Interesting piece on a bit of the history of the Voyagers, as well as recent interviews with the handful of remaining folks dealing with Voyager today (well, as of 2021/2022).
Thirteen volumes about everything from deep-space tracking and navigation to cryogenic low-noise amplifiers, all available for free online. It's an amazing resource.
As a science (and science fiction) nerd kid growing up in Australia in the 1970/80s I got a kick out of tracking station 43 mention in Epilogue 2 of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds (1978)...
[NASA unmanned landing craft just touches down on mars]
[Houston Control]:
"What's that flare? See it? A green flare, coming from Mars, kind of a green mist behind it. It's getting closer.
You see it, Bermuda? Come in, Bermuda!
Houston, come in! What's going on?
Tracking station 43, Canberra, come in, Canberra!
Tracking station 63, can you hear me, Madrid?
Can anybody hear me? Come in, come in!"
[instrumental music suddenly stops]
The Viking missions to mars had started planning in the late 1960s and Viking 1 and 2 landed on Mars in 1976 so the inclusion of a NASA Mars landing in Epilogue 2 was pretty neat.
I would get my ham license and do everything I could with that hobby, especially digital.
While doing that I’d either enlist in the US Navy or US Army and work my way into a SIGINT job. Once you’re in a SIGINT job, you’ll be far too busy with radio for ham. This would be a fast track into SIGINT.
After that I’d use my military career to get into the private sector SIGINT world, as there’s a well-worn path there.
Related, Deep Sky Videos did a series of large-telescope tours / interviews a few years back. For example, this is their one on Alma; there are a number of others in their channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAQZp6yTR2Q
Successful space travel and rocket science being a contemporary of war and violence is only strange if you find toys to be fascinating objects. And didn't a human land on the Moon because of a cold war between two superpowers?
What's strange is acknowledgement of the possibility of scarce resources necessitating conflict is considered invalid criticism that needs to be silenced or given negative reviews by the majority opinion. But that's not really surprising when things like ascetic religion were created as a reaction to what is popularly called criminal or antisocial mental models of the world.
It’s hard for me to understand the arc seconds and degrees. Is there some kind of illustration available that shows the transmission from earth as a megaphone cone expanding out into to space?
The angle is about 9x10^-5 radians. If you were to take a meter stick (or a yard stick) and stick a piece of paper under one end, that's the precision within which it can point the dish. (While the earth is spinning, and going around the sun!) The actual width of the beam is about 5 times that angle.
Well, the area taken by a cone with angle "a" at the distance "r" is pi * r^2 * sin(a)^2.
For an arcsec, the square sin is ~85e-9. At the distance of the Moon, that means the signal occupies ~400km^2. At the distance of the Sun, ~5 billions of km^2 (5Mm^2).
The signal intensity is inversely proportional to that area.
For example, if the screw/servo controlling one axis of the dish is turned by a minimum adjustment, how many hundreds or thousands of miles does it throw the cone’s target at the distance of the probe? What’s the remaining margin for error at these scales?
One arcminute is about the resolution of the human eye. That is, if two points are less than 1 arcminute apart on the your field of view, they appear as one point.
The moon is 30 arc minutes (1/2 degree) on your field of view, that's why one can see the details of the surface with the naked eye.
18 arcseconds is about the size of Saturn (without the rings) as seen from the earth. It means it is just precise enough to shoot through the rings of Saturn. You can't see this without magnification, like with a small telescope or a good pair of binoculars.
It’s a Dish of Theseus, though. The electronics have been replaced, and the dish has been widened. I wonder how much of it is actually 50 years old besides the superstructure.
We, as a species, need the Deep Space Network(DSN) in order to keep communicating with everything man made that’s out there exploring our neighborhood.
This should be a global effort and I’ve read many articles about the lack of funding for the DSN. It’s getting more and more difficult to “juggle” and do proper time sharing in order to keep communicating with all the existing (and coming) spacecraft.
More resources and funding should be put together, by all space agencies (NASA, ESA, JAXA, ISRO…) so as to continue having means of communicating with all these space probes.
If the global free market doesn't want to spend capital in space stuff, then space is probably not worth it. Capitalism is an effective filter for economics and resource allocation. Soviet Union styled failed management occurs otherwise.
>Capitalism is an effective filter for economics and resource allocation
It really isn't a good filter for anything except "makes money quickly". Plenty of science returns zero economic benefits for years, even decades, but that doesn't mean it's useless.
> It really isn't a good filter for anything except "makes money quickly".
How do you figure? We stand in a nation built on giant economic long shots and in the only one that managed to put humans on the moon in a joint government commercial venture.
