Voyager: Through the door to eternity

BBC ^

[chessplayer]

Dr Carolyn Porco is one of the world's leading planetary scientists and was part of the Voyager-1 imaging team. She helped Carl Sagan set up Voyager's famous "Pale Blue Dot" portrait of Earth when the probe had reached beyond Neptune in 1990. Here, she reflects on what it means to see the veteran craft finally make the leap to interstellar space.

It is a momentous occasion. We know now with certainty that the Voyager spacecraft, launched 36 years ago to spend the 1980s touring the outer solar system, has finally slipped beyond the protective magnetic bubble created by our Sun and into the nothingness of interstellar space.

Such an event happens for the first time in human history only once. And as reported in a publication today in the journal Science, it happened last summer.

Voyager was a mission of mythic proportions, with all the elements of Homeric legend, and I was unspeakably fortunate to have been a part of it.

[chessplayer]

I'm still letting this soak in. Absolutely incredible. I think this is actually even more momentous than the Apollo moon landings. And this would never have been possible if the space program was not govt funded. Why? Because this mission was about pure knowledge. No profit motive. Nobody made money (beyond their base salaries) off this mission. It was done for knowledge's sake and nothing else.

[SHOOT THE MOON bat]

It will be back to make a terrible movie.

[Hulka]

Contractors.corporations built for profit the hardware and facilities.

And this was done before PC and “muslime outreach.”

[James C. Bennett]

From back when NASA was run by the Germans...

:^)

[Marine_Uncle]

Veger will come back in a few hundred years and threaten the earth. :)

[1rudeboy]

[mdittmar]

V’ger;)

[cripplecreek]

To be that far out is an acomplishment to be sure but its got a very long way to go before it actually leaves the solar system.

To technically leave the solar system it will need to be outside the sun's influence beyond the most distance orbiting objects. It shouldn't take but another 26,000 years or so. Its still inside the closest orbit of Sedna.

[dragnet2]

The future belongs to unmanned spacecraft.

They have gone and will go where no man can. In fact man may never be able to match these accomplishments...It would take man probably thousands of years, or possibly never just to match the data these unmanned spacecraft have already achieved.

Unmanned spacecraft have obtained so much data in the past 30 plus years, we’ll be studying that data for another several decades. It will be the unmanned spacecraft which will pave the way for the few doable manned missions. In fact unmanned spacecraft/rovers are doing that right now in regards to Mars.

It’s why the Shuttle program was trashed.

I believe the shuttle program competed about 30,000++ earth orbits...It basically was reduced to supplying the ISS. It was time to move on.

[Nowhere Man]

I'm still letting this soak in. Absolutely incredible. I think this is actually even more momentous than the Apollo moon landings. And this would never have been possible if the space program was not govt funded. Why? Because this mission was about pure knowledge. No profit motive. Nobody made money (beyond their base salaries) off this mission. It was done for knowledge's sake and nothing else.

As much as it goes against most libertarian thought, I do see a need and understand there are times government needs to fund various things to advance medicine and science. I'm not for funding things that are considered BS but are for things that do return a genuine benefit. I'm also for private funding as well if they wish to do so.

[cripplecreek]

NASA should have a pathfinding and prospecting mission like Lewis and Clark.

[Marine_Uncle]

Whoops! Veger V'ger will come back in a few hundred years and threaten the earth. :)

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Actually there was a great deal of for private sector involvement. Honeywell in MA provided the star trackers. GE in NY provided Computer Command Subsystems and Flight Control Processors - Ted Kennedy along with Jacob Javits of NY, Birch Bayh of IN and William Proxmire of WI were the program's harshest critics. They had to be paid off somehow. There were aerospace contractors all over the country providing components - and politicians in their states and districts contributing their votes.

When the government is involved there ain't no such thing as "pure knowledge".

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Technological superiority was a deterrent during the cold war. Our space program was a propaganda weapon. That's one reason why people who were opposed to American victory in the Cold War were also against the space program.

Too bad we don't have leaders who love our country and what it stands for.

[mikrofon]

You might say that the government subsidized the R&D of the contractors during this period. As many people have noted, the secondary benefits to emerging technologies that followed was tremendous.

One of the few instances where public “investment” paid real dividends ...

[redpoll]

>>>The future belongs to unmanned spacecraft.

They have gone and will go where no man can. In fact man may never be able to match these accomplishments...It would take man probably thousands of years, or possibly never just to match the data these unmanned spacecraft have already achieved.<<<

Yes and no. That’s like saying the future belongs to the internal combustion engine and intricate geared mechanisms, except I’m still inside the car moving down the road while all that technology moves me along.

The technology in the unmanned spacecraft - and robots and rovers and gatherers of comet dust - can also be used to carry us along for the ride. It will be like my right front brake caliper in my truck. The robots can go outside into the harshness of the interstellar environment; the data can be assessed and reviewed by artificial intelligence; and we can go along for the ride. It isn’t one or the other.

[stormer]

“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.

[ontap]

Voyager was launch when NASA was an elite organization run by first class scientists....not the global warming moron of present!!!

[Petrosius]

I would worry about Veger too:

[Marine_Uncle]

Holy smokes. We really got a problem now. :)