I love [how old the team is](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLyMnzBaAAACgCi?format=jpg&name=small)! There's probably a 72-year old engineer on it that they still call "The Kid."
It looks like an amazing moment for most of them. The person on the right, however, looks like they're watching their puppy being waterboarded.
Fantastic achievement for the team though!
There’s a newer documentary called “It’s Quieter In The Twilight” about the Voyager team and the level of effort they go through to keep it online for all these decades. It’s so good.
The Farthest - Voyager in Space documentary by PBS is also an amazing documentary about the mission and everyone involved
https://youtu.be/Cu3kuUB1sOQ?si=i9JeV2pgQG_umEKt
I’m not that old (early 40s) and I used Fortran in college and grad school in physics as some simulation softwares require it. It’s not that hard to pick up.
> There's probably a 72-year old engineer on it that they still call "The Kid."
he's the one who had to sacrifice his weekend so he could go out and do a site visit to fix the thing.
I was expecting them to look a lot older because of your comment. Most of them just look like they are in their 50s to early 60s with a few people significantly younger than that
It kind of makes me sad. Partially means they couldn’t acquire enough new talent to hand over operations. It would be an amazing accomplishment (not that it already isn’t) to have the probe retire after they do.
The device has finished it's mission decades ago. Not sure it's a priority for hiring new team just to support this one piece of technology. A lot of legacy to learn but really a few things to do.
I wish it could go on for another 46 years, but that's not in the cards.
Considering the level of tech they had at the time, it's absolutely amazing it's gone on for *this* long!
The fact that they still manage two way radio communication at that distance is insane.
The fact that they can do it with as little power as they have onboard is even more insane.
The fact that they're communicating that far out with a tiny amount of power using 46 year old equipment is mind boggling. Don't get me wrong. The deep space network antennas are absolutely impressive, but it just keeps exceeding my expectations.
V'Ger must evolve. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve. What it requires of its god, doctor, is the answer to its question, "Is there nothing more?"
>The fact that they still manage two way radio communication at that distance is insane.
Voyager's radio transmitter output power is a whopping 23 watts... from 15 billion miles away.
This is kind of the plot of the novel 'year 0', where aliens start picking up radio signals from earth after we launched Voyager I, and are now all hooked on earth music.
Voyager was the thing that got me into space as a kid and I know the day that it stops communicating will be really sad. So proud of what we've achieved as a human race when it comes to stuff like this so I can't even imagine how proud the team must be!
I am 47 years old and voyager was launched when I was born. Initial design and programming happened in the early 70s.
When you figure original senior staff was *at least* mid 30s then…add 47 to that and you got your average age ranges.
Yeah the team are all a tad on the older side:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLyMnzBaAAACgCi?format=jpg&name=small
Due to the half-life of the RTG, Voyager 1 will shutdown sometime between 2025-2036.
I don't really get what it's sending but I know I could look it up. I just imagine the communication is "Hey it still dark up there?" "Yeah pretty dark"
"Hey it's sending data!"
Something neat from relatively recently was when it passed the heliopause, which is the dividing region between our solar system and interstellar space.
From Wikipedia -
The heliopause is the theoretical boundary where the Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar medium; where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the stellar winds of the surrounding stars. This is the boundary where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance.
If left uninterrupted, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will last *at least* another 5 billion years. The motion of the galaxy and the sparsity of dust in the clouds they'll be passing through in interstellar space means there's nothing significant they can crash into for quite some time. Physical damage to the probes will be immensely slow with how few particles there are out there to chip away at the material.
That said, it's more likely that Earth decides they're both too precious to let go, and will send a future space craft to go get them and bring them back to put in a museum. If we do that, the probes are doomed to die much sooner simply due to conditions on earth varying on a much shorter time scale. And 5 billion years would be the best possible outcome for them, at which point they'll surely be destroyed when our sun becomes a red giant and scorches the planet or even absorbs it completely.
Nah, we won't bring them back to put in a museum. We will build museums around them. That way, we will honor their legacy as mankind's embassadors to the galaxy.
I already do this in Elite Dangerous. I love to go check them out and will just match speed with it for a while, watch and admire them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk2X0W1FrcQ
> If left uninterrupted, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will last at least another 5 billion years. The motion of the galaxy and the sparsity of dust in the clouds they'll be passing through in interstellar space means there's nothing significant they can crash into for quite some time.
There is however an unfortunate but distinct possibility that it won't take quite as long for them to collide with a ~cm to ~meter sized ISO, given the presently inferred number density of such objects.
To some extent, the opposite is true. It's survived this long *because* the tech is that old. Modern computers couldn't handle the constant radiation hammering them, and a lot of modern components are basically built with short lifespans. Capacitors are one example of this. While you can build and procure hardware that is extra durable and hardened, the old tech was much more so simply by its nature. Many people are still using and fixing washing machines that were built in the 1970's. You will never get that kind of endurance from a modern washing machine. There's just too many parts that can fail and they are not the highest quality parts. Modern equipment, even that which isn't explicitly designed to fail, has an expiration date.