I'm using an open source product to write this to you. Running on an open source operating system. Also on an open source hardware device. Where's the "quick money" in any of this?
> but that doesn't mean it's useless.
It doesn't mean it's useful either. You can't use a simple "expectation factor" divorced from all other reality to decide how to spend tax money.
Our motivation for putting humans on the moon was an international dick-measuring contest. While the space race certainly created jobs and advanced science and technology, none of that was the primary reason we went up there.
The maximization of American dollars in a bank is a polite, democratic proxy for the violence of neo-colonialism. So any good investment scheme should ignore common metrics of science potential, as a lot of evidence is required to measure and determine what is a good science program to embark on. In contrast to analytical models and proposed theories that are more rational than they are empirical; rationalism is a sneaky way for neo-Marxism to taint the natural administration of science, technology, and capital. Hard evidence and reproducible centuries-long experiments are protective guardians of sensible science.
America wins for a reason in geopolitical history and it's because it has a secret military on top of its apparent military. Air forces and scientists are just fungible tokens for a surreptitious right wing shadow government that competes with ankle biting bugs like neo-Marxists. But it can all be reduced to undignified gang banging like Crips and Bloods, because space colonization isn't as noble as the romantic fictions have showed it to be. Maybe the correct inference from knowledge of history is that humanity isn't the end goal to chase after?
I hope you realize that this is essentially an argument for anarchy, as you may substitute for "space stuff" any of the many worthwhile things that free markets don't adequately incentivize, which is to say everything a government does. So-called "free markets" are not even self-hosting, as without the quite substantial socialist investment that a government represents, the entire system would rapidly collapse into warlord feudalism.
As long as the chaos of anarchy is instrumental in culling unfit individuals, ideas, and regimes, a man can reasonably sponsor the logical conclusion of free market capitalism. Maximum efficiency is the goal. Test-driven development is a better evaluator for what values a high time preference society should have. Economics proxies is the future of warfare and violence, as America loses its neo-colonial foothold in the Middle East named Israel and admirably demonstrates how not to dominate the world. Playing a form of high level chess requires patience and a divergence from mainstream education.
Money has to come somewhere. Hence market is a way. Competition is also needed so you produce better and better.
There is no capitalism as such it is a communism or. We have mix system always. War, love, gov, politics, … even old communist found relative autonomy and over determination (and once on that no point to say ultimate we believe communism or capitalism will determine as things keep on going, end never comes).
Btw totalitarianism is the worry. Once you are in especially media (india starting china and Russia telling) good luck. That is the worry. Not politics, market, war, … alone.
Multi dimensional life and sometimes believe me one guy can do a lot. Rip, steve.
I thought I'd noticed this documentary on HN a few weeks ago, but I'll re-add it here.
"It's Quieter in the Twilight": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/
Interesting piece on a bit of the history of the Voyagers, as well as recent interviews with the handful of remaining folks dealing with Voyager today (well, as of 2021/2022).
Also available here https://www.amazon.com/Its-Quieter-Twilight-Suzanne-Dodd/dp/...
Extra points for that nice Sun setup. That keyboard isn't my favorite - I prefer the squarer ones, models 5 and 7.
Available via BitTorrent as well.
Looks really interesting. Found it free to stream on Plex: https://l.plex.tv/mR6jp
Seconded. It was an enjoyable watch for any Voyager fan.
For deep technical info on DSN, I highly recommend the DESCANSO book series:
https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/mono.html
Thirteen volumes about everything from deep-space tracking and navigation to cryogenic low-noise amplifiers, all available for free online. It's an amazing resource.
As a science (and science fiction) nerd kid growing up in Australia in the 1970/80s I got a kick out of tracking station 43 mention in Epilogue 2 of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds (1978)...
[NASA unmanned landing craft just touches down on mars] [Houston Control]: "What's that flare? See it? A green flare, coming from Mars, kind of a green mist behind it. It's getting closer. You see it, Bermuda? Come in, Bermuda! Houston, come in! What's going on? Tracking station 43, Canberra, come in, Canberra! Tracking station 63, can you hear me, Madrid? Can anybody hear me? Come in, come in!" [instrumental music suddenly stops]
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPHEbh7cnr561iJqxno3q...
The Viking missions to mars had started planning in the late 1960s and Viking 1 and 2 landed on Mars in 1976 so the inclusion of a NASA Mars landing in Epilogue 2 was pretty neat.
There’s a fun movie about this particular antenna, starring Sam Neill (from another famous historic movie, Jurassic Park).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish
Worth a watch.
I agree it's a good watch, however they're different antennas.
