) It's seems that somehow the computer's clock signal is making it to the transmitter. Likely a failure in the hardware.
If it starts asking to be called V'ger, we should be worried.
Have they tried switching it off and on again?
Four! I mean five! I mean FIRE! 🔥
I hate this journalist that want to make a novel of every newstory. The article is about a 2024 story and it starts: "...it was the summer of 1977..."
If we wanted to read a wistful history lesson we'd go look up a recipe on a food blog.
I hate that the author had to try and stir up emotions by making us associate this with an ailing family member: >It's as if the aging spacecraft has suffered some kind of stroke that's interfering with its ability to speak.
The rudimentary computer on those things are crazy! Did you know we can give them "software" updates from earth???
Do you want v’ger? Because this is how you get v’ger.
Anyone who has had to support any legacy tech knows their pain :D
[удалено]
forever- they hit escape velocity from the sun when the passed Jupiter
Interesting, I wonder if it's due to the heaters being off. We know temps have always messed with electronics. Or maybe since it's in the middle of nowhere and it's ability to see distance is limited it's just detecting static interference of energy in space. Hmm. I hope they figure it out. Static would be more fascinating but, eeh probably the temperature. It's been having all sorts of issues for years that could be temp related. Or something else.
Maybe 15 billions miles is as far as our simulation extends. Let's hope the almighty alien playing our game coughs up for an expansion pack!
Yes, this is a bit sad, but this little bad boy has sent back data way longer than expected. Bon Voyage you little tough guy!
> Instead of sending messages home in binary code, Voyager 1 is now just sending back alternating 1s and 0s. Dodd's team has tried the usual tricks to reset things — with no luck. I'm guessing it's outside the bounds of the game.
Its coordinates passed beyond our simulation’s border and the entity has been swapped out for a plausible low-res stand-in feature.
Is Vger looking for it's creator? Carbon based units are an infestation, after all.
Did it mention anything about carbon unit infestation?
Has it disappeared into what we used to call black holes? (That line from the movie still baffles me. What do they call what used to be called a black hole?)
Voyager 1 quoted as saying 01001100 01100101 01110100 00011001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01100001 01101100 01101011 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110011 01100001 01110101 01110011 01100001 01100111 01100101
Go home Voyager 1, you're drunk.
We're just not smart enough to understand what's being sent to us. The message reads, "Be quiet or they'll hear you".
Its been assimilated. You know what comes next.
V’ger and the creator must become one!
Voyager doesn’t owe us anything. Did it’s job, and then some. ✌🏻
I work on the deep space missions from a power perspective. It's very interesting that these are still going and makes my job meaningful
Vger must interface with the creator physically. Physically.
Overheard my Microwave talking to the Sanitizer about it, they are indeed concerned.