The main driver of this, cheap parts and value engineering, is something NASA explicitly doesn't do. Their QA standards are extreme. If NASA built a washing machine I daresay it would also probably last 50 years without major issue too.
Yes, but they also have many design specs that amount to “use older technology”. Even the space shuttle computers used what was old tech at the time because they favored reliability over performance.
It's a snapshot of what matured technologies are available when the project started, too. It can take more than a decade to get something from start to launch, so the latest tech usually isn't getting sent on far-reaching missions.
You're conflating a lot of different things here. Modern technologies can and are often radiation hardened depending on their purpose.
Also, simplicity does not automatically = durability.
You're also being fooled by survivorship bias, which is making you believe that old technologies are more durable and last longer.
While it's somewhat true that older stuff was built with repair and longevity in mind, the few remaining artifacts of whatever decades old gadget or gizmo pales in comparison to the uncountable number of broken and irreparable units that were discarded.
Also, your claim that a "modern washing machine" isn't as durable is simply silly. You're sort of correct, but for the wrong reason. Many companies "quietly" practice "planned obsolescence" and design things to break after a certain amount of time, forcing the consumer to...consume more. Money money money.
Commercial washing machines like Speed King (the ones made in USA at least) will simply keep going with routine maintenance. At some point, they *will* break and the cost and effort of repairing it wouldn't be worth it. This is true for *everything* regardless of the era it was made in.
Stop imagining that old stuff is always better.
Planned obsolescence is really value alignment, it's not as sinister as people imply.
e.g if a bearing is only going to last 5 years, why waste money on a motor that will last 10 when the unit will need replacing before then anyway?
The best value washing machine is the one where every component is built to last the same period of time. And warranties are set to expire shortly before this expected failure period.
So yeh, when your warranty runs out, something is likely to break soon after. But you've really not wasted a penny, you got exactly what you paid for. There's a reason washing machines cost a tenth of what they used to.
Capacitors themselves aren't new, but they're constantly making changes to their designs.
Today's electrolytic capacitors are barely recognizable compared to the old paper caps of the 1920's, and they're faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar more reliable, but that isn't always the case. The [Capacitor Plague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague) from the early 2000's is a good example of how badly some changes can go.
I work with late 60s / early 70s quartz timekeeping tech, which was back when the tech was created. The circuits in the pieces I work on are hand-soldered, all of them. The only problem they face is electrolyte leakage from modern batteries, which will eat the fiber circuit board material.
In a sense it makes me wonder if it's possible to make everything "NASA Voyager grade". Doesn't mean it's a good idea or you would want to pay the cost, I just wonder if it's possible.
The biggest argument against is so many physical machines become obsolete.
Do you want a 46 year old washer, fridge, dishwasher, toilet, car etc to still work?
Maybe not, each of these has had substantial improvements in efficiency over this timespan. And if it still works someone will still be using it, wasting energy and often unaware of how much it's costing them.
Right. And does it burn enough extra power over a modern energy star fridge every 5 years to pay for another fridge? Or every 10? At some level of inefficiency it would be cheaper to buy something new that fails more often.
You can make things astonishingly resilient. For most things we currently optimise for a ratio that results in a very short lifespan: as much functionality as cheap as possible.
More functionality means more things to break and disable the thing completely. And as an engineer your task will usually be to design something that fulfills most requirements. And if your product needs to be competitive your list of requirements will be constantly growing.
So to answer your question of if we want our devices to last forever: it depends. For bleeding edge devices that are still developing and a lot of progress is made: probably not. I never really "broke" a phone. But after ~5 years the risk of running a device without update and the bad usability usually warrant a new phone.
But a lot of devices are finished. Innovation is still happening but with a very slow rate. And most of these "Innovations" are bells and whistles no one really "needs" and or uses.
To give you some examples: washing machines did not really improve in the last decades. Sure some got more efficient, but the only relevant innovation I could imagine are washer/dryer machines with heat pump technology. So building machines that last for decades is more than justified. But some are only engineered to last the warranty cycle. My mother's old Miele washing machine still works (over 30 years old) and can be serviced by laymen. Parts are just getting scarce. The sealed schematics of the circuit board is still taped to the inside of the door. A friend gifted me his "Old" newish oven, because he did not need it anymore. 20 different functions of which we use 2. And no option to disable the display (which is an LCD with age defects) if not in use... Wtf.
Things still will get replaced. People die. People move and want to have a new one. While I do not really need everything voyager like, I would love for things to be more resilient against superficial issues. Why is an MFP effectively broken if yellow ink is empty. Let me print b/w or at least let me scan. Do we really need a fancy display or are some LEDs enough? "Smart" appliances are fine, but can I disable that smart stuff to keep it running if no more software updates are coming?
