Posted on 11/03/2020 2:38:42 PM PST by blueplum
Election Day may have us tied up in anxious knots today. But we can also take solace in the fact that nearly 12 billion miles away, one of humanity's greatest achievements is twinkling back at us, and our understanding of the mysteries of the universe continues to unfold....
...After a seven-month hiatus without being able to command Voyager 2, NASA is now able to communicate new directions and procedures to the craft, the agency announced.
The Voyager 2 space probe, launched in August 1977, has been traveling outward for more than 43 years visiting Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune....
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Somebody with your screen name shouldn’t own a pinto my friend. Lol
About 17.9 hours each way.
Persis Khambatta died of a heart attack in 1998. Too damn young.
Yup. I'm proud of those 'solid-state' chips we made way-back-when.
It was NASA that gave the big boost ($$$$) that got the chip business going.
Now that is awesome!
Something economical for when the Duece Coupe is in the shop.
American Grafitti to Milner’s car:
1973 - 1932 = 41 years
Now to my Pinto:
2020 - 1977 = 43 years
Wrap your brain around that one!
At the distance, with the technology it has, the transmission rate is 160 bps - 16 bytes, I figure with the checksums.
So, imagine watching a 1960's teletype printer. That's the speed at which data is streaming.
My God. Incredible. It just proves the axiom of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is valid. It’s also stated that the average smartphone from years ago still had more total computing power than the Saturn V rocket that sent men to the moon, LEM included. I honestly do get the jits when these so-called ‘modern’ or ‘cutting edge’ manned spacecraft are scheduled to launch. People point out how antiquated Russian capsules are, but once they finally eliminated all the bugs through trial and error, they function the Swiss watches now. Like Scotty said in Star Trek III, the more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.
Your Dad rocks.
Now why can’t I have one of those RTG thingies powering my fridge?
You said “Uranus”.
Beat me to it. 17.92 hours. The signal must be incredibly weak and not to just detect it but actually get usable data from it - quite an accomplishment.
Cool! I’m sure your father looked back on that project with great pride.
Can some explain the math here?” ‘200,000 times less’ memory than an average smart phone of today”
onboard computer - smartphone*200,000 = x
x would be a negative!?
Full story about the antenna network at this link:
https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-contacts-voyager-2-11-6-billion-miles-from-earth-using-upgraded-deep-space-station/
He sure did. He went on to lead the program to develop large wind turbines at GE, the things dotting the US countryside from coast to coast. After that, they picked him to lead an ultra-secret satellite program in the 90s. All he could tell me about that was “Son, you cannot believe how important this is to national security.” To this day, I don’t know what it was. One of my bosses in Silicon Valley was a captain in the Air Force who worked at the Blue Cube and knew the project. All he would say was “Your dad was right.”
I just checked your calculations and it came out about 18 hours.
12000000000/186000 = 12000000/186 = 64516 seconds
64516 / 3600 = 17.92 hours
16 baud? When I was in USAF, in 1986 I was at Yokota AB, Japan. My work center had a teletype that was hooked up to an undersea cable directly to PACAF HQ in Honolulu. It ran at 16 baud. In those days I could type much faster.
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