13.3 billion miles (21.4 million km)
Voyager 1 left the planet 41 years ago – and SpaceX hopes to land on Earth this Saturday
Yesterday saw the 41st anniversary of Voyager 1’s launch from the Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 41 – and SpaceX fire up its next Falcon 9 at the neighbouring Launch Complex 40 pad. Launched just after its twin, Voyager 2, the spacecraft was sent on NASA’s Grand Tour of the solar system, scooting past Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn …
COMMENTS
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Friday 7th September 2018 04:43 GMT Dagg
Long or Short
Long billion 10**12 or short billion 10**9. Since the 1950s the short scale has been increasingly used in technical writing and journalism, so this has to be assumed as the short billion.
Now approx 1.6 km per mile, so 13.3 billion miles is (13.3 * 1.6) billion km. No idea where you got 21.4 million km from....
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Friday 7th September 2018 14:27 GMT Cuddles
Re: Long or Short
"No idea where you got 21.4 million km from...."
It's almost as though two similar-sounding words that differ only by a single letter can occasionally be accidentally substituted for one another when writing. It's a shame this is such rare occurrence that we haven't invented a word to describe such typos.
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Monday 10th September 2018 11:17 GMT JimmyPage
Re: Women-give-better-directions-than-men
O'Reilly ?
From bitter experience, women are very good at adding all sorts of irrelevant details to the directions ... I mean "carry on until you get to the A454, turn left, 500 yards, your're there" is succinct. You don't need to know about any roundabouts, superstores, churches, or other landmarks on the way.
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Monday 10th September 2018 11:27 GMT onefang
Re: Women-give-better-directions-than-men
"You don't need to know about any roundabouts, superstores, churches, or other landmarks on the way."
Depends on what sort of navigator you are. Some people navigate better with landmarks than with dead reckoning.
"carry on until you get to the A454, turn left, 500 yards, your're there"
Your example includes a landmark, the A454. A superstore might be a tad more obviously visible than a street sign that says "A454".
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Monday 10th September 2018 12:19 GMT Just Enough
Re: Women-give-better-directions-than-men
"carry on until you get to the A454, turn left, 500 yards, your're there"
Which road will I be on to get to the A454?
Will it say A454 on the sign, or will it be the name of the road, or the name of the town it leads to?
How far do I go until I reach the A454? 1 mile? 50? 100? How will I know if I've missed it if I've no idea how far to go?
Do I turn left on the A454? Or turn left onto the A454? Or is the left turn simply at the same place as the A454 ?
Your succinct directions suck.
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Saturday 8th September 2018 13:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: V'ger
> Just don't put a woman in charge
Just for your info, what might have seemed funny to some audiences in a 1950s American sitcom doesn't come across as particularly witty or imaginative in 2018.
But you must know that, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to go anonymous for this one.
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Saturday 8th September 2018 17:56 GMT 404
Re: V'ger
Please don't faint, but that was good up into the 1990's.
It went:
1950's: Bam, zoom, straight to the moon physical abuse of women.
1960's: James Bond slayed more female sex symbols than you could shake a stick at... Hippies, free love.
1970's: James Bond still swinging it, Disco, Son of Sam, etc.
1980's: Weird Science: creating female sex slaves and ballistic missiles in adolescent boys bedrooms... With Computers & Modems.
1990's: Everybody is Fucking. Even Bill Clinton.
2000's: Age of the Offended. Yet everybody is fucking.
Main theme throughout all is everybody is getting laid and laughing at the same shit - except maybe in front of you.
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Thursday 6th September 2018 14:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: V'ger
@Belperite
We don't need to retrieve it. As you can see in that same documentary, it is programmed to return to Earth on its own once its data banks are full or it starts having an existential crisis about how it knows all, but why doesn't that make it happy?
Whichever comes first....
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Friday 7th September 2018 10:15 GMT Kane
Re: existential crisis about how it knows all, but why doesn't that make it happy?
"I believe that's due to the pain in its diodes down its left side."
.
Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see in infrared,
How I hate the night.
.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.
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Friday 7th September 2018 20:44 GMT MachDiamond
Re: V'ger
"We don't need to retrieve it. As you can see in that same documentary, it is programmed to return to Earth on its own once its data banks are full or it starts having an existential crisis about how it knows all, but why doesn't that make it happy?"
Is there going to be a mandate that it will have to have its own toilet provided at all public facilities?
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Friday 7th September 2018 07:35 GMT shaunhw
Re: V'ger
@Alien
" V'ger
I'm sure I saw a documentary about what will happen to that probe once. Perhaps we should launch a mission to retrieve it"
No No! We have to leave it out there for some aliens to soup it up, (hopefully without using any Microsoft stuff on it) and then for Captain Kirk to find it.
It is so written!
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Friday 7th September 2018 07:21 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Re: Voyager
"That's what happens when you let FORTRAN programmers build things"
Whereas Pascal programmers could simply choose which one would be first, as in
CONST First = 42, Last = 43;
VAR Voyager : ARRAY [First .. Last] OF SPACEPROBE ;
and given that there are just 2 Voyagers, they might have gone for Voyager FALSE, to be followed by Voyager TRUE (or actually Voyager[FALSE] and Voyager[TRUE]), which would have been really, really WRONG
I'll get me coat. The one with Jensen and Wirth's "Pascal User Manual and Report" in the pocket. please
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Thursday 6th September 2018 12:20 GMT Tony Jarvie
3.6AU per year
That sounds impressively fast, but when I worked it out (please check my maths here!) it's approximately: 334640906 miles (according to Google's conversion). Divide by around 365.25 days per year = 916,197 miles per day. Divide by 24 hours per day, and that's around 38,174 miles per hour. The ISS goes around about 17,500 mph so it's only twice as fast as the ISS, roughly speaking. (I'm assuming that the 3.4AU is approximate and that 365.25 is close enough for a year's duration). I honestly thought it would be going faster than that.
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Thursday 6th September 2018 12:53 GMT Tony Jarvie
Re: 3.6AU per year
How much is it decelerating by? Since it's in (mostly) vacuum, there wouldn't be much in the way of friction against other particles. And I wouldn't think collisions with micro-meteorites, etc. would make much of a dent in its speed. Other parts of it, yes, but not its speed! The sun's rays would presumably push it along by a tiny amount, collisions from behind by other space particles might do the same slightly, but unless it's been slowed down a lot by hitting the heliosheath / edge of the healioshpere, then what's been slowing it down? Oh, and the slingshots around planets (which the ISS obviously hasn't benefited from unless you count its orbit as a permanent slingshot around Earth) is another reason why I'd have thought it would be a lot faster than twice ISS's speed.
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