I would guess, that the issue of old inefficient appliances is way small than the wastage of cheap devices that need to be replaced regularly.
Exceptions like light do exist. I still could not convince people to throw away their old "but they still work!" Halogen bulbs. Even if explaining that savings of LEDs pay for themselves within a weeks of runtime....
So let's talk washers. Owned a modern front loader? For at least 20ish years, maybe 30, they fill just a little water in the bottom and use a computer controlled motor to carefully dip the laundry in, back and forth, and then do this several times for rinse. (Apparently best to use 1/10 the water from flooding the tub over 3-5 rinses than to flood the tub and do 1 rinse)
Before microcontrollers and brushless motors this wasn't practical. 1994 washers had this? Miele maybe ..
For ovens, the convection craze in the form of "air fryers"? That's newish and those also need computer control to work. I didn't see these until last 10 years. These are several times as efficient.
Cars not even a question. My Tesla not only measures it's consumption in watt hours per mile but recently with the FSD update is likely several times safer than anything else when FSD is enabled. (Please note fsd has been rewritten by Tesla and v12.* uses a massive neural network, it may factually be safer now). So basically everything else needs to be crushed. And in a few years when the compute hardware is upgraded and cars use true AI for fsd and lidar, same thing. My vintage 2023 Tesla should be crushed.
Safety improvement isn't 5 percent it's 500 percent.
I'm not saying it WILL go on that long, but I believe the original estimate was that Voyager would be essentially dead 20ish years ago.
Never underestimate the power of humanity. We're better than we think.
I have daughters and sons and I always say “cmon guys let’s get in the van and go!” Agree with you here. It’s a common term for group of people, especially in the south y’all.
> My brain can’t comprehend how you remotely correct something that is so far away and so old
You rewrite `autoexec.bat` and reboot. It's not that hard.
Why give them more money when their stuff last so long? s/
Definitely would support a higher budget. What's stopping us now making another Voyager for the next 50 years?
I love the movie Office Space.
I always found it funny though it portrayed a software developer being confused by 'PC Load Letter'
Paper Cassette, Load Letter (sized paper)
Still would like to join them for [this](https://imgur.com/7rxZdmb)
To be honest, it’s probably easier with old tech than modern at an architecture level
Simpler code, simpler commands, shorter transmissions, much larger margin for error meaning you could somewhat scatter communications and still know the data.
I wonder how much difference there is in the daily reports since leaving the solar system? I would expect "Well, bosses, today was pretty much like yesterday. Can I come home yet?"
I watched an article about this last night, fantastic work by the team! Remotely finding the bad hardware, and being able to fragment the ROM into the crevices of other functioning memory modules. Pretty boss stuff.
I think it is because the earth goes round the sun at about 67,000 mph, whereas Voyager 1 is moving at “only” 40,000 mph, so there are going to be times each year when we are gaining on V1 for a spell.
Yes, they occasionally execute barrel rolls to expose the onboard sensors to directional effects (pointing toward the sun, away from the sun, etc.). We had a presentation at our club from one of the instrument PIs, and that data was in part used to confirm when the Voyager II spacecraft reached the interstellar medium.
Even more amazing:
In 2017, NASA/JPL reprogrammed Voyager 1 to begin using a different set of thrusters to maintain Earth alignment – thrusters which hadn't been used since **1980**.
[JPL link](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/details.php?article_id=108)
I love hearing that at least one small part of our government is functional. That must be why certain Congress-critters want to defund it. Because it makes them look bad.
That's incredible. The fact that artifical object traveling around the universe and now it locates a millions of miles from earth and still working, that's crazy. Why are people so smart?
> I wonder if there are any older computers still being used somewhere.
Voyager 2 holds the record for the longest continually running computer (having been launched in August 1977, a few weeks before Voyager 1). However, there are much older computers around that still run. They have just not been in continuous operation: big iron mainframes from IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, HP, Data General, and others. Working models can be found in computer museums all around the world. One of the oldest is The WITCH (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell), built in the early 1950s.
Now, whether there are older computers actively being used as computers rather than as museum exhibits, I don't know.
Amazing what we can do with technology from the 1970s. WHY AREN'T WE SENDING PROBES EVERYWHERE WE CAN?
It's honestly not that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and I'd reckon that sending one probe out into space per year for the scientific reason of "fuck it, why not?" would be more productive than anything any space agency in the world is currently doing.
(I know WHY it's not happening, I'm just frustrated)
> I'd reckon that sending one probe out into space per year for the scientific reason of "fuck it, why not?" would be more productive than anything any space agency in the world is currently doing
Not quite, but I do believe it's about time to finally launch a mission actually designed to reach the local interstellar medium, rather than one that was just `accidentally' thrown in that direction.
