Space exploitation vs space exploration: Humanity has much to learn from the Voyager probes
- Reference: 1706786108
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/02/01/lessons_from_the_voyager_probes/
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Dr Garry E Hunt was one of the original imaging team members and tells The Register why he thinks the veteran spacecraft had endured for so long. "Brilliant engineering," he says. "Let's be honest, the scientific community gets credit, but it's the engineers that really deserve the credit."
The twin Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977. Both were to perform flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, but while Voyager 1 would visit Saturn's Moon, Titan, Voyager 2 could perform a Grand Tour of the planets, taking in Neptune and Uranus. "[Former US President Richard] Nixon," says Hunt, "only funded it as far as Saturn; he refused to have it funded for longer…"
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However, both spacecraft were in good health thanks to some canny engineering decisions and plenty of redundant systems. So the Tour continued, with memorable shots of Uranus and Neptune before the famous Pale Blue Dot image was taken.
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Over 30 years on, the Solar System family portrait remains Hunt's proudest moment from the mission: "If you ask me what was the most important picture we took? … The picture that showed the entire family of the Solar System from just beyond the orbit of Neptune, which showed that the Earth was a tiny tiny blue dot.
43 years and 14 billion miles later, Voyager 1 still crunching data to reveal secrets of the interstellar medium [4]READ MORE
"And that was a big wake-up call to everybody to say, 'Hey guys, we've got a serious problem. That's the only place that we've found in the solar system that we can live. That's our home. Don't mess it up'."
Could a project like Voyager happen now? Hunt is not so sure: "We have a problem with politics. The US is having a fundamental problem with funding its missions. The budget has been trimmed by Biden, trimmed further by the Senate, decisions are not being made because the election is coming, the pandemic affected establishments like JPL and others … so all these are factors.
"Furthermore, countries say 'Look, it's not just science you get out of this, what's the value to the economy? … We're not prepared to wait 10 or 20 years for something. We need quick results which are beneficial for the economy.
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"So I think we're going to be looking at missions to the very distant parts of our solar system somewhat differently. We are looking at the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids somewhat differently. In the past, we talked about space exploration. I think we're looking at a re-spelling. We're looking at space exploitation now."
[6]44-year-old Voyager 2 data sheds light on solar system's magnetic personalities
[7]NASA Juno probe to produce 'firehose of data' during close flyby of Jupiter moon
[8]NASA engineers scratch heads as Voyager 1 starts spouting cosmic gibberish
[9]Half a century ago, NASA's Pioneer 10 visited Jupiter, then just kept going
While acknowledging the benefits, Hunt also worries about a more commercial approach. The load and risk are, in theory, spread, yet the desire for quick returns remains. "If you're making something in the most cost-effective way, the cheapest way, you cut corners."
"I look back at the way space missions were developed in the past; the number of redundant systems we had on Voyager; the number of quality checks to make sure nothing failed.
"Will the commercial sector be having the same approach?"
Hunt notes recent issues with NASA's Artemis program and says, "I wonder whether we would have had some these problems in the old days with NASA working the way it did…"
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Hunt, however, does accept the modern need to demonstrate the benefits of space exploration. With other pressures on the economy, "can we really afford to do all these things that go on for 10 – 20 years? So return [on investment] has got to be a parameter that is examined very strongly when making decisions."
Things have, of course, moved on since the era of Voyager, even if the chemical rocket technology used to launch the probes continues to power modern rockets. The UK has demonstrated prowess in developing spacecraft systems, but Hunt says the future lies beyond that niche.
"The future of space," he says, "involves everything from high finance to insurance, to engineering, right the way through the spectrum … are we going to be the leaders?"
Hunt's career has been varied. He worked on the Viking missions to Mars and was involved in payloads on the early Shuttle missions. Today, he advises industry and politicians. He is very concerned about climate change and the environment, which is understandable when considering his background in atmospheric science.
Of the Earth, he says, "We're making a jolly good mess of it."
However, Hunt's enthusiasm for science remains undimmed. He is delighted that Voyager data continues to be used for research. "Some of the latest work on Neptune to actually understand and get the correct colors and such like involves going back to the original Voyager data. Isn't that stunning?"
