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Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with Textile from hof dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey then, everyone, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan

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Speaker 1: Strickland and I'm Lauren voc Obam. And today we wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk about something that was sent into us by

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Speaker 1: a listener. Listener Eric via Twitter said, can we talk

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Speaker 1: about Voyager? The Voyager spacecraft? And oh, how we can? Yes,

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Speaker 1: we can. So we divided this up into a few

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Speaker 1: different sections to talk about, and the first thing we

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Speaker 1: wanted to talk about was kind of what was the

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Speaker 1: purpose of the Voyager missions, which by the way, are

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Speaker 1: still going right now. But we wanted to talk about

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Speaker 1: kind of the timeline of the missions, and then we'll

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Speaker 1: get into more details about the spacecraft itself, and then

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Speaker 1: follow that up with a discussion about the science that

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Speaker 1: has been discovered by these amazing spacecraft. So, going back

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Speaker 1: to May nineteen seventy two, that's when NASA begins to

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Speaker 1: fund a mission that will involve designing, building, and launching

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Speaker 1: spacecraft that are meant to explore the outer planets of

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Speaker 1: our Solar System. And even before this, back in the

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Speaker 1: nine an engineer named Gary Flandreau noticed that sometime in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, the outer planets would be aligned planetary

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Speaker 1: alignment in such a way as to make this very possible.

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Speaker 1: And this was you know, the space program was going

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Speaker 1: and booming, and it was kind of an incredible alignment

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Speaker 1: of the stars that allowed us to write when we

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Speaker 1: had money to do this stuff. Right, So, so I

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Speaker 1: mean that planetary alignment is really what makes the voyageer

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Speaker 1: missions possible because you know, if the if the plants

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Speaker 1: were in such an alignment so that let's say that

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Speaker 1: well there's still aligned properly, they're just not viable for

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Speaker 1: us to explore. But let's say let's say like Jupiters

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Speaker 1: on one side of the Sun and Saturn's on the

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Speaker 1: other side of the Sun, it would be really tricky

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Speaker 1: to design a spacecraft trajectory that could explore both. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: and this particular alignment isn't going to occur again for

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Speaker 1: another hundred and seventy six years, so you had to

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Speaker 1: jump on the opportunity. And so in nineteen seventy two,

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Speaker 1: even though it was still years away from when this

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Speaker 1: alignment would occur, NASA gets on the ball and starts

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Speaker 1: to design this and in nineteen seventy seven they are

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Speaker 1: finished with the design, and the spacecraft they had been

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Speaker 1: designing was under the working name the Mariner Jupiter slash

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Speaker 1: Saturn nineteen seventy seven, but they decided to rename it

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a mouthful, yeahah, they called it Voyager,

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Speaker 1: And on August twenty, nineteen seventy seven, a Titan Centaur

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Speaker 1: rocket carried one of the two Voyager spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida,

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Speaker 1: into the atmosphere and ultimately into space. Which one was

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Speaker 1: it that launched first? It was Voyager two that launched first.

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Speaker 1: Which one launched second, Voyager one? Okay, So so this

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Speaker 1: this was basically for pr purposes because the way that

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Speaker 1: they were designed, Voyager one was going to do to

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Speaker 1: with trajectory. It was going to reach Jupiter first and

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Speaker 1: so start sending back images of Jupiter. You know, fingers

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Speaker 1: crossed if all goes well first, and NASA thought that

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Speaker 1: the public would be incredibly confused if if a Voyager

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Speaker 1: one launched first but got to the planets second, whereas

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Speaker 1: some for some reason, launching second and getting to the

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Speaker 1: planet first is less confusing. No one was paying attention

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Speaker 1: to the launch, yeah, goodness knows, no one pays attention

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Speaker 1: to something spectacular. Yeah, the one thing you're actually able

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Speaker 1: to watch while you're still on Earth. Uh. It still

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Speaker 1: makes me tear up every single time anything gets launched

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Speaker 1: in to space. I'm like, just humanity is so beautiful. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. I mean, when you think about what

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Speaker 1: it takes to get something into space, it is phenomenal

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Speaker 1: the amount of engineering and ingenuity that went into that.

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Speaker 1: But yes, so the Voyager to launches first. The voyage

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Speaker 1: Or one launches about sixteen days later. In fact, not

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Speaker 1: about sixteen days later, at launches nasically on September nine,

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Speaker 1: and it's using the same sort of rocket, the Titans

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Speaker 1: Centaur rocket, which, by the way, I love it. Um anyway,

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Speaker 1: the initial purpose was for these to explore the giant

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Speaker 1: planets in the Outer Solar System. Those giant planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,

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Speaker 1: and Neptune Um. Pluto of course, not a giant planet,

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Speaker 1: it does not get the treatment, not for these missions.