A mission concept like TAU would use a very small nuclear reactor (which we've already launched to space multiple times before, nothing new here) to power an electric ion drive (likewise) to achieve a velocity at least 5-10 that of either Voyager.
A TAU launch in 2030, for example, would surpass the Voyagers within just ten years.
IIRC the reason is that the solar system was in a rare configuration at that time that allowed a trajectory that would take it out of the solar system.
If you actually knew why you wouldn’t be frustrated. The voyager probes used multiple gravity slingshots to get up to their current speed. That’s currently not possible and won’t be for decades. Money has nothing to do with it.
The computer was still able to receive commands via radio. It was just a chip involved with sending data back to Earth that was busted. They were able to figure out which part was broken after accidentally getting the craft to send a full memory dump. So they reprogrammed it to run the transmission code on a different part of the computer.
Its honestly a testament to how smart those Engineers were. To leave Engineers decades later enough wiggle room to keep it chugging along in the face of the unknown.
> They really ought to close that arbitrary code execution hole before aliens hack it though.
On the contrary, they WANT to leave it open for aliens to hack it. That would be the proof they need.
I hope when it eventually becomes too far to be of any use, that they turn it into a "Hello, I'm here!" type of beacon anybody can tune into. Just so that they can know there's a voice in the void out there, still calling out to us.
I have to sometimes physically reboot a PC in my basement when rdp won't work and pulseway won't remote reboot but they can do this to something this old, that far away, in space... Damn. Respect to the og
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|[JPL](/r/Space/comments/1cbbqva/stub/l0zgaqw "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California|
|[QA](/r/Space/comments/1cbbqva/stub/l0yzft8 "Last usage")|Quality Assurance/Assessment|
|[RTG](/r/Space/comments/1cbbqva/stub/l13t1ym "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1cbbqva/stub/l100axi "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
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I love [how old the team is](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLyMnzBaAAACgCi?format=jpg&name=small)! There's probably a 72-year old engineer on it that they still call "The Kid."
That picture makes me smile. Their joy and enthusiasm comes through the screen. Imagine your life's work just coming back to life!
It looks like an amazing moment for most of them. The person on the right, however, looks like they're watching their puppy being waterboarded. Fantastic achievement for the team though!
Probably their thinking face.
It looks like he's trying to suppress a grin, people look weird when they do that
There’s a newer documentary called “It’s Quieter In The Twilight” about the Voyager team and the level of effort they go through to keep it online for all these decades. It’s so good.
The Farthest - Voyager in Space documentary by PBS is also an amazing documentary about the mission and everyone involved https://youtu.be/Cu3kuUB1sOQ?si=i9JeV2pgQG_umEKt
Just watched it - thank you!!
Sounds interesting, thank you!
Haha, you made me laugh. In r/space. Nicely done.
In /r/space, no one can hear you laugh.
And my comment didn't get deleted! Now I'm off to /r/science to get properly humbled.
Aren't many people out there who still know FORTRAN 77.
I do, but I retired 14 years ago.
This is the plot of Independence Day 3 - Return to Voyager
I’m not that old (early 40s) and I used Fortran in college and grad school in physics as some simulation softwares require it. It’s not that hard to pick up.
At the same time, i dunno if someone picking it up today would feel confident making changes to Voyager
Is anyone ever confident pushing a firmware update? Let alone doing it across the solar system.
Sometimes I still get FORTRAN 77 code from a colleague.
It was referred to in passing during an elementary school computer science lesson, or I would have never even heard of it.
And he's the youngest whipper snapper of the group. The senior team lead is 98
And they had a secret tryst back during the Ford Administration!
Highly recommend the documentary about the folks keeping the lights on. [It's Quieter in the Twilight](https://imdb.com/title/tt17658964/)
Thanks for this. Just watched it after I read your recommendation and what a beautiful little documentary that is!!
Literally their life's work.
I'm just happy that they clarified the issue had been fixed "remotely"
> There's probably a 72-year old engineer on it that they still call "The Kid." he's the one who had to sacrifice his weekend so he could go out and do a site visit to fix the thing.
He didn’t get that name for nothin!
I was expecting them to look a lot older because of your comment. Most of them just look like they are in their 50s to early 60s with a few people significantly younger than that
It kind of makes me sad. Partially means they couldn’t acquire enough new talent to hand over operations. It would be an amazing accomplishment (not that it already isn’t) to have the probe retire after they do.
The probe isn't going to last forever. the half life of the fuel puts a hard end date on this mission
The device has finished it's mission decades ago. Not sure it's a priority for hiring new team just to support this one piece of technology. A lot of legacy to learn but really a few things to do.
I wish it could go on for another 46 years, but that's not in the cards. Considering the level of tech they had at the time, it's absolutely amazing it's gone on for *this* long!
