3 ms·

Love the Voyagers story. Just get me thinking: Why there is not more missions like this ? It takes significant time to cross "somewhere there", every year one

Love the Voyagers story. Just get me thinking: Why there is not more missions like this ? It takes significant time to cross "somewhere there", every year one launch could not hurt ? Edit: *Obligatory video: "Uptime 15,364 days - The Computers of Voyager" by Aaron Cummings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o Also here on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=voyager https://hn.algolia.com/?q=voyager

pkaye 3y ago
The Interstellar Probe is something the Johns Hopkins APL has been proposing. I don't think its been funded yet. https://interstellarprobe.jhuapl.edu/Interstellar-Probe-Executive-Report.pdf https://interstellarprobe.jhuapl.edu/Interstellar-Probe-Exec...
- thombat 3y ago
  The difficulty of long range communications is nicely demonstrated there: "X-band with 5-m fixed antenna capable of sufficient downlink (~10 Mbit/week) at 1000 au using Next Generation Very Large Array or equivalent resource" ... "Two Next Generation Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators for 300 W (electric) at end of mission" So with twice the area of radio dish and a power supply that after 50 years is still double what Voyager launched with, the data rate will be two bytes per second.
  - m4rtink 3y ago
    That's still a lot faster than FT8 or WSPR & both are perfectly usable for things like 16g solar powered balooon probes with a RPi Pico and a GPS, flying around the globe. :) https://www.zachtek.com/post/a-new-wspr-transmitter-for-balloons https://www.zachtek.com/post/a-new-wspr-transmitter-for-ball... Should be similar out there & also likely not much stuff to take photos of.
dotancohen 3y ago
The answer is money. Starship will both greatly reduce the cost to orbit, and the cost to design spacecraft (far wider mass budgets). I do not know how much C3 it will have, but very likely a kicker stage will come along for interplanetary and possibly interstellar craft.
psunavy03 3y ago
Because the program literally depended on the planets aligning a certain way that they won't align again until about 2150. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#History
- xattt 3y ago
  Start getting the probes designed now.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Start getting the probes designed now. That makes absolutely no sense. Even someone who thinks technological progress will slow greatly in the future would acknowledge that something designed today will likely be obsolete and unbuildable in 127 years. I mean, probably *every* *single* electronic component in a design made today will almost certainly have been EOL for over a century by the time 2150 rolls around.
    - xattt 3y ago
      I say it in jest, but I am speaking to the experience of the JWST. Initial designs were proposed starting in 1996 and didn’t get completed until mid-2010s after many, many delays. It would be no surprise to anyone to say the 2150 probes will have technologies that haven’t been invented yet, and won’t for some time.
- throwaway888abc 3y ago
  Make sense, thanks, fuel, gravity, not easy feat
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
thombat 3y ago
Another constrained resource is communications: the Deep Space Network dishes are shared between all of the current NASA missions and already has rationing. So before upping the pace of new deep missions factor in the time for getting Congress to back expanding the DSN (not ludicrously expensive, but also not so sexy as launches, boots-on-the-moon, etc) https://spacenews.com/increasing-demands-putting-pressure-on-deep-space-network/ https://spacenews.com/increasing-demands-putting-pressure-on...

pkaye 3y ago

The Interstellar Probe is something the Johns Hopkins APL has been proposing. I don't think its been funded yet. https://interstellarprobe.jhuapl.edu/Interstellar-Probe-Executive-Report.pdf https://interstellarprobe.jhuapl.edu/Interstellar-Probe-Exec...

thombat 3y ago
The difficulty of long range communications is nicely demonstrated there: "X-band with 5-m fixed antenna capable of sufficient downlink (~10 Mbit/week) at 1000 au using Next Generation Very Large Array or equivalent resource" ... "Two Next Generation Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators for 300 W (electric) at end of mission" So with twice the area of radio dish and a power supply that after 50 years is still double what Voyager launched with, the data rate will be two bytes per second.
- m4rtink 3y ago
  That's still a lot faster than FT8 or WSPR & both are perfectly usable for things like 16g solar powered balooon probes with a RPi Pico and a GPS, flying around the globe. :) https://www.zachtek.com/post/a-new-wspr-transmitter-for-balloons https://www.zachtek.com/post/a-new-wspr-transmitter-for-ball... Should be similar out there & also likely not much stuff to take photos of.

dotancohen 3y ago

The answer is money. Starship will both greatly reduce the cost to orbit, and the cost to design spacecraft (far wider mass budgets). I do not know how much C3 it will have, but very likely a kicker stage will come along for interplanetary and possibly interstellar craft.

psunavy03 3y ago

Because the program literally depended on the planets aligning a certain way that they won't align again until about 2150. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#History

xattt 3y ago
Start getting the probes designed now.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Start getting the probes designed now. That makes absolutely no sense. Even someone who thinks technological progress will slow greatly in the future would acknowledge that something designed today will likely be obsolete and unbuildable in 127 years. I mean, probably *every* *single* electronic component in a design made today will almost certainly have been EOL for over a century by the time 2150 rolls around.
  - xattt 3y ago
    I say it in jest, but I am speaking to the experience of the JWST. Initial designs were proposed starting in 1996 and didn’t get completed until mid-2010s after many, many delays. It would be no surprise to anyone to say the 2150 probes will have technologies that haven’t been invented yet, and won’t for some time.
throwaway888abc 3y ago
Make sense, thanks, fuel, gravity, not easy feat

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thombat 3y ago

Another constrained resource is communications: the Deep Space Network dishes are shared between all of the current NASA missions and already has rationing. So before upping the pace of new deep missions factor in the time for getting Congress to back expanding the DSN (not ludicrously expensive, but also not so sexy as launches, boots-on-the-moon, etc) https://spacenews.com/increasing-demands-putting-pressure-on-deep-space-network/ https://spacenews.com/increasing-demands-putting-pressure-on...