The radio telescope at Parkes was built prior to DSS-43 that is the article's subject, they're located approx. 4 hours drive apart.
No, that was about the dish at Parkes, this is about the Tidbinbilla dish, near Canberra.
Not necessarily related, but it’s a fantastic Aussie film nonetheless.
Cable Guy flashbacks, anyone? :P
here's an older file with some more detailed info on the microwave path loss to/from voyager: https://voyager.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/DeepCommo_Chapter3--14...
If someone wanted to learn antenna design and eventually sigint, what resource would you start with?
I would get my ham license and do everything I could with that hobby, especially digital.
While doing that I’d either enlist in the US Navy or US Army and work my way into a SIGINT job. Once you’re in a SIGINT job, you’ll be far too busy with radio for ham. This would be a fast track into SIGINT.
After that I’d use my military career to get into the private sector SIGINT world, as there’s a well-worn path there.
You can try to go through the amateur radio extra class.
Additionally, the ARRL Antenna Book is a great resource: https://www.arrl.org/arrl-antenna-book
That’s what turned my law enforcement career into designing cellphones for a carrier.
Dave from EEVblog made a nice series of interviews about this station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA
Nice link - thanks!
Related, Deep Sky Videos did a series of large-telescope tours / interviews a few years back. For example, this is their one on Alma; there are a number of others in their channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAQZp6yTR2Q
Whenever I read stuff like this I find it strange that as a species we do this and also kill each other in wars.
Successful space travel and rocket science being a contemporary of war and violence is only strange if you find toys to be fascinating objects. And didn't a human land on the Moon because of a cold war between two superpowers?
What's strange is acknowledgement of the possibility of scarce resources necessitating conflict is considered invalid criticism that needs to be silenced or given negative reviews by the majority opinion. But that's not really surprising when things like ascetic religion were created as a reaction to what is popularly called criminal or antisocial mental models of the world.
Von Braun designed both the V-2 and the Saturn V.
Also, Alfred Nobel which left almost all his fortune to create the famous prizes, was the inventor of dynamite.
Well they had to make a separate Peace prize, to distinguish it from the regular one ;)
Alice: All I want is to stand tall, looking at the sun.
Bob: All I want is to stand tall, looking at the sun.
Alice: Your shade hits me, Bob. Prepare to die.
As said Buddha has evil nature. It goes hand inn hand.
Slightly related, here are radio astronomy antennas: https://www.vlba.nrao.edu/sites/SITECAM/
It’s hard for me to understand the arc seconds and degrees. Is there some kind of illustration available that shows the transmission from earth as a megaphone cone expanding out into to space?
Draw an equilateral triangle. The internal angle at a corner is 1/6 of a circle, 1.0471975511965 radians.
That can be divided by 60 into degrees, which are 0.0174532925199 radians
Those can be divided by 60 into minutes, which are 0.0002908882086 radians
Those can be divided by 60 into seconds, which are 0.00000484813681109 radians
Those can be divided by 60 into thirds, which are 8.08022801849E−8 radians
I think going any further is likely to be meaningless in a modern context, but fourths and fifths were used in the past.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_(angle)
I understand the division of units, what I’d like to see is an illustration of the signal’s cone at the astronomical distances in the article.
The angle is about 9x10^-5 radians. If you were to take a meter stick (or a yard stick) and stick a piece of paper under one end, that's the precision within which it can point the dish. (While the earth is spinning, and going around the sun!) The actual width of the beam is about 5 times that angle.
Well, the area taken by a cone with angle "a" at the distance "r" is pi * r^2 * sin(a)^2.
For an arcsec, the square sin is ~85e-9. At the distance of the Moon, that means the signal occupies ~400km^2. At the distance of the Sun, ~5 billions of km^2 (5Mm^2).
The signal intensity is inversely proportional to that area.
For example, if the screw/servo controlling one axis of the dish is turned by a minimum adjustment, how many hundreds or thousands of miles does it throw the cone’s target at the distance of the probe? What’s the remaining margin for error at these scales?
1 degree = 60 arcminutes, 1 arcminute = 60 arcseconds
One arcminute is about the resolution of the human eye. That is, if two points are less than 1 arcminute apart on the your field of view, they appear as one point.
The moon is 30 arc minutes (1/2 degree) on your field of view, that's why one can see the details of the surface with the naked eye.
18 arcseconds is about the size of Saturn (without the rings) as seen from the earth. It means it is just precise enough to shoot through the rings of Saturn. You can't see this without magnification, like with a small telescope or a good pair of binoculars.
Still ned an emulator if nothing just to pay respect and in remembrance of these two. Especially how the whole programming change.