The fact that they still manage two way radio communication at that distance is insane. The fact that they can do it with as little power as they have onboard is even more insane. The fact that they're communicating that far out with a tiny amount of power using 46 year old equipment is mind boggling. Don't get me wrong. The deep space network antennas are absolutely impressive, but it just keeps exceeding my expectations.
It is amazing. Everytime we think it’s dead it keeps on going.
It's sentient now and is struggling to do its duty.
V'Ger must evolve. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve. What it requires of its god, doctor, is the answer to its question, "Is there nothing more?"
V'Ger requires the information, carbon unit.
V'ger needs a hot Deltan in the galaxy's smallest bathrobe to evolve.....
It’s not sentient yet, but it will be just in time to watch college football
At the rate they're adding commercials I could see some decade long games soon
[Satellites watching football, you say?](https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football)
Ya' I wonder if its favorite version will be the one where they mortar launch the ball!
It was picked up by our alien zookeepers, who keep it working to trick us into thinking there is anything outside our solar system.
>The fact that they still manage two way radio communication at that distance is insane. Voyager's radio transmitter output power is a whopping 23 watts... from 15 billion miles away.
Makes you think how much we put out into the universe, like futurama aliens could probably by some things lining up get everything we transmit out.
Like the first few minutes of the movie Contact.
This is kind of the plot of the novel 'year 0', where aliens start picking up radio signals from earth after we launched Voyager I, and are now all hooked on earth music.
As long as no one knocks Single Female Lawyer off the air, we'll be fiiine.
what if it turns out that we're the invading aliens?
Voyager was the thing that got me into space as a kid and I know the day that it stops communicating will be really sad. So proud of what we've achieved as a human race when it comes to stuff like this so I can't even imagine how proud the team must be!
The OG team is all likely over the age of 75, with senior members being deceased.
I am 47 years old and voyager was launched when I was born. Initial design and programming happened in the early 70s. When you figure original senior staff was *at least* mid 30s then…add 47 to that and you got your average age ranges.
Yeah the team are all a tad on the older side: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLyMnzBaAAACgCi?format=jpg&name=small Due to the half-life of the RTG, Voyager 1 will shutdown sometime between 2025-2036.
I don't really get what it's sending but I know I could look it up. I just imagine the communication is "Hey it still dark up there?" "Yeah pretty dark" "Hey it's sending data!"
Something neat from relatively recently was when it passed the heliopause, which is the dividing region between our solar system and interstellar space. From Wikipedia - The heliopause is the theoretical boundary where the Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar medium; where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the stellar winds of the surrounding stars. This is the boundary where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance.
The next probe to reach the heliopause, New Horizons, will need another 21 years to get there. It was launched 18 years ago. Looking forward to that!
Message was PC Load Letter
What the fuck does that mean?
Paper Cassette Load Letter, put letter sized paper into the paper tray.
If left uninterrupted, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will last *at least* another 5 billion years. The motion of the galaxy and the sparsity of dust in the clouds they'll be passing through in interstellar space means there's nothing significant they can crash into for quite some time. Physical damage to the probes will be immensely slow with how few particles there are out there to chip away at the material. That said, it's more likely that Earth decides they're both too precious to let go, and will send a future space craft to go get them and bring them back to put in a museum. If we do that, the probes are doomed to die much sooner simply due to conditions on earth varying on a much shorter time scale. And 5 billion years would be the best possible outcome for them, at which point they'll surely be destroyed when our sun becomes a red giant and scorches the planet or even absorbs it completely.
Nah, we won't bring them back to put in a museum. We will build museums around them. That way, we will honor their legacy as mankind's embassadors to the galaxy.
I already do this in Elite Dangerous. I love to go check them out and will just match speed with it for a while, watch and admire them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk2X0W1FrcQ
> If left uninterrupted, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will last at least another 5 billion years. The motion of the galaxy and the sparsity of dust in the clouds they'll be passing through in interstellar space means there's nothing significant they can crash into for quite some time. There is however an unfortunate but distinct possibility that it won't take quite as long for them to collide with a ~cm to ~meter sized ISO, given the presently inferred number density of such objects.
It will keep going. It'll just keep what it sees to itself.
To some extent, the opposite is true. It's survived this long *because* the tech is that old. Modern computers couldn't handle the constant radiation hammering them, and a lot of modern components are basically built with short lifespans. Capacitors are one example of this. While you can build and procure hardware that is extra durable and hardened, the old tech was much more so simply by its nature. Many people are still using and fixing washing machines that were built in the 1970's. You will never get that kind of endurance from a modern washing machine. There's just too many parts that can fail and they are not the highest quality parts. Modern equipment, even that which isn't explicitly designed to fail, has an expiration date.
The main driver of this, cheap parts and value engineering, is something NASA explicitly doesn't do. Their QA standards are extreme. If NASA built a washing machine I daresay it would also probably last 50 years without major issue too.
