Has Voyager 1 escaped the Sun yet? Yes, but also no, say boffins Voyager 1, the deep space probe launched in 1977 and thought to have left the Solar System hasn't entirely escaped the parts of space where Sol holds sway. So says a new contribution to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Triangulation of the interstellar magnetic field . Boffins have debated whether Voyager 1 has left the …
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FORTRAN - check
ALGOL - check
Assembler - lots and lots of weird CPUs (so check)
US Citizen - nope
Damn - guess NASA won't be calling me then...
Was contacted last year to see if I wanted to work on some CORAL code (no thanks). It's amazing how much of this old stuff is still kicking around.
Nothing wrong with Coral-66! Used to write extensions to our chip design software in it.
I'd love to work on something like that - take a while to work round the innards (I'm guessing theres a lot of clever shit in there) but is there really a requirement for US residency? Seems a bit dumb requiring you to work in the US of something nearly out of the fucking solar system.
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"Potential applicants will need to do their own research into exactly which CPU's assembly language they need to be fluent in, because El Reg couldn't be bothered to look that information up, and include it in the article."
Potential applicants would be proactive enough to do the research themselves, and not wait for El Reg to do their homework for them. Sigh.
"...which CPU's assembly language they need to be fluent in..."
If you understand a) what was written, b) the technology of the time as used in space vehicles, and c) what the hardware designers would have HAD to do, then you'd already know that it must be a custom design built from the ground up using gates.
http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-2.html
You're not hired.
I seem to recall (I'll need to look it up) but both Voyagers used three computers, one of which was the GE-18bit TTL (the same as on the Viking probes) The other two were custom jobs based on that chipset. I think it's fair to say, that even if you knew the assembly language there will be many custom instructions to learn.
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"If you think of the magnetic field as a rubber band stretched around a beach ball...
Got you
that band is being deflected around the heliopause"
What?
Today with other usless analogies, "If you think of atoms as a golf ball orbiting a tennis ball, nuclear reactions are caused by the fusion of multiple nuclei into a single atomic mass." Or "If you think of engines as giant popping bang-bangs, the play off between torque and power demonstrates why trucks tend to have high displacement, low RPM engines."
one of my pet peeves, useless analogies. Although there are analogies, that have an almost Zen-like quality about them.
Which makes me think: is there something like a digital analogy?
Yeah, a better analogy would be a pond surrounded by a marsh.
Trying to pinpoint exactly where water gave way to firm dry land is impossible.
Best you can do is say, "Over there is dry land, over there is water, and in between is neither."
Right now Voyager is somewhere in between, probably closer to dry land than water.
Boffins have debated whether Voyager 1 has left the Solar System for a few years now...
This is what happens when you move the solar system limits from Pluto to some other locale: it just confuses everyone! Actually, I was not able to easily find a definition as to what the solar system is, much less what its boundaries are, on the IAU's web site (they really have a crappy web site, especially when it comes to search functions). As far as I can tell, they have defined what a planet in the solar system is without defining what constitutes the solar system itself.
[insert over-used slogan about voyage, destination here] - the more you know, the more you realize what you don't know - but that's what keeps it interesting!
Seems like a pointless discussion, really. When does summer become autumn?
True but we're a species that likes compartmentalising everything.
That's why there are indeed various definitions - albeit questionable ones - of when summer ends and autumn begins.
Well we're still discovering objects orbiting the Sun. The far reaches of our solar system are largely unknown as of yet. Unfortunately Voyager will not be able to provide us with answers for much longer either. The nuclear battery in it will only output enough power to transmit for a couple more decades. In that time the craft will not be able to traverse the distance to the theorized Oort cloud either.
LOL
Sounds like a dream job until you consider how much legacy code there must be. You'd have trouble getting any of the tooling to work. But surely they don't update code on the probe anymore? I guess they just have to simulate or emulate it somehow so any new commands can be verified before being sent.
I'm hoping it just suddenly disappears mid-trans ......
"So when is Microsoft pushing Windows 10 on to that platform?"
Accounting for the quite slow communications bitrate, it won't get the win 10 install before it drifts into the next solar system. By that stage, the intelligent life there will be getting ready to communicate with us.
Then they'll notice Voyager, take one look at windows 10, and they'll launch an intergalactic war instead.
That's what happens when you can't observe it any more.
Only a matter of time before someone starts worshipping 'Vger' as a new deity.
Cant see it? - check
Lots of people get excited when referring to it and look skywards with reverence? - check
All the whales dead? - getting there.
We're doomed.
Dear Mr. Zottarelli,
Thank you for your 55 years of work in helping to find out just how small we are, and how big and wonderful the universe is.
And having a cool name.
Have a wonderful retirement (though I sense consulting fees in your future...)
Sincerely,
Science/Space buffs everywhere.
It's America not Europe, hence why you see old people working in supermarkets shuffling around, they can't necessarily afford to retire.
Don't worry though it's coming this way, under the guise of choice and that old people love working until they die. The thought they may want to put their feet up and drink tea is now just seen as an expense to the tax payer...
"It's America not Europe, hence why you see old people working in supermarkets shuffling around, they can't necessarily afford to retire."
Generally true, but US aerospace industry workers like those in this article can usually retire early and well. I'm surrounded by coworkers bailing from the company at ages 55 to 60. If they stick around beyond 65, then they've either done poorly by their finances or just like the job.
One guy, our wiring materials expert, was 83 when he retired for his 6th and final (?) time last year. His finances were fine, though he liked the extra income of being a very veteran contractor - his billing rate meant his morning coffee break probably earned him more than I got in a day. Very cool stories from him: stuff from the Korean War, early development of ballistic missiles, and even the coloring of warhead wiring (Hollywood, surprisingly, always gets the wire colors wrong when wiring need to be snipped to save the city and love interest from nuclear annihilation.) And he was here because he liked the job. Staying at home drove him stir crazy, and being in close quarters with his wife of 65 years drove them both crazy. So, he kept working. Heck, while I worked with him, two of his eldest kids retired (early, before 60) from law enforcement jobs.
I'm willing to bet anyone repeatedly patted on the back for being the "last original Voyager engineer" and having irreplaceable knowledge of its software was similar. He could've retired, but stuck around because he liked the job (and could bill at insane rates).
"So this 80 year old guy has been working for almost a couple of decades into retirement age and a "replacement" was only brought in 1 year ago (linked article)"
That's a good point, and all too common. My retiring coworkers tend to be leaving with no replacements in line for them, not until the last minute. I understand why: it's expensive to support a replacement doing the same job at the same time that a highly-paid veteran is still on staff. But it's a perpetual train wreck as the replacements stumble for lack of education from the pensioners they're replacing.
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