I highly recommend "It's Quieter in the Twilight" (2022), a documentary about the team maintaining these spacecraft as the end of their mission draws nearer. It adds a tremendous amount of context to articles like this.
The engineering involved in making these spacecraft durable for as long as they have been is truly awe inspiring. As a software engineer it seems silly to consider where my code will be in fifty years. I wish it wasn't.
As an OT systems architect I am totally floored. We design and plan for systems lifecycle on a ~20yr scale, with OT hardware (not the controls hardware, that’s closer to 10-20) lifecycle much shorter (~5 yr). Obvious on Earth we can afford luxuries of adopting new things, which actually shortens a total system lifecycle since new tech drives new designs.
I wish (and don’t) I could work on something that had a dependency of “design it once because it’s relatively inaccessible after its go live.” I’ll def check out the documentary.
Video games used to be like this. Once you built the "gold master" CD/DVD/cartridge/etc it was out of your hands. It was kinda nice to have a concrete end to the project [1]. Nowadays, everything is on the 'net, you can send patches, dlc, etc and the notion of a game being "done" is murky.
[1] There was, however, one game I worked on where they had to pull the boxes from stores (delivered, but not yet for sale) and swap out the disk in order to release a critical fix that was discovered too late. Fun times (:
That documentary was fantastic. Another good resource is this paper from 2016 on what all the equipment/computing systems on Voyager do and what the team had done to keep the mission going as of that point. https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/VIMChallenges.pdf
It's mind blowing that engineering that took place almost 50 years ago is still floating through space, giving us valuable data. It's depressing to realize that the style of engineering that accomplished such a feat is all but dead.
Look up golden age fallacy. Different projects have different requirements. You're selectively remembering the pieces of software that survived 50 years and forgetting the ones that didn't. I'm sure some projects written today will survive 50 years.
I wonder if they could use a time-sharing approach. Instead of permanently shutting down instruments, they could run different sets, with a maximum of three at a time.
Love everything about Voyager, but some lazy editing in the article. It opens with them "cruising through interstellar space for more than 47 years" and then later mentions that they only reached interstellar space in 2012 and 2018. The project deserves better, even in a puff piece!
I hope & wonder that if some spaceship find this space object a thousand or a million years from now (a-la Star Trek), the captain will tell with a stern voice (ofc like Patrick Stewart's) to the Science Officer "calculate the trajectory of the object, and give the coordinates to the Helm. then engage with Warp 9. I will be in my quarters getting some tea".
What would be found here in a thousand years much less a million?
My attitude is that it's something similar to getting ready for the end of the world by putting money in a savings account. If the money (or gold under your bed, cans of beans in the basement or even a pistol in your nightstand) does any good then it's not the end of the world.
If the universe is so crowded or so good at finding things like voyager that it's found in a meaningful (i.e. before humanity goes extinct or joins the godhead) time frame then we would have that encounter if voyager existed or not.
Unfortunately the sort of exponential advance of technology we imagined through Star Trek seems to have been overoptimistic. If humans ever leave the solar system it'll be on something like a generational ship, or in some kind of freezedried/informational form where we're reconstituted much later at our destination.
Why do you think it's particularly likely that two tiny objects running out of power will not only outlive Earth, but also any future objects sent from Earth to do the same things they're doing now? Or are you betting on the lack of future space exploration probes and relatively quick destruction of the Earth?
The chance of them hitting anything in the time it takes the sun to swallow the earth is probably tiny?
As for more probes - getting more speed than these did efficiently is probably hard, let alone the fact that they don’t generate personal profit probably stops them being politically viable for a while…
I was just reading a book that touched on Ancient Rome. The author tried to convey the significance of the Council of Nicaea by comparing it to the furor over Global Warming.
I only mention that to say that the motivations of people in the future will probably seem odd to us and it's possible ours may seem equally odd to them. Not odd in the sense that they are intellectually inscrutable but - like people getting excited over the matters theological - that they're emotionally inscrutable.
> getting more speed than these did efficiently is probably hard,
A new probe wouldn't necessarily need to travel faster than these to not be on Earth when the sun dies.
The idea of there being a minuscule chance the Voyager probes hit anything is fair, but even a third one of the exact same model launched in the exact same direction has just as much chance of surviving just as long, barring wild speculation that could easily go either way.
I highly recommend "It's Quieter in the Twilight" (2022), a documentary about the team maintaining these spacecraft as the end of their mission draws nearer. It adds a tremendous amount of context to articles like this.
The engineering involved in making these spacecraft durable for as long as they have been is truly awe inspiring. As a software engineer it seems silly to consider where my code will be in fifty years. I wish it wasn't.
As an OT systems architect I am totally floored. We design and plan for systems lifecycle on a ~20yr scale, with OT hardware (not the controls hardware, that’s closer to 10-20) lifecycle much shorter (~5 yr). Obvious on Earth we can afford luxuries of adopting new things, which actually shortens a total system lifecycle since new tech drives new designs.
I wish (and don’t) I could work on something that had a dependency of “design it once because it’s relatively inaccessible after its go live.” I’ll def check out the documentary.
Video games used to be like this. Once you built the "gold master" CD/DVD/cartridge/etc it was out of your hands. It was kinda nice to have a concrete end to the project [1]. Nowadays, everything is on the 'net, you can send patches, dlc, etc and the notion of a game being "done" is murky.