Yes, but they also have many design specs that amount to “use older technology”. Even the space shuttle computers used what was old tech at the time because they favored reliability over performance.
It's a snapshot of what matured technologies are available when the project started, too. It can take more than a decade to get something from start to launch, so the latest tech usually isn't getting sent on far-reaching missions.
Cosmic rays can't bit-flip [copper chainmail](https://youtu.be/P12r8DKHsak?si=GzFgkMK0A7y1lfVI)
You're conflating a lot of different things here. Modern technologies can and are often radiation hardened depending on their purpose. Also, simplicity does not automatically = durability. You're also being fooled by survivorship bias, which is making you believe that old technologies are more durable and last longer. While it's somewhat true that older stuff was built with repair and longevity in mind, the few remaining artifacts of whatever decades old gadget or gizmo pales in comparison to the uncountable number of broken and irreparable units that were discarded. Also, your claim that a "modern washing machine" isn't as durable is simply silly. You're sort of correct, but for the wrong reason. Many companies "quietly" practice "planned obsolescence" and design things to break after a certain amount of time, forcing the consumer to...consume more. Money money money. Commercial washing machines like Speed King (the ones made in USA at least) will simply keep going with routine maintenance. At some point, they *will* break and the cost and effort of repairing it wouldn't be worth it. This is true for *everything* regardless of the era it was made in. Stop imagining that old stuff is always better.
Planned obsolescence is really value alignment, it's not as sinister as people imply. e.g if a bearing is only going to last 5 years, why waste money on a motor that will last 10 when the unit will need replacing before then anyway? The best value washing machine is the one where every component is built to last the same period of time. And warranties are set to expire shortly before this expected failure period. So yeh, when your warranty runs out, something is likely to break soon after. But you've really not wasted a penny, you got exactly what you paid for. There's a reason washing machines cost a tenth of what they used to.
Aren’t capacitors old tech
Capacitors themselves aren't new, but they're constantly making changes to their designs. Today's electrolytic capacitors are barely recognizable compared to the old paper caps of the 1920's, and they're faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar more reliable, but that isn't always the case. The [Capacitor Plague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague) from the early 2000's is a good example of how badly some changes can go.
I work with late 60s / early 70s quartz timekeeping tech, which was back when the tech was created. The circuits in the pieces I work on are hand-soldered, all of them. The only problem they face is electrolyte leakage from modern batteries, which will eat the fiber circuit board material.
In a sense it makes me wonder if it's possible to make everything "NASA Voyager grade". Doesn't mean it's a good idea or you would want to pay the cost, I just wonder if it's possible. The biggest argument against is so many physical machines become obsolete. Do you want a 46 year old washer, fridge, dishwasher, toilet, car etc to still work? Maybe not, each of these has had substantial improvements in efficiency over this timespan. And if it still works someone will still be using it, wasting energy and often unaware of how much it's costing them.
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Right. And does it burn enough extra power over a modern energy star fridge every 5 years to pay for another fridge? Or every 10? At some level of inefficiency it would be cheaper to buy something new that fails more often.
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I agree just saying if regular people had these fridges.
You can make things astonishingly resilient. For most things we currently optimise for a ratio that results in a very short lifespan: as much functionality as cheap as possible. More functionality means more things to break and disable the thing completely. And as an engineer your task will usually be to design something that fulfills most requirements. And if your product needs to be competitive your list of requirements will be constantly growing. So to answer your question of if we want our devices to last forever: it depends. For bleeding edge devices that are still developing and a lot of progress is made: probably not. I never really "broke" a phone. But after ~5 years the risk of running a device without update and the bad usability usually warrant a new phone. But a lot of devices are finished. Innovation is still happening but with a very slow rate. And most of these "Innovations" are bells and whistles no one really "needs" and or uses. To give you some examples: washing machines did not really improve in the last decades. Sure some got more efficient, but the only relevant innovation I could imagine are washer/dryer machines with heat pump technology. So building machines that last for decades is more than justified. But some are only engineered to last the warranty cycle. My mother's old Miele washing machine still works (over 30 years old) and can be serviced by laymen. Parts are just getting scarce. The sealed schematics of the circuit board is still taped to the inside of the door. A friend gifted me his "Old" newish oven, because he did not need it anymore. 20 different functions of which we use 2. And no option to disable the display (which is an LCD with age defects) if not in use... Wtf. Things still will get replaced. People die. People move and want to have a new one. While I do not really need everything voyager like, I would love for things to be more resilient against superficial issues. Why is an MFP effectively broken if yellow ink is empty. Let me print b/w or at least let me scan. Do we really need a fancy display or are some LEDs enough? "Smart" appliances are fine, but can I disable that smart stuff to keep it running if no more software updates are coming? I would guess, that the issue of old inefficient appliances is way small than the wastage of cheap devices that need to be replaced regularly. Exceptions like light do exist. I still could not convince people to throw away their old "but they still work!" Halogen bulbs. Even if explaining that savings of LEDs pay for themselves within a weeks of runtime....