A lot of high tech around us is 50 years old now. Some of that we would have trouble replacing.
It’s a Dish of Theseus, though. The electronics have been replaced, and the dish has been widened. I wonder how much of it is actually 50 years old besides the superstructure.
Very often in such projects, The Stuff Not There Anymore is visibly contributing to the overall quality of the installation.
I had never heard of deep space 43, only deep space 9
Digital watch for power.
We, as a species, need the Deep Space Network(DSN) in order to keep communicating with everything man made that’s out there exploring our neighborhood.
This should be a global effort and I’ve read many articles about the lack of funding for the DSN. It’s getting more and more difficult to “juggle” and do proper time sharing in order to keep communicating with all the existing (and coming) spacecraft.
More resources and funding should be put together, by all space agencies (NASA, ESA, JAXA, ISRO…) so as to continue having means of communicating with all these space probes.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
If the global free market doesn't want to spend capital in space stuff, then space is probably not worth it. Capitalism is an effective filter for economics and resource allocation. Soviet Union styled failed management occurs otherwise.
I love how it's automatically "the Soviet Union" any time someone suggests that we might go against what the free market wants.
As an aside, the "free market" doesn't actually exist, something people with even a basic financial and civics education should trivially realize.
[dead]
>Capitalism is an effective filter for economics and resource allocation
It really isn't a good filter for anything except "makes money quickly". Plenty of science returns zero economic benefits for years, even decades, but that doesn't mean it's useless.
> It really isn't a good filter for anything except "makes money quickly".
How do you figure? We stand in a nation built on giant economic long shots and in the only one that managed to put humans on the moon in a joint government commercial venture.
I'm using an open source product to write this to you. Running on an open source operating system. Also on an open source hardware device. Where's the "quick money" in any of this?
> but that doesn't mean it's useless.
It doesn't mean it's useful either. You can't use a simple "expectation factor" divorced from all other reality to decide how to spend tax money.
Our motivation for putting humans on the moon was an international dick-measuring contest. While the space race certainly created jobs and advanced science and technology, none of that was the primary reason we went up there.
>Where's the "quick money" in any of this?
Where's the capitalism in open source? Yes, yes, Red Hat, Microsoft etc all have their hands in it, but the very idea is anticapitalist.
>You can't use a simple "expectation factor" divorced from all other reality to decide how to spend tax money.
It's a bit more complicated than that, but plenty of countries outside the US spend money on things without tangible economic benefit.
The maximization of American dollars in a bank is a polite, democratic proxy for the violence of neo-colonialism. So any good investment scheme should ignore common metrics of science potential, as a lot of evidence is required to measure and determine what is a good science program to embark on. In contrast to analytical models and proposed theories that are more rational than they are empirical; rationalism is a sneaky way for neo-Marxism to taint the natural administration of science, technology, and capital. Hard evidence and reproducible centuries-long experiments are protective guardians of sensible science.
America wins for a reason in geopolitical history and it's because it has a secret military on top of its apparent military. Air forces and scientists are just fungible tokens for a surreptitious right wing shadow government that competes with ankle biting bugs like neo-Marxists. But it can all be reduced to undignified gang banging like Crips and Bloods, because space colonization isn't as noble as the romantic fictions have showed it to be. Maybe the correct inference from knowledge of history is that humanity isn't the end goal to chase after?
I hope you realize that this is essentially an argument for anarchy, as you may substitute for "space stuff" any of the many worthwhile things that free markets don't adequately incentivize, which is to say everything a government does. So-called "free markets" are not even self-hosting, as without the quite substantial socialist investment that a government represents, the entire system would rapidly collapse into warlord feudalism.
As long as the chaos of anarchy is instrumental in culling unfit individuals, ideas, and regimes, a man can reasonably sponsor the logical conclusion of free market capitalism. Maximum efficiency is the goal. Test-driven development is a better evaluator for what values a high time preference society should have. Economics proxies is the future of warfare and violence, as America loses its neo-colonial foothold in the Middle East named Israel and admirably demonstrates how not to dominate the world. Playing a form of high level chess requires patience and a divergence from mainstream education.
Money has to come somewhere. Hence market is a way. Competition is also needed so you produce better and better.
There is no capitalism as such it is a communism or. We have mix system always. War, love, gov, politics, … even old communist found relative autonomy and over determination (and once on that no point to say ultimate we believe communism or capitalism will determine as things keep on going, end never comes).
Btw totalitarianism is the worry. Once you are in especially media (india starting china and Russia telling) good luck. That is the worry. Not politics, market, war, … alone.
Multi dimensional life and sometimes believe me one guy can do a lot. Rip, steve.