[1] There was, however, one game I worked on where they had to pull the boxes from stores (delivered, but not yet for sale) and swap out the disk in order to release a critical fix that was discovered too late. Fun times (:
Trailer: https://itsquieterfilm.com/trailer
That documentary was fantastic. Another good resource is this paper from 2016 on what all the equipment/computing systems on Voyager do and what the team had done to keep the mission going as of that point. https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/VIMChallenges.pdf
It's mind blowing that engineering that took place almost 50 years ago is still floating through space, giving us valuable data. It's depressing to realize that the style of engineering that accomplished such a feat is all but dead.
Look up golden age fallacy. Different projects have different requirements. You're selectively remembering the pieces of software that survived 50 years and forgetting the ones that didn't. I'm sure some projects written today will survive 50 years.
I wonder if they could use a time-sharing approach. Instead of permanently shutting down instruments, they could run different sets, with a maximum of three at a time.
Both voyagers have golden records on them - a copper disk that is gold-plated that has a bunch of images and messages from earth. Carl Sagan was the lead on picking what was on the disk. It shows some basic math, phoots, and has recordings of people saying hello from across the world in different languages- https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/voyager-golden-reco... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
Reminds me of the opening to one of my favorite games of my childhood!
https://youtu.be/dlBJaKSSOXU?t=31
Love everything about Voyager, but some lazy editing in the article. It opens with them "cruising through interstellar space for more than 47 years" and then later mentions that they only reached interstellar space in 2012 and 2018. The project deserves better, even in a puff piece!
[dupe] Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43274184
I hope & wonder that if some spaceship find this space object a thousand or a million years from now (a-la Star Trek), the captain will tell with a stern voice (ofc like Patrick Stewart's) to the Science Officer "calculate the trajectory of the object, and give the coordinates to the Helm. then engage with Warp 9. I will be in my quarters getting some tea".
EDIT: I hope it's Jean-Luc and not The Borg!!
What would be found here in a thousand years much less a million?
My attitude is that it's something similar to getting ready for the end of the world by putting money in a savings account. If the money (or gold under your bed, cans of beans in the basement or even a pistol in your nightstand) does any good then it's not the end of the world.
If the universe is so crowded or so good at finding things like voyager that it's found in a meaningful (i.e. before humanity goes extinct or joins the godhead) time frame then we would have that encounter if voyager existed or not.
> What would be found here in a thousand years much less a million?
Possibly an advanced civilization that says "No, not ours."
Unfortunately the sort of exponential advance of technology we imagined through Star Trek seems to have been overoptimistic. If humans ever leave the solar system it'll be on something like a generational ship, or in some kind of freezedried/informational form where we're reconstituted much later at our destination.
I assume you are aware of the plot of the first Star Trek movie (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Pictur...)? Picard was not involved however...
It might also be used by the Deceptions to record history in an attempt to prevent the Autobots from winning the war in Cybertron.
(Assuming my hazy memories of Beast Wars are correct)
It's spooky to know that it will outlive Earth and likely be the last remaining physical evidence that humans were ever here.
Why do you think it's particularly likely that two tiny objects running out of power will not only outlive Earth, but also any future objects sent from Earth to do the same things they're doing now? Or are you betting on the lack of future space exploration probes and relatively quick destruction of the Earth?
The chance of them hitting anything in the time it takes the sun to swallow the earth is probably tiny?
As for more probes - getting more speed than these did efficiently is probably hard, let alone the fact that they don’t generate personal profit probably stops them being politically viable for a while…
I was just reading a book that touched on Ancient Rome. The author tried to convey the significance of the Council of Nicaea by comparing it to the furor over Global Warming.
I only mention that to say that the motivations of people in the future will probably seem odd to us and it's possible ours may seem equally odd to them. Not odd in the sense that they are intellectually inscrutable but - like people getting excited over the matters theological - that they're emotionally inscrutable.
> getting more speed than these did efficiently is probably hard,
A new probe wouldn't necessarily need to travel faster than these to not be on Earth when the sun dies.
The idea of there being a minuscule chance the Voyager probes hit anything is fair, but even a third one of the exact same model launched in the exact same direction has just as much chance of surviving just as long, barring wild speculation that could easily go either way.
>getting more speed than these did efficiently is probably hard
Here is one approach using solar sails that would get up to 22 AU/year (~6 times faster than Voyager 1):
https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI?si=Ol20sGMnsEMhRVf1&t=883
...and then further down in TRL: using laser pushed light sails to get over 10% of the speed of light:
https://ia800108.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/24...
If I were to guess it would be the latter. We seem to be heading for it rather quickly at least.
IIRC we've projected that there's nothing in their path for millions of years, as far as we can reasonably predict.
Whether humans will still exist or our planet is a glowing radioactive waste by the time the voyagers encounter a new star is not a given.
> It's spooky to know that it will outlive Earth and likely be the last remaining physical evidence that humans were ever here.
Although eventually a rather obscure form of evidence as it'll gradually become a melted blob of constituent materials from cosmic rays.
"We determine that previous generations of earthlings believed spacecraft could be powered by lumps of lead. Silly earthlings."
When I saw the headline, I was briefly worried this is DOGE...
Beep twice to resign.
It didn’t respond within 24 hours…
"Ok Voyager, 5 things you did last week! You only have 3 instruments? Boo-hoo. You're fired!"
Same concept, to keep things operating.
[flagged]
You're trolling, right?