8 ms·

Voyager 1 & 2 is one of my favourite human science achievements, not even so much from technology standpoint, as it's relatively simple compared to what we have

Voyager 1 & 2 is one of my favourite human science achievements, not even so much from technology standpoint, as it's relatively simple compared to what we have now (although that's one of the charms), but just the fact that it's so far away, it still more or less works long after the scheduled mission end time, we can communicate with it and despite all the modern technology progress, it would take decades to catch up. Absolutely amazing and inspiring!

andai 6mo ago
>despite all the modern technology progress, it would take decades to catch up. Could you elaborate on this?
- gautamcgoel 6mo ago
  I assume OP means that a probe launched today would take decades to exit the solar system.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- cedilla 6mo ago
  Voyager 1 and 2 are 25 and 21 billion kilometres away, respectively. Even if we built a rocket just designed to get stuff as far away as quickly away as possible, it would take decades to catch up to where they are now.
  - Narishma 6mo ago
    Could we even catch up to them at all with the current propulsion technology? Not only did they have decades of head start but they took advantage of a unique planetary alignment that I don't think will come back around anytime soon.
    - vikingerik 6mo ago
      Yes, easily. The alignment doesn't really matter for that. Almost all your speed gain comes from just Jupiter. Saturn is 30% the mass and 2/3 of the orbital velocity, so your gain from Saturn is only 20% of what you can get from Jupiter (and also your potential gain is limited by a minimum approach distance greater than the rings, or you'd hit them.) And the ice giants are slower and smaller yet; Voyager barely gained from Uranus and actually slowed from Neptune since it wasn't routed to gain speed there. New Horizons achieved 80% of Voyager's velocity with just Jupiter, and it wasn't really trying to optimize for speed, it approached Jupiter only to 10 million km (over 100x greater than the planet's radius.) A probe dedicated to a fast slingshot past Jupiter could easily overtake Voyager. We haven't had any need to try, unless one of the missions to specifically study the heliopause-interstellar area happens. It would still take a while to catch up to Voyager's head start, but it's doable. The alignment for Voyager was captivating, but it really wasn't as important as people typically think. Jupiter alone can get you anywhere and launch windows for it come every 12 years. If the four-planet alignment hadn't happened then, realistically we would have just done separate Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Neptune missions.
- wongarsu 6mo ago
  Take decades to catch up to the location of either voyager probe. The probes have be traveling for a long time. They have also taken advantage of a rare planetary alignment that allowed them to visit a lot of planets and get gravity assists from them (converting a tiny portion of the planet's angular momentum into orbital speed for the spacecraft)
  - anovikov 6mo ago
    Won't ion engines power by something like Kilopower reactor let us do better?
    - bragr 6mo ago
      Bunch of napkin math: you'd need something like 10 kilowatts and 140 km/s detla-v to catch up to Voyager in a decade, assuming a New Horizons equivalent Earth escape velocity. The amount of xenon is technically possible, however even assuming impressive 8000 Isp thrusters, your fuel mass fraction ends up being 90+% fuel which doesn't leave a lot of mass for that reactor and radiators. A 20 year intercept would be pretty reasonable though. It needs about 15 km/s delta v after that NH style escape, about a kilowatt of power, and maybe a 25% fuel mass fraction at 6000 Isp. That's all very reasonable by current standards.
      - jandrese 6mo ago
        Is that including a Jupiter/Saturn assist?
        bragr 6mo ago
        No, that's more than napkin math but I feel the numbers stand for themselves that we can't really do better than decades. A few km/s won't change that.
      - anovikov 6mo ago
        I understand that celestial mechanics are involved, because "stuff in space do not fly on straight lines", but why is the delta V budget 10x smaller for 2x more time? That feels counterintuitive :/
zitterbewegung 6mo ago
A large amount of Voyager 1 & 2 's success isn't just technological it is the ability to take advantage of a specific planetary alignment for a gravity assist [1] that can only occur every 175 years [2] . [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#/media/File:Voyager_Path.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#/media/File:Voyager_...
- joe_mamba 6mo ago
  Fingers crossed, if we manage not to blow each other up until then, we have 126 years to go till we can try again.
  - toomuchtodo 6mo ago
    You might enjoy "A Canticle for Leibowitz" on this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz | https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2626638W/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2626638W/A_Canticle_for_Leib...