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Speaker 1: Forget you Pluto. And there were two separate trajectories that

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Speaker 1: were being used. Voyager one, of course, was designed so

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Speaker 1: that the trajectory was chosen so that it would reach

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Speaker 1: Jupiter first, then move on to Saturn, and then get

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Speaker 1: flung off to head toward interstellar space. Uh. Voyager too

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Speaker 1: would do a visit to all four of the giant planets.

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Speaker 1: So that's why you have the different timelines. But because

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Speaker 1: even though Voyager two launched first, for it to be

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Speaker 1: able to hit this trajectory where it was going to

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Speaker 1: pass by each of the four giants, it had to

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Speaker 1: do that at a different different Yeah. So that's the

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Speaker 1: you know. And if you were to just look at

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Speaker 1: a model of the Solar System and just spend the

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Speaker 1: plants around at the different rates, you would see like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: now I understand you would have to be really particular

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Speaker 1: about when you would launch and how you would launch

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Speaker 1: for it to be able to hit all of these

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Speaker 1: points properly. I mean, it's an amazing amount of engineering

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Speaker 1: that's required and and just math that's required to make

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Speaker 1: sure that you've got the right the right timing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it was it was kind of shady, you know,

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Speaker 1: basically until it happened, no one was sure that it

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Speaker 1: was going to happen, right and uh, and it's interesting

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Speaker 1: because the Voyager spacecraft actually used the plants themselves to

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Speaker 1: help make sure they got to where they needed to go,

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Speaker 1: but we'll get into that. It's pretty awesome though. So

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Speaker 1: moving down the timeline, they they've launched in nineteen seventy seven.

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Speaker 1: Almost two years later, on March five, Edger one has

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Speaker 1: its closest approach to Jupiter and it captures a lot

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Speaker 1: of images of Jupiter and Jupiter's moons. Uh. And then

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Speaker 1: July nine nine, so same year, that's when Voyager two

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Speaker 1: passes closest to Jupiter. Uh. Then we go to the

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Speaker 1: next year. On November twelve, Voyager one has its closest

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Speaker 1: approach to Saturn, and then it begins its trip out

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Speaker 1: of the Solar System, saying so long, suckers, and starts

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Speaker 1: heading off into the Well. It would be the sunset,

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Speaker 1: except it can't be at the opposite of the sunset, right,

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Speaker 1: It's not the sunrise either. That's that would normally be

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Speaker 1: the opposite of a sunset, the sun diminishing into a

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Speaker 1: tinier ball. I guess not nearly as poetic, but auguste

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Speaker 1: that's when Voyager two gets its closest approach to saturny.

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Speaker 1: But of course Voyager two is not flung off into

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Speaker 1: in our interstellar space right away. Instead, it is then

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Speaker 1: heading toward Urinus, which it passes closest to on January

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Speaker 1: nineteen eight six. So it took five years for Voyager

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Speaker 1: two to go from Saturn to Uranus uh, and it

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Speaker 1: would take um it would take a few more years

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Speaker 1: before it would like five well three more years, I'm sorry,

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Speaker 1: three more years before it would get close to Neptune.

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Speaker 1: But before we get to that point, seven, Voyager two

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Speaker 1: observes the supernova nineteen eight Voyager returns the first color

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Speaker 1: images of Neptune, so that Voyager two that is so

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Speaker 1: it's getting closer to Neptune's still not the closest it

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Speaker 1: will be, but that's when we first started getting color

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Speaker 1: images of Neptune back from Voyager, and on August nine,

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Speaker 1: Voyager two as its closest approach to Neptune. And that

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Speaker 1: concludes the primary mission of the of both Voyager spacecraft.

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Speaker 1: That primary mission being the exploration of those outer planets.

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Speaker 1: So the cost of the missions from nineteen seventy two

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Speaker 1: to the time when they finished their mission their primary

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Speaker 1: mission was eight hundred sixty five million dollars. Now, NASA

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Speaker 1: points out that if you break this down by the

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Speaker 1: population of the United States and year over year that's

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Speaker 1: about eight cents per person per year. So it's shappy.

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Speaker 1: It's essentially saying like, look, really, in the grand scheme,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot of money. Then the grand

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Speaker 1: scheme of things, this is just a tiny investment. So

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Speaker 1: look at these Saturn Yeah. Uh, keep keep calm and

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Speaker 1: keep exploring, is what they said. I hate that name anyway.

