It's expected never to encounter any other object in all eternity. Unless of course someone deliberately aims for it. I heard once it will eventually lose it's form entirely and just drift through space as a melted lump of metal. For some reason that reminds me of Red Dwarf.
We are going to lose it before long i wonder if it will be possible to find it on a future date in theory.
Sure, but we're talking insane amounts of time unless it hits something head one. Even the electronics are still alive and in 2024 after a long break we managed to get signals back. It is anybody's guess at this point how long the craft will remain functional but it will take a long, long time (long after humanity will either have destroyed itself or has figured out how to overtake it) before it is 'a melted lump of metal'.
Look at the metal that we routinely dig up in the hostile environment known as 'Earth' and which wasn't particularly designed to be long lasting. Voyager is just that: designed to last for a really long time. At a minimum several millennia, though of course by that time the electronics will no longer function, and not because they no longer have power but simply because they have degraded due to their rather more sensitive nature than the rest of the craft.
A thousand years ago it was unthinkable we could circumnavigate the globe.
We don’t understand quantum mechanics and we don’t understand gravity. There’s no reason to assume that we won’t find ways to travel the universe, e.g. by manipulating space time. We just don’t know what we don’t know.
If you had to bet based on past achievements, humanity will find a way. Our job is to push the limits as much as we can and build a foundation for future generations.
Voyager 1 passed by Saturn in 1980 on my ninth birthday, and my dad had set up TV sets in the house with video he was getting off a satellite feed for my birthday party with a bunch of my friends. We were all very confused as to why he did it, as it wasn't very kid's party like. Only many years later did I get how cool it actually was, and how I will always remember that Voyager event. So... a much belated thanks, dad!
Great story! At first, I got the impression that your dad was receiving a video stream directly from Voyager's signal. Of course, that would be technically impossible, since Voyager 1 requires approx. 70-meter radio telescopes and specialized equipment to obtain data.
So, what was the "satellite feed" mentioned in the story? Was it a regular TV broadcast, or something more internal distributed by NASA?
Humanity’s greatest journey so far has only reached the closest world to us: the Moon ... in a universe that stretches endlessly in every direction and is seemingly infinite.
It's kind of wild to think about: we might end up collapsing our own civilization before we ever make it beyond our solar system.
At this point, I suspect the next real explorers won't be us, but probes carrying intelligent machines..our robotic descendants venturing where we can’t.
Many see this as the answer to the Fermi paradox. Any society on the path to being advanced enough to potentially leave their system probably gains the ability to destroy themselves before getting to that point.
If there isn't a good rationale why it'd be applicable to every civilization that has ever arisen, then it isn't a good fermi paradox solution. Otherwise, if even 1%, or 0.1%, don't fall into the same trap, the galaxy still ends up completely colonized.
> Humanity’s greatest journey so far has only reached the closest world to us: the Moon ... in a universe that stretches endlessly in every direction and is seemingly infinite.
I've never felt this impulse. To me it's like saying the Earth is 8,000 miles thick but we all chose to live within just a few feet of the surface.
Any manned mission in the next 100 years or so to the surface of a moon or planet is basically unnecessary and just to show we can. I am not saying this is a bad thing - but much of the reasons we haven't had manned missions is because it isn't worth it. Robots can do most of what we can do already and what they can't we can do remotely. There's really not a great science reason to send people with our current technology. Robots are already the real explorers.
Elite Dangerous is a modern sci-fi space simulation game. It takes place in the 34th century. You can actually visit solar system (can't land on Earth yet), and catch up with two Voyagers. They are where they would be in 1200 years, approximately 25 light days away from the Sun.
I remember as a kid seeing the first photos of Uranus and Neptune from the Voyager probes. What's sad to me is they remain to this day the only time we've ever visited these ice giants. There have been a number of proposals over the years but none have been selected and it seems like 2045-2050 is the soonest we could get to Uranus (more for Neptune) but that pretty much requires a launch by 2034 and we've pretty much run out of time for a mission to be selected to that window given that it would be a complex and expensive flagship mission. I guess it depends on whether it's a flyby (like New Horizons) or an intercept mission, which would take substantially longer.