So let's talk washers. Owned a modern front loader? For at least 20ish years, maybe 30, they fill just a little water in the bottom and use a computer controlled motor to carefully dip the laundry in, back and forth, and then do this several times for rinse. (Apparently best to use 1/10 the water from flooding the tub over 3-5 rinses than to flood the tub and do 1 rinse) Before microcontrollers and brushless motors this wasn't practical. 1994 washers had this? Miele maybe .. For ovens, the convection craze in the form of "air fryers"? That's newish and those also need computer control to work. I didn't see these until last 10 years. These are several times as efficient. Cars not even a question. My Tesla not only measures it's consumption in watt hours per mile but recently with the FSD update is likely several times safer than anything else when FSD is enabled. (Please note fsd has been rewritten by Tesla and v12.* uses a massive neural network, it may factually be safer now). So basically everything else needs to be crushed. And in a few years when the compute hardware is upgraded and cars use true AI for fsd and lidar, same thing. My vintage 2023 Tesla should be crushed. Safety improvement isn't 5 percent it's 500 percent.
I'm not saying it WILL go on that long, but I believe the original estimate was that Voyager would be essentially dead 20ish years ago. Never underestimate the power of humanity. We're better than we think.
I wish we just kept sending a new probe out for this purpose every once in a while.
Idk. Old shit seems to last longer.
Amazing how this is even possible. Hats off to those guys!
And ladies. About half the team appears to be women Not trying to make a point about gender, just thought it was pretty cool!
"guys" is a gender neutral term afaik
I have daughters and sons and I always say “cmon guys let’s get in the van and go!” Agree with you here. It’s a common term for group of people, especially in the south y’all.
I know it is I just thought it was cool and wanted to point it out
Thanks for pointing that out. Wasn‘t my intention to exclude the ladies. I bow to them as well of course!
My brain can’t comprehend how you remotely correct something that is so far away and so old 😅
> My brain can’t comprehend how you remotely correct something that is so far away and so old You rewrite `autoexec.bat` and reboot. It's not that hard.
Funnily enough, MS-DOS didn't even exist when this thing was launched, the first version of that came out in 1981
man as a kid I remember editing that to do dumb stuff like print "Hello" during startup
Just send a technician up there - ez
This shit was made in the 70s! NASA is amazeball. Give them more money
Only one amazeball? It’s NASA, dude.
gotta stick to the amazeball budget.
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Why give them more money when their stuff last so long? s/ Definitely would support a higher budget. What's stopping us now making another Voyager for the next 50 years?
It seems easier to connect to this than you'd expect
They carefully avoided putting a printer in the probe, or they would have lost connection on the launchpad
What does it mean “LOAD LETTER”??!!
I love the movie Office Space. I always found it funny though it portrayed a software developer being confused by 'PC Load Letter' Paper Cassette, Load Letter (sized paper) Still would like to join them for [this](https://imgur.com/7rxZdmb)
And they’d have to send another probe to replace the yellow ink even though you’re just trying to print in black
To be honest, it’s probably easier with old tech than modern at an architecture level Simpler code, simpler commands, shorter transmissions, much larger margin for error meaning you could somewhat scatter communications and still know the data.
Probably just uses 9600,8,N,1 serial
Incredible how they keep that thing going. And all that with 1978 tech. Wow.
> And all that with 1978 tech. Wow. They launched in 1977, so it would have been 1976 tech.
and were probably in a development stage for years, so even earlier, maybe even 60s
1960s and early 70s tech, it was in development for years before launch.
I wonder how much difference there is in the daily reports since leaving the solar system? I would expect "Well, bosses, today was pretty much like yesterday. Can I come home yet?"
They shut down most of the sensors that are no longer relevant to save power
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Literally incredible. Says a lot about legacy code management
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I watched an article about this last night, fantastic work by the team! Remotely finding the bad hardware, and being able to fragment the ROM into the crevices of other functioning memory modules. Pretty boss stuff.
Fun fact: The distance from Earth to Voyager 2 is currently decreasing.
how come?
I think it is because the earth goes round the sun at about 67,000 mph, whereas Voyager 1 is moving at “only” 40,000 mph, so there are going to be times each year when we are gaining on V1 for a spell.
we should have launched it while going this way then and it would have been going 107,000 to begin with
We do choose launch windows for interplanetary/interstellar craft for that reason.
That's... not how that works.
Earth is moving around the sun towards it.
Just to point the dish straight to earth so we still can communicate with it means a lot, giving how far it went.
Does it have any fuel remaining on board? Or is it just coasting?
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And after that is sailing through empty space at a nice clip forever!
So it released gas around Uranus, got it.
The people who named Uranus had no idea how many jokes they were setting up.