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Speaker 1: So the that that million dollars included everything. It included

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Speaker 1: the expense of the launch vehicles, the radioactive power source,

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Speaker 1: which we'll get to talk about in a little bit. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and and just the maintaining of the missions. By nine,

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Speaker 1: Voyager one was heading toward interstellar space. And on Valentine's

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Speaker 1: Day in nineteen nine, we get the final images from Voyager,

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Speaker 1: which is a portrait of the cell system. Happy Valentine's Day,

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Speaker 1: I gave you the Solar system. Sweet. Three days later

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Speaker 1: February I'm sorry, three days in eight years later on

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Speaker 1: fas I should read the year before I read the day,

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Speaker 1: February sevent have all my notes in front of me.

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Speaker 1: It's just, you know, my typing and viewing skills are

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Speaker 1: apparently there's something to be desired. February seventeenth, the Voyager

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Speaker 1: one passes the Pioneer ten, which had obviously been launched previously,

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Speaker 1: and so that makes the Voyager one the most distant

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Speaker 1: human made object in space. It is still to this

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Speaker 1: day the most distant human made object in space. It's

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Speaker 1: actually most distant stir than it was because it keeps

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Speaker 1: going that well, I figured it might as well measure

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Speaker 1: up to my reading and comprehension skills. De Sceumber fifteen,

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Speaker 1: two thousand four. Voyager one crosses the termination shock combination shock.

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Speaker 1: This is this is pretty cool. Guy into the Heliu sheath. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So here's here's some things that you need to know

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Speaker 1: about our wacky little solar system. Here, you might ask,

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Speaker 1: what's the edge of the Solar System? Is it Pluto? No, No,

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Speaker 1: it's not Pluto. Well, I mean again, it all depends

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Speaker 1: on how you're defining the edge of the Solar System.

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Speaker 1: But the way NASA defines it, Nope, not Pluto, you

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Speaker 1: might especially since it's not it's still on a planet,

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Speaker 1: right now, that's not it's a dwarf planet. There's that,

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Speaker 1: never mind, there's yeah, it's you know, it's Pluto is

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Speaker 1: right there with happy, sneezy, sleepy Adobe doc bashful uh

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Speaker 1: so termination shock. That's that's the point where the solar

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Speaker 1: wind particles start to slow down. They were traveling essentially

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Speaker 1: at kind of the speed of sound would be, but anyway,

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Speaker 1: they're traveling really fast. They start slowing down because you

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Speaker 1: can think of the solar wind as this, uh, this

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Speaker 1: force that pushes outward from the Sun. All right, Now,

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Speaker 1: think of the interstellar space kind of having its own pressure. Sure,

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Speaker 1: it's sort of like air pressure. It's pushing in on

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Speaker 1: the solar syde of magnetic fields instead of air pressure.

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Speaker 1: So there exactly, they're not air particles. It's all we're talking.

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Speaker 1: There are particles out in space, but that's that's a

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Speaker 1: different thing anyway. So the solar wind is pressing against

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Speaker 1: these these other pressures. So once you get to the

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Speaker 1: point where the solar wind is slowing down, that's the

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Speaker 1: termination shock. Right, there's kind of a boundary with a

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Speaker 1: with a shock wave there and also still not the

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Speaker 1: edge of the Solar system. Also, you also have the heliosphere.

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Speaker 1: Now this is where we still have we still have

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Speaker 1: evidence of the solar wind within the heliosphere. Then you

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Speaker 1: have the helio pause, which is the very boundary of

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Speaker 1: where the solar wind is and that still is not

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Speaker 1: the edge of the Solar System, not according to NASA.

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Speaker 1: According to NASA, really we need to think of the

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Speaker 1: edge of the Solar System as being an area where

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Speaker 1: the Sun's gravitational poll has no greater effect on you

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Speaker 1: than any other particular celestial body out there. So, in

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Speaker 1: other words, you aren't being pulled towards the Solar System

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Speaker 1: at that point anymore than you're being pulled towards some

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Speaker 1: other point, right, Yeah, so that that area is ill

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Speaker 1: defined by the very nature of gravity. But um, that

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Speaker 1: would take us a very long time to get there,

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Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that when we get into the

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Speaker 1: science section. So anyway, termination shock has all these fluctuating

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Speaker 1: magnetic fields due to the change and the speed of

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Speaker 1: the Solar wind, and that's kind of why it's called

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Speaker 1: what it's called. And Voyager one, like I said, crossed

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Speaker 1: it on December two thousand four and begins to encounter

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Speaker 1: the interstellar medium. That doesn't mean that it's in interstellar

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Speaker 1: space yet, but starting to encounter the particles that would

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Speaker 1: be an interstellar space. September five, two thousand seven, three

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Speaker 1: years later, that's when Voyager two catches up and crosses

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Speaker 1: the termination shock at a totally different point. By the way,

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Speaker 1: these two spacecraft are in two totally different sections of

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Speaker 1: no nowhere near each other anymore, not at all. And

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Speaker 1: in in July and two thousand twelve, Voyager one enters

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Speaker 1: a new region of space which is still inside the

