With a new trick…
Voyager 1 continues to amaze. After 47 years, having crossed together with its twin into interstellar space, you’d think the spacecraft would stop surprising us. No chance. The probe had another glitch in the last few weeks that caused a loss of communication, but it managed to find a fix all by itself using hardware that had not been used since 1981.
Full article HERE, h/t Stretch.
The funny part is, this was done by Voyager on it’s own!
After all this time, that it and its twin are still working at all is a testament to not only the programmers, but also the builders who put the crafts together.
And this was done basically by slipstick and manual calculations and engineering, as computers were just coming into their own. So elegant math, possibly hand drawn blueprints, and no CNC machined parts.
THAT is a tribute to the old school types that designed them, built them, tested them, and sent them on their way…
I’m not sure, even with the technology available today, these feats could be duplicated. It seems much of the ‘math’ today is brute forced by the scientists/engineers with multiple iterations on massive computers, CNC machined parts, assembled by techs who have no loyalty to their companies, and everyone in the entire process looking for the next pay raise.
Sigh…
It is amazing… or is it? As I type, my 1857 grandfather clock in the hall — all wooden works — just struck. It keeps perfect time (well, not quite — a minute or so off in a week) and has. For the last 165 years. It wasn’t until we started to substitute computer fudges for precision work, clear thought, and simplicity that things started to go downhill.
The only counterpoint I’ll make is many companies don’t have any loyalty towards their employees. Unless you are driving results the “right” way or driving cost savings, get out. If you are in the same position for more than 3-5 years you must not be very good/talented/worthwhile.
The Voyager program is part of that peak period for NASA and like you said continues to impress. I hope they last forever.
Indeed. I watched my company force retirement on a man with 45 years service last month. Security escorted him to the gate after the meeting with a vague promise of “We’ll send you the personal things from your desk…”
4 weeks in and we’ve had multiple meetings about continuity and capabilities… My standard answer has been, “Gosh, Sam always handled that, sorry…”
Guess who won’t be offering two weeks notice when I head for the door…
Loyalty begets loyalty.
And love. I watched several documentaries about Voyager and another early probe, and saw the Mars Rover landing and first shots. The people involved loved what they did, and were still in awe at what they found, and what the machines managed to accomplish. The sense of wonder, pride, sheer joy they had in their craft and the results … doesn’t seem as strong today.
We need more sense-o-wonder.
Indeed. I think these days that would be SpaceX.
I suspect there was at least some some computer use for design calculations. Voyager was designed during the heyday of the minicomputer (DEC PDP series, Data General Nova, etc.) and mainframe timesharing systems being used to run science and engineering calculations.
And, numeric machine control (I believe a lot used paper tape) was a thing back then. I think the jump from NC to CNC was almost straightforward. Almost. 🙂
The mechanisms of both of those probes were lubricated with real sperm whale oil – which is still the finest lubricant known to mankind. It simply does not go rancid. Banned since 1971, every once & a while a partially full container pops up on eBay and usually gets bid up over $100/oz. I was able to grab a couple of 4oz bottles when an old building in Bar Harbor ME that used to be a general store was being rubbled, and somebody found two cartons of unopened bottles. He was putting them up on eBay one at a time until Maine Fish & Game nailed him.
It is absolutely amazing stuff, clear amber after 120 or 140 years, and to think that this wasn’t pumped out of the ground and refined in a cracking tower but had been taken by eight men rowing a dory far from land, a harpooneer standing on the prow, and 2000ft of rope ready to pay out fast and take along someone’s wrist if an unlucky bight of rope caught it. Then comes the ‘Nantucket Sleighride.’ Just imagine that a few drops and smidgeons of Herman Melville’s world of canvas sails, wooden ships, and iron men is on a wayward journey so, so far from Earth…
“ I’m not sure, even with the technology available today, these feats could be duplicated.”
Oh, I’m sure. They couldn’t on a bet. Someone (Maybe Musk or Bezos) recovered an Apollo F1 engine to study early in their space business. The hand done welds were more precise than I think a robot could accomplish. The people in the space program then were the best master crafters of the best industrial nation on earth at the time.
I know the killing was banned in 1987 but whales beach themselves. If a sperm whale had died on the beach could the oil then be taken and used?
Rock Island Arsenal in the late 1950’s was looking for people to train as computer programmers. Talk was that if you didn’t have an advanced math program and degree don’t bother taking the test. My mother, high school only, checked out books of college math and then went on to the master’s courses. She was the only woman to test that Saturday. All day, no breaks and escorted to the rest rooms. When results posted she had become one of the ten. So she spent the next 15 years programming.
And innumerable space creatures along the route have seen it in their skies and exclaimed, “What the hell was THAT?!”
All- Thanks for the comments, and Bob, that had me snorting Dr. Pepper. TXRed, back in the late 90s, I was working out of Hughes Aircraft on a project when they were running the shake and bake on the original Mars Rover program. The engineers and craftsmen were eating lunch at the same restaurant I was and I heard one of the craftsmen basically crying that they were destroying millions of dollars of hardware, while and engineer tried to console him with the fact that they HAD to do it.
Read a book I found through Wikipedia called Computers In Space flight.
Link: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19880069935
The computers that they put up were (and are) phenomenal!
The fact that they come back and threaten the earth in the first Star Trek movie is the most amazing part of all!
We have dumbed down the population so much over the past half century that maintaining what the Greatest Generation and early Boomers built is becoming a challenge. Actually accomplishing anything new is becoming a very rare feat.
Rat- Thank you!
Ed- LOL, true!
Dan- Agreed!
47 years and 2 months outbound at 38,000 miles per hour, it has traveled 165 AU, pointed out into deep space. It’s humanity’s furthest reach to the stars.
And the “golden record” it’s carrying as cargo has an analog recording of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”
“Go, go
Go Johnny, go
Go, go, go Johnny, go
Go, go, go Johnny, go
Go, go, go Johnny, go
Go
Johnny B. Goode”