Obital mechanics are a funny thing however. You see this with the complicated BepiColombo trajectory to Mercury [1] that requires multiple passes on Venus. Mercury orbits at ~48km/s (compared to Earth's 30km/s). Fun fact: the escape velocity of the Sun is 42km/s so it's easier to leave the Solar System than intercept Mercury.
One difficulty is there aren't large gas giants to slingshot or brake around.
Uranus's orbital velocity is ~6.8km/s so it's both really far and requires a ton of delta-V to slow down to intercept.
Anyway, I digress.
So Voyager 1's speed seems to be ~17km/s, I guess relative to the Sun. People talk about the time required for interplanetary (let alone interstellar) travel but we can do much better than this with relatively near-future technology.
We need a whole bunch more Earth-orbit space infrastructure and industry to do anything, really. Lower launch costs in particular. I think this future is orbital rings [2]. This would revolutionize getting stuff into orbit but also launching vehicles to other planets. Basically you accelerate on the inside of the ring at ~2G with magnetic levitation to counter the linear momentum. You can reasonably get ~15km/s with this, adding to the EArth's 30km/s ideally so even without fuel you can get to ~45km/s.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 47.7 ms ] threadWe are going to lose it before long i wonder if it will be possible to find it on a future date in theory.
Look at the metal that we routinely dig up in the hostile environment known as 'Earth' and which wasn't particularly designed to be long lasting. Voyager is just that: designed to last for a really long time. At a minimum several millennia, though of course by that time the electronics will no longer function, and not because they no longer have power but simply because they have degraded due to their rather more sensitive nature than the rest of the craft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Spheres
Everyone.
We don’t understand quantum mechanics and we don’t understand gravity. There’s no reason to assume that we won’t find ways to travel the universe, e.g. by manipulating space time. We just don’t know what we don’t know.
If you had to bet based on past achievements, humanity will find a way. Our job is to push the limits as much as we can and build a foundation for future generations.
So, what was the "satellite feed" mentioned in the story? Was it a regular TV broadcast, or something more internal distributed by NASA?
It's kind of wild to think about: we might end up collapsing our own civilization before we ever make it beyond our solar system.
At this point, I suspect the next real explorers won't be us, but probes carrying intelligent machines..our robotic descendants venturing where we can’t.
Short terms issues preventing long term gains.
I've never felt this impulse. To me it's like saying the Earth is 8,000 miles thick but we all chose to live within just a few feet of the surface.
Obital mechanics are a funny thing however. You see this with the complicated BepiColombo trajectory to Mercury [1] that requires multiple passes on Venus. Mercury orbits at ~48km/s (compared to Earth's 30km/s). Fun fact: the escape velocity of the Sun is 42km/s so it's easier to leave the Solar System than intercept Mercury.
One difficulty is there aren't large gas giants to slingshot or brake around.
Uranus's orbital velocity is ~6.8km/s so it's both really far and requires a ton of delta-V to slow down to intercept.
Anyway, I digress.
So Voyager 1's speed seems to be ~17km/s, I guess relative to the Sun. People talk about the time required for interplanetary (let alone interstellar) travel but we can do much better than this with relatively near-future technology.
We need a whole bunch more Earth-orbit space infrastructure and industry to do anything, really. Lower launch costs in particular. I think this future is orbital rings [2]. This would revolutionize getting stuff into orbit but also launching vehicles to other planets. Basically you accelerate on the inside of the ring at ~2G with magnetic levitation to counter the linear momentum. You can reasonably get ~15km/s with this, adding to the EArth's 30km/s ideally so even without fuel you can get to ~45km/s.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK3F4fmqtbA
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
My favorite conspiracy about aliens is that the nuclear explosion testing in the 50s had an observable effect and there’s some documented proof of maybe something was watching us: https://www.astronomy.com/science/did-aliens-watch-1950s-nuc...