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Speaker 1: Solar System. It's another region of the helio heliosphere helio

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Speaker 1: sheaf called a magnetic highway YEP. And the directions of

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Speaker 1: the particles that it's encountering are beginning to change, which

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Speaker 1: suggests that the spacecraft is at the very edge of

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Speaker 1: the heliosphere. And UM engineers didn't expect that the data

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Speaker 1: that they got back. They thought that it would have

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Speaker 1: passed beyond this point earlier, which just tells us that

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Speaker 1: our Solar system is actually larger. We thought that the

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Speaker 1: Sun is more powerful than we previously expected. It never

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Speaker 1: underestimate the power of the Sun. It can turn me

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Speaker 1: read in a matter of minutes, very susceptible to that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. So yeah, that's we've already talked about

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Speaker 1: how they have They left at different times in their

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Speaker 1: pathways meant that they are traveling in different directions and

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Speaker 1: different at different speeds. Uh, and they visited different you know,

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Speaker 1: like the Voyager two visited two more planets than Voyager

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Speaker 1: one did. We talked about how the planets helped move

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Speaker 1: the spacecraft and direct the spacecraft. So, if you guys

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Speaker 1: have seen science fiction films like Star Trek for the

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Speaker 1: Voyage Home, where they sling shot around the Sun, they're

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Speaker 1: actually using the Sun's gravity to kind of accelerate a

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Speaker 1: ship to the point where it can travel back in time.

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Speaker 1: I don't understand that. By the way, if you've got

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Speaker 1: warp speed, you technically anyway, that's another episode. We already

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Speaker 1: did that episode, Yes we did. But anyway, they use

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Speaker 1: it to slingshot around the Sun, which magically lets them

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Speaker 1: travel back in time. There's some truth to that in

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Speaker 1: the sense that we have used that same kind of

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Speaker 1: principle with designing the voyage or spacecraft. Right. What we

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Speaker 1: what we kind of realized is that if you okay,

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Speaker 1: you're you're you're moving towards the planet, you're a probe okay,

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Speaker 1: and uh, as you move towards the planet, you're going

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Speaker 1: to start accelerating as the planet's gravitational pull starts pulling

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Speaker 1: you in. Right, if you only kind of graze by it.

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Speaker 1: Then hypothetically you'll decelerate on the way out because you're

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Speaker 1: losing energy to that gravitational pull. Right. And by the way,

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Speaker 1: because of the concert vation of energy, technically the planet's

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Speaker 1: orbit actually slows sure infanticimally, Yeah, it's uh see, I've

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Speaker 1: got wait wait, wait, I have it written down. I

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Speaker 1: know I've got it written down. It's something like, uh,

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Speaker 1: one foot in a trillion years. Well, but hey, that

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Speaker 1: is an impact you are, you are making a difference,

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Speaker 1: But that Jupiter is going to be a little late

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Speaker 1: to its to its appointment in one trillion years. Right. However,

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Speaker 1: because planets are moving in their orbits, if you are

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Speaker 1: going on the same trajectory as a planet's orbit, you

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Speaker 1: can pick up that orbital speed as you slingshot around

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Speaker 1: the planet. Ye, And so that that has allowed the

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Speaker 1: Voyager spacecraft to get propulsion from one planet to the

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Speaker 1: next without having to have massive thrusters on board. In fact,

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Speaker 1: when we get to the actual description of the spacecraft,

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Speaker 1: you'll find out that their thrusters are not incredibly powerful

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Speaker 1: at all, but they were able to use the power

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Speaker 1: of gravity to direct and propel themselves to as large

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Speaker 1: as as Jupiter. You know, it's moving through space at

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Speaker 1: something like thirty thousand miles per hour forty eight thousand

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Speaker 1: kilometers and uh yeah, so so and and that's yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a completely free energy boost of about that much speed.

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Speaker 1: According to NASA, because of the use of planetary gravity,

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Speaker 1: Voyager too ended up having a fuel economy of about

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Speaker 1: thirteen thousand kilometers per leader or thirty thousand miles per gallon.

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Speaker 1: That's efficient. That beats That beats my car. That's highway miles,

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Speaker 1: city miles. They did not give me, so I don't

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Speaker 1: I don't know how it would do in the city. Uh. There,

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Speaker 1: the Voyager two's flight path got a look, like we said,

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Speaker 1: at all four of the giant plants, um and uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's a couple of billion miles further inside the

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Speaker 1: Solar System than the Voyager one, So the Voyager one

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Speaker 1: got a kind of a head start into interstellar space. Um. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it is more than eleven billion or seventeen point

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Speaker 1: seven eleven billion miles or seventeen point seven billion anometers

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Speaker 1: away from the Sun at this point, more than eighteen

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Speaker 1: