Engineers have mitigated an issue with Voyager 1’s thrusters, enabling the mission to stay in touch with mission controllers on Earth and send back unique data.
The voyager probes only got as far as they did because of their trajectory that got some massive (and rare) slingshots, it will take ages for the new horizons probe to get anywhere near as far.
We could probably spam missions to some other planets, who will pay for it though? We are not at the stage where an 'out of the box’s mission can do that I think?
Little to Nothing. Because they wouldn’t make it as far as fast as the Voyager probes because they got a massive gravitational assist from a rare alignment that only happens every 176 years. All the other planets needed to be aligned appropriately for this journey at this speed. New horizons may leave the solar system in 43 if we don’t lose contact. And they already want to shut the program down. NH is about 10000 km/h slower than Voyager 1.
Best to use targeted probes to explore things we haven’t before. Ask different questions and if they leave the solar system, good on them. But I’d prefer orbital data satellites around all the ocean moons in the outer solar system.
Maybe I could have been more explicit. Without the planetary alignment that made the voyager probes possible an equivalent mission would be ridiculously expensive/impossible due to the fuel requirements (and wouldn’t be able to visit all of the planets)
If starship/new glen/the rocket lab one work, it might become more feasible.
Instead, sending smaller, simpler probes that just visit one planet/moon would be much more cost effective, but still expensive.
We have already got a lot of the low hanging planetary science fruit from existing missions. New missions would need new/novel sensors or need Landers/aircraft which make them much more expensive.
Even just a ‘standard’ interplanetary mission isn’t just an out of the box job like current earth satalites are becoming.
Space is big enough that even if we tried to “pollute” it we could not. We would need Von Neumann self replicating probes to even stand a chance. But even then if we are talking intergalactic we wouldn’t register.
Yes, and a few broken down satellites in the ocean is but a mere drop in the bucket. Being irresponsible is irresponsible, no matter how you try to excuse it.
A drop in the bucket isn’t event close to a good understanding of how big space is. A satellite in the ocean is grossly misleading when it comes to the scope of space.
Maybe a single O2 molecule in the ocean might be closer but even then that’s not even close to the scope of space.
Space is big. So big that the light cone of our “pollution” can’t physically interact with most of it even if we did our best to “pollute” as much as we can and some alien species did their best to find that “pollution”. Space is so big that physics dictate the impossibility of our “pollution” interacting with most of space.
Fun fact this is why the chance of aliens visiting us here on earth is basically 0.
You can’t use earth scale thinking, that’s how big space is.
This all being said we should do our best to not pollute the earth. We should use earth scale thinking when it comes to earth.
How expensive would it be to make similar spacecraft now?
Assuming it’s relatively cheap, what could we learn from sending out thousands today?
The voyager probes only got as far as they did because of their trajectory that got some massive (and rare) slingshots, it will take ages for the new horizons probe to get anywhere near as far.
We could probably spam missions to some other planets, who will pay for it though? We are not at the stage where an 'out of the box’s mission can do that I think?
you answered neither question
Best to use targeted probes to explore things we haven’t before. Ask different questions and if they leave the solar system, good on them. But I’d prefer orbital data satellites around all the ocean moons in the outer solar system.
you answered both questions
Maybe I could have been more explicit. Without the planetary alignment that made the voyager probes possible an equivalent mission would be ridiculously expensive/impossible due to the fuel requirements (and wouldn’t be able to visit all of the planets)
If starship/new glen/the rocket lab one work, it might become more feasible.
Instead, sending smaller, simpler probes that just visit one planet/moon would be much more cost effective, but still expensive.
We have already got a lot of the low hanging planetary science fruit from existing missions. New missions would need new/novel sensors or need Landers/aircraft which make them much more expensive.
Even just a ‘standard’ interplanetary mission isn’t just an out of the box job like current earth satalites are becoming.
So comparing to New Horizons mission
We could learn that we are intergalactic litter bugs. We should stick with fixing polluting our inner space.
Space is big enough that even if we tried to “pollute” it we could not. We would need Von Neumann self replicating probes to even stand a chance. But even then if we are talking intergalactic we wouldn’t register.
Yes, and a few broken down satellites in the ocean is but a mere drop in the bucket. Being irresponsible is irresponsible, no matter how you try to excuse it.
A drop in the bucket isn’t event close to a good understanding of how big space is. A satellite in the ocean is grossly misleading when it comes to the scope of space.
Maybe a single O2 molecule in the ocean might be closer but even then that’s not even close to the scope of space.
Space is big. So big that the light cone of our “pollution” can’t physically interact with most of it even if we did our best to “pollute” as much as we can and some alien species did their best to find that “pollution”. Space is so big that physics dictate the impossibility of our “pollution” interacting with most of space.
Fun fact this is why the chance of aliens visiting us here on earth is basically 0.
You can’t use earth scale thinking, that’s how big space is.
This all being said we should do our best to not pollute the earth. We should use earth scale thinking when it comes to earth.