Having noted the retrospective importance now placed on missions from decades past that demonstrated the potential for manufacturing in space, Hunt still expresses awe at the science being generated by modern spacecraft. "The James Webb [space telescope]," he says, "is just unbelievable … they [the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble] are just stunning."
The Voyager probes continue to demonstrate the benefit of robot explorers. Modern spacecraft like the James Webb Space Telescope are doing the same. The Reg can but hope that any shift from exploration to exploitation won't sacrifice that.
And Hunt? He's looking forward to one more trip to the US to celebrate Voyager's 50th anniversary. "When Voyager's 50th birthday comes up, I think I'd like to be back in JPL," he tells us.
Will the Voyagers still be running? Perhaps.
At the moment, NASA's [11]best guess is that while science data will cease to be collected after 2025, there is every chance that engineering data could continue to be returned for several more years. Both spacecraft could remain in range of the Deep Space Network through 2036, depending on there being enough power remaining to transmit a signal back to Earth. ®
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/10/voyager_2_jupiter_research/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/28/juno_to_get_up_close/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/14/engineers_work_to_fix_voyager/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/05/50_years_pioneer_10/
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[11] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Timescales
The last few generations have seen innovation come faster and faster. Pop culture trends change on a dime based on "social media" posts. The news cycle keeps getting shorter, and politics doesn't look beyond the next election (as if they'd bother to fix THIS year's budget). Capitalism embodied in the banking/credit card industry wants you to buy today (and pay interest forever). Everything around us is pushing our minds into "NOW NOW NOW", utterly incapable of thinking about tomorrow.
If we want society to slow down and expand our collective minds into the next century or even millennium, we need a fundamental shift of what society IS. We need to slow our own lives down just to give us time to think. If business and politics won't lead, it's up to us users/consumers/voters to tell them to be quiet for a bit, starting by turning off the 24/7 media. Then maybe businesses and government will get in line.
(Yeah, right. We are the proles of 1984 -- it won't change until we rise up, and we can't rise unless things change.)
Re: Timescales
(Yeah, right. We are the proles of 1984 -- it won't change until we rise up, and we can't rise unless things change.)
But if you read the appendices of 1984 there's an implication that the proles did rise up and smash the system. Never give up hope.
"We do want our society to still be around in a thousand years' time, don't we"
Google "bronze age collapse"
I won't be around, but I'd be surprised if we last another 150 years.
Google "bronze age collapse"
Disappointing - it's all about the Eastern Mediterranean are and a little about Central Europe. Nothing further west into Ireland, for instance.
Electricity has been a useless toy for a very long time.
Volta invented the battery in 1800. Michael Faraday made the first electric motor in 1821 and Robert Davidson demonstrated an electric locomotive on the Glasgow - Edinburgh railway another 21 years after that. By the end of the century electric railways, tramways, lighting and motors were common.
The word 'Electricity' was coined by a contemporary of Shakespeare. Stephen Gray built a crude electric telegraph in the early 18th Century. That's at least two centuries of electricity being a useless toy. The thing is you can never know when an idea's time will come so you have no choice but to take a long term view.
The word 'Electricity' was coined by a contemporary of Shakespeare.
And the word electricity comes from ἤλεκτρον, the Greek for amber. The Greeks knew about static electricity and played around with its effects over 2 millennia ago.
>>"can we really afford to do all these things that go on for 10 – 20 years? [...]"
> Can we afford not to?
Yes, we can afford not to. I admire the Voyager project, but let's be honest: the economic return on investment is likely to be negative. It's still worth doing in my opinion, but asking about ROI for this kind of thing is like asking about ROI for an arts project. ROI is not why we do these things.
For maximum clarity:
I strongly agree that we should be doing these things despite ROI.
I weakly agree that Voyager, specifically, is unlikely to have a positive ROI - if we look at easily-quantifiable money value alone.
I strongly disagree, and this is the point I'm trying to make, that just because something "goes on for 10-20 years" or even more, that implies a poor ROI. It implies that the return is a long way off, and highly uncertain, but neither of those adjectives means "low" .
" We do want our society to still be around in a thousand years' time, don't we?"
So far as the historical record can show, no society has lasted anything like a thousand years so far. All that's lasted as long as this to date have been more or less corrupted fragments of past systems and cultural concepts, most often completely misunderstood and subsequently applied out of context. So what makes 'our society' likely to be the exception? And incidentally, which society out of the many current ones is the preferred one for survival?
Re: " We do want our society to still be around in a thousand years' time, don't we?"
> So far as the historical record can show, no society has lasted anything like a thousand years so far.
It depends on what you mean by "society". It's a fuzzy term. These days, I feel I can safely say that it goes beyond "nation". I'm not sure myself of what exactly I meant by it, but the concept I wanted to express was: we seem to focus a lot on GDP, yet all of our GDP plots seem to have "who gives a shit" as value for all points beyond the 50-years marker or so. But, actually, there will still be people well beyond that marker, yes? People who presumably will be better off, possibly a lot better off, if we make wise very-long-term investments right now?
Do we just not give a crap, because they're not us? Makes some selfish sense. But it hardly seems like an optimal strategy for a large group that spans many generations.
> which society out of the many current ones is the preferred one for survival?
I'm... not sure what you mean here. Ideally, I would like all of them to survive, and possibly new ones to emerge. I don't like the idea of societies being in a zero-sum competition. I've no idea why I would give any other impression, was it the "we" and "our"? Honestly, I was basically thinking "the human society".
Re: " We do want our society to still be around in a thousand years' time, don't we?"
all of our GDP plots seem to have "who gives a shit" as value for all points beyond the 50-years marker or so
Realistically, projections that get anywhere near that point would be worthless anyway. Predictions tend to fail as soon as the next big unpredictable event comes along.
Re: " We do want our society to still be around in a thousand years' time, don't we?"
Correct, but there's a lot of difference between "we can't make a reliable estimate on this" and "we don't care about this". Sure, it does mean that our very-long-term investments can't be very reliable, but smart investors have had the solution to that problem since stock market existed, and it's not "only invest in things you can easily predict". Just diversify. Fund all kinds of different projects. Some will pay off, and cover the rest.
Awe-inspiring....
Voyagers were both already well into their missions when I joined this Earth and might be producing useful data for a few years more.
Further than that, given the close-to-zero chances of physically smacking into something in that vast expanse of nothingness up there, it's quite likely they will still be travelling through space when the Sun swallows up the Earth.
"Will the commercial sector be having the same approach?"
If you ever need an example of a rhetorical question, come right here. We've got a dead billionaire in a crushed tin can down by the Titanic to tell us what approach the commercial sector will take.
Hunt notes recent issues with NASA's Artemis program and says, "I wonder whether we would have had some these problems in the old days with NASA working the way it did…"
Mostly Harmless
I'd prefer the money was spent on a working Cobra Mark III ...
Keep on running
He's looking forward to one more trip to the US to celebrate Voyager's 50th anniversary. "When Voyager's 50th birthday comes up, I think I'd like to be back in JPL," he tells us.
Will the Voyagers still be running? Perhaps.
The Voyager probes were launched in the same year in which I was born, so it's like we're having a competition to see which of us lasts longest. Don't fancy my chances to be honest.
Re: Keep on running
The design and survival of the Voyagers has been a wonderful item in our human improvements and there's the potential to continue working with the implementation and the information that it gives us ... remember how much we learned a few thousand years ago after getting the first stone axes to work well but then discovered that the stone could be crushed and heated to enable us to create a metal axe.
We're reasonably convinced that there are aliens out there in the universe, so we need to continue to develop and evolve in the way they have been doing!
> "can we really afford to do all these things that go on for 10 – 20 years? [...]"
Can we afford not to?
Investiments in pure science are things that can pay, and pay big , bigger than anything, but often only decades in the future. Possibly centuries. Electricity has been a useless toy for a very long time.
Such dividends don't happen on the time scale of a human's life, and therefore we ignore them. But they do happen on the time scale of a nation's life. Even more on the time scale of humanity itself.
We keep considering 5-10 years as the longest "long term", and pass on any investment beyond that... that strategy makes sense for people, but isn't it harming the nation's history-scale economic outlook? We do want our society to still be around in a thousand years' time, don't we? 'cause if we do, getting to work now on something that may result in workable asteroid mining, space solar or moon economy a hundred years from now suddenly makes quite a lot of economic sense.