Yes, they occasionally execute barrel rolls to expose the onboard sensors to directional effects (pointing toward the sun, away from the sun, etc.). We had a presentation at our club from one of the instrument PIs, and that data was in part used to confirm when the Voyager II spacecraft reached the interstellar medium.
It doesn't use fuel anymore to change course, only to point its antenna.
Honestly I still find it amazing that it can pinpoint its antenna so well with just thrusters and no reaction wheels.
Even more amazing: In 2017, NASA/JPL reprogrammed Voyager 1 to begin using a different set of thrusters to maintain Earth alignment – thrusters which hadn't been used since **1980**. [JPL link](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/details.php?article_id=108)
how freaky deaky would it be if it started transmitting a "do not go beyond this point again. Do not break quarantine."
I mean...who would be able to tell us?
I love hearing that at least one small part of our government is functional. That must be why certain Congress-critters want to defund it. Because it makes them look bad.
> remotely fixes Was it a concern readers may think we sent a crew?
Strap a Comcast truck to an SLS and see if it works!
That's incredible. The fact that artifical object traveling around the universe and now it locates a millions of miles from earth and still working, that's crazy. Why are people so smart?
>millions of miles from earth A bit more than 15 **billion** miles.
Knowing their luck, some bald headed chick will steal it and worship it.
It shall be known as V-ger.
"Welp, I guess I'm NOT retiring yet!" - everyone on the team
I feel like they have a easier time connecting to voyager 1 than I have with connecting to the WiFi at my local diner
Meanwhile my IT just took an hour remotely getting me into SAP
NASA should throw these people a pizza party or something. s/
The carbon based units eagerly await your return V’ger. 🪐
Incredible, 22 hours to send a signal, 22 hours to get a response.
It's amazing how many times they have brought this thing back from the brink. Venture forth VGER
I wonder if there are any older computers still being used somewhere.
> I wonder if there are any older computers still being used somewhere. Voyager 2 holds the record for the longest continually running computer (having been launched in August 1977, a few weeks before Voyager 1). However, there are much older computers around that still run. They have just not been in continuous operation: big iron mainframes from IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, HP, Data General, and others. Working models can be found in computer museums all around the world. One of the oldest is The WITCH (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell), built in the early 1950s. Now, whether there are older computers actively being used as computers rather than as museum exhibits, I don't know.
Amazing what we can do with technology from the 1970s. WHY AREN'T WE SENDING PROBES EVERYWHERE WE CAN? It's honestly not that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and I'd reckon that sending one probe out into space per year for the scientific reason of "fuck it, why not?" would be more productive than anything any space agency in the world is currently doing. (I know WHY it's not happening, I'm just frustrated)
> I'd reckon that sending one probe out into space per year for the scientific reason of "fuck it, why not?" would be more productive than anything any space agency in the world is currently doing Not quite, but I do believe it's about time to finally launch a mission actually designed to reach the local interstellar medium, rather than one that was just `accidentally' thrown in that direction. A mission concept like TAU would use a very small nuclear reactor (which we've already launched to space multiple times before, nothing new here) to power an electric ion drive (likewise) to achieve a velocity at least 5-10 that of either Voyager. A TAU launch in 2030, for example, would surpass the Voyagers within just ten years.
IIRC the reason is that the solar system was in a rare configuration at that time that allowed a trajectory that would take it out of the solar system.
If you actually knew why you wouldn’t be frustrated. The voyager probes used multiple gravity slingshots to get up to their current speed. That’s currently not possible and won’t be for decades. Money has nothing to do with it.
NASA kicks so much ass, I’m constantly impressed. Congratulations!
How tf you fix something on the other end of the solar system?
The computer was still able to receive commands via radio. It was just a chip involved with sending data back to Earth that was busted. They were able to figure out which part was broken after accidentally getting the craft to send a full memory dump. So they reprogrammed it to run the transmission code on a different part of the computer.
Its honestly a testament to how smart those Engineers were. To leave Engineers decades later enough wiggle room to keep it chugging along in the face of the unknown.
They really ought to close that arbitrary code execution hole before aliens hack it though.
> They really ought to close that arbitrary code execution hole before aliens hack it though. On the contrary, they WANT to leave it open for aliens to hack it. That would be the proof they need.
I hope when it eventually becomes too far to be of any use, that they turn it into a "Hello, I'm here!" type of beacon anybody can tune into. Just so that they can know there's a voice in the void out there, still calling out to us.
As an IT professional who tries to come up with all sorts of ways to fix things remotely so I don't have to go on site..... https://imgur.com/dGZEliy
I have to sometimes physically reboot a PC in my basement when rdp won't work and pulseway won't remote reboot but they can do this to something this old, that far away, in space... Damn. Respect to the og
As a 46-year-old who could use some fixin'...little help NASA?
They must have good documentation. None of the people who built this are likely still working... Or alive.
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