    - smithza 6mo ago
      I read the book but don't recall any correlation to the topic of solar system alignment. Spoiler: Era 3 in the novel does speak of space exploration but this is all before the launches of Voyager (though Sputnik had launched by the books release IIRC).
      - toomuchtodo 6mo ago
        > if we manage not to blow each other up until then, we have 126 years to go till we can try again. > A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic social science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.
trvz 6mo ago
They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent. I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.
- wongarsu 6mo ago
  I assume you are against them due to the silent forest hypothesis? Better not announce ourselves, because anything out there might not be friendly to us?
  - whattheheckheck 6mo ago
    The vast space of everything seems to me that any intelligent life eventually discovers physics to get out of this dimension. Dune space feudalism is unlikely
  - cyberax 6mo ago
    The dark forest hypothesis assumes that it's easy to travel between stars, so interstellar conquests are possible. But it doesn't seem to be the case. There are no material goods that can justify the material and energetic expense of any interstellar travel. You'd be far better off just using a particle accelerator to forge any chemical element and then assemble them into molecules using nano-replicators. The best you can do is to send information, possibly with the help of gravitational lensing. Sci-fi mode on: given that the potential galactic civilization is going to be information-based, who's to say the Earth is not already under attack? An interstellar fleet of large invasion ships with soldiers is not feasible, but a small drone with an AI that connects to terrestrial networks and steers the civilization towards collapse is possible. I'd start investigating if TikTok algorithm developers got some nudges from a weirdly knowledgeable source.
    - gambiting 6mo ago
      >>There are no material goods that can justify the material and energetic expense of any interstellar travel. Material, no. but we know with absolute certainty that Earth will stop being habitable for humans at some point. So assuming any intelligent race, human descendent or otherwise, still exists on this planet, it will have to eventually move. It's just pure luck that we evolved when we did. But there are valid reasons for interstellar travel(other than you know, pure curiosity).
joezydeco 6mo ago
Don't forget that the mission planners figured out the "Grand Tour", calculating orbits and trajectories to slingshot around the Solar System. All with 1960s technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  And scrambled to get two machines ready for the small window we had to take advantage of it.
- hydrogen7800 6mo ago
  I have a ~20 in x 30 in poster of the Grand Tour from this collection[0]. I considered printing the whole series, but not enough wall space. [0] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/
  - joezydeco 6mo ago
    Okay those are pretty rad.
jgalt212 6mo ago
Voyager, Apollo, and Hubble. Everything else NASA has done is a distant 4th place. And it's not like 4th place is trash, it's just that the big 3 are just so impressive.
- pja 6mo ago
  James Webb Telescope is up there with Hubble.
  - hparadiz 6mo ago
    The rovers on Mars as well and New Horizons that went to Pluto. That is also at escape velocity so it will leave this solar system and most likely no human will ever lay eyes on it again. Voy 1 and 2 are still faster but hey they're all going in different directions so it's not exactly a race.
    - bigiain 6mo ago
      I'm really impressed by Ingenuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) It was sent to Mars with a plan for 5 flights and a total of 7 or 8 minutes flight time. It ended up flying for over 2 hours in 72 seperate flights before it damaged itself with a bad landing. Not quite the "this thing is still doing science almost 50 years later" that Voyager can claim, but impressively engineered so it lasted way beyond it's initial mission plan.
    - Valakas_ 6mo ago
      Never is a long period of time. Most likely we will, unless we go extinct.
    - ac29 6mo ago
      > The rovers on Mars as well Curiosity was intended to operate from 2011-2013 and is still active now, just shy of 5000 days after landing. Really impressive.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
whatrocks 6mo ago
Yes, yes! I got really into the Voyager-inspiration vibes for a while and wrote this little short story about a secret "Voyager 3" mission - thought you might enjoy it: https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/ https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/

andai 6mo ago

>despite all the modern technology progress, it would take decades to catch up. Could you elaborate on this?

gautamcgoel 6mo ago
I assume OP means that a probe launched today would take decades to exit the solar system.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
cedilla 6mo ago
Voyager 1 and 2 are 25 and 21 billion kilometres away, respectively. Even if we built a rocket just designed to get stuff as far away as quickly away as possible, it would take decades to catch up to where they are now.
- Narishma 6mo ago
  Could we even catch up to them at all with the current propulsion technology? Not only did they have decades of head start but they took advantage of a unique planetary alignment that I don't think will come back around anytime soon.
  - vikingerik 6mo ago
    Yes, easily. The alignment doesn't really matter for that. Almost all your speed gain comes from just Jupiter. Saturn is 30% the mass and 2/3 of the orbital velocity, so your gain from Saturn is only 20% of what you can get from Jupiter (and also your potential gain is limited by a minimum approach distance greater than the rings, or you'd hit them.) And the ice giants are slower and smaller yet; Voyager barely gained from Uranus and actually slowed from Neptune since it wasn't routed to gain speed there. New Horizons achieved 80% of Voyager's velocity with just Jupiter, and it wasn't really trying to optimize for speed, it approached Jupiter only to 10 million km (over 100x greater than the planet's radius.) A probe dedicated to a fast slingshot past Jupiter could easily overtake Voyager. We haven't had any need to try, unless one of the missions to specifically study the heliopause-interstellar area happens. It would still take a while to catch up to Voyager's head start, but it's doable. The alignment for Voyager was captivating, but it really wasn't as important as people typically think. Jupiter alone can get you anywhere and launch windows for it come every 12 years. If the four-planet alignment hadn't happened then, realistically we would have just done separate Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Neptune missions.
wongarsu 6mo ago
Take decades to catch up to the location of either voyager probe. The probes have be traveling for a long time. They have also taken advantage of a rare planetary alignment that allowed them to visit a lot of planets and get gravity assists from them (converting a tiny portion of the planet's angular momentum into orbital speed for the spacecraft)
- anovikov 6mo ago
  Won't ion engines power by something like Kilopower reactor let us do better?
  - bragr 6mo ago
    Bunch of napkin math: you'd need something like 10 kilowatts and 140 km/s detla-v to catch up to Voyager in a decade, assuming a New Horizons equivalent Earth escape velocity. The amount of xenon is technically possible, however even assuming impressive 8000 Isp thrusters, your fuel mass fraction ends up being 90+% fuel which doesn't leave a lot of mass for that reactor and radiators. A 20 year intercept would be pretty reasonable though. It needs about 15 km/s delta v after that NH style escape, about a kilowatt of power, and maybe a 25% fuel mass fraction at 6000 Isp. That's all very reasonable by current standards.
    - jandrese 6mo ago
      Is that including a Jupiter/Saturn assist?
      - bragr 6mo ago
        No, that's more than napkin math but I feel the numbers stand for themselves that we can't really do better than decades. A few km/s won't change that.
    - anovikov 6mo ago
      I understand that celestial mechanics are involved, because "stuff in space do not fly on straight lines", but why is the delta V budget 10x smaller for 2x more time? That feels counterintuitive :/

zitterbewegung 6mo ago

A large amount of Voyager 1 & 2 's success isn't just technological it is the ability to take advantage of a specific planetary alignment for a gravity assist [1] that can only occur every 175 years [2] . [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#/media/File:Voyager_Path.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#/media/File:Voyager_...

joe_mamba 6mo ago
Fingers crossed, if we manage not to blow each other up until then, we have 126 years to go till we can try again.
- toomuchtodo 6mo ago
  You might enjoy "A Canticle for Leibowitz" on this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz | https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2626638W/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2626638W/A_Canticle_for_Leib...
  - smithza 6mo ago
    I read the book but don't recall any correlation to the topic of solar system alignment. Spoiler: Era 3 in the novel does speak of space exploration but this is all before the launches of Voyager (though Sputnik had launched by the books release IIRC).
    - toomuchtodo 6mo ago
      > if we manage not to blow each other up until then, we have 126 years to go till we can try again. > A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic social science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.

trvz 6mo ago

They are dangerous and reckless. They were also done in the name of humanity, but without humanity’s consent. I despise the naive scientists who did them as much as those who brought the damocletian sword of nuclear weapons on us.

wongarsu 6mo ago
I assume you are against them due to the silent forest hypothesis? Better not announce ourselves, because anything out there might not be friendly to us?
- whattheheckheck 6mo ago
  The vast space of everything seems to me that any intelligent life eventually discovers physics to get out of this dimension. Dune space feudalism is unlikely
- cyberax 6mo ago
  The dark forest hypothesis assumes that it's easy to travel between stars, so interstellar conquests are possible. But it doesn't seem to be the case. There are no material goods that can justify the material and energetic expense of any interstellar travel. You'd be far better off just using a particle accelerator to forge any chemical element and then assemble them into molecules using nano-replicators. The best you can do is to send information, possibly with the help of gravitational lensing. Sci-fi mode on: given that the potential galactic civilization is going to be information-based, who's to say the Earth is not already under attack? An interstellar fleet of large invasion ships with soldiers is not feasible, but a small drone with an AI that connects to terrestrial networks and steers the civilization towards collapse is possible. I'd start investigating if TikTok algorithm developers got some nudges from a weirdly knowledgeable source.
  - gambiting 6mo ago
    >>There are no material goods that can justify the material and energetic expense of any interstellar travel. Material, no. but we know with absolute certainty that Earth will stop being habitable for humans at some point. So assuming any intelligent race, human descendent or otherwise, still exists on this planet, it will have to eventually move. It's just pure luck that we evolved when we did. But there are valid reasons for interstellar travel(other than you know, pure curiosity).

joezydeco 6mo ago

Don't forget that the mission planners figured out the "Grand Tour", calculating orbits and trajectories to slingshot around the Solar System. All with 1960s technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program

JKCalhoun 6mo ago
And scrambled to get two machines ready for the small window we had to take advantage of it.
hydrogen7800 6mo ago
I have a ~20 in x 30 in poster of the Grand Tour from this collection[0]. I considered printing the whole series, but not enough wall space. [0] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/
- joezydeco 6mo ago
  Okay those are pretty rad.

jgalt212 6mo ago

Voyager, Apollo, and Hubble. Everything else NASA has done is a distant 4th place. And it's not like 4th place is trash, it's just that the big 3 are just so impressive.

pja 6mo ago
James Webb Telescope is up there with Hubble.
- hparadiz 6mo ago
  The rovers on Mars as well and New Horizons that went to Pluto. That is also at escape velocity so it will leave this solar system and most likely no human will ever lay eyes on it again. Voy 1 and 2 are still faster but hey they're all going in different directions so it's not exactly a race.
  - bigiain 6mo ago
    I'm really impressed by Ingenuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) It was sent to Mars with a plan for 5 flights and a total of 7 or 8 minutes flight time. It ended up flying for over 2 hours in 72 seperate flights before it damaged itself with a bad landing. Not quite the "this thing is still doing science almost 50 years later" that Voyager can claim, but impressively engineered so it lasted way beyond it's initial mission plan.
  - Valakas_ 6mo ago
    Never is a long period of time. Most likely we will, unless we go extinct.
  - ac29 6mo ago
    > The rovers on Mars as well Curiosity was intended to operate from 2011-2013 and is still active now, just shy of 5000 days after landing. Really impressive.
throwaway27448 6mo ago

whatrocks 6mo ago

Yes, yes! I got really into the Voyager-inspiration vibes for a while and wrote this little short story about a secret "Voyager 3" mission - thought you might enjoy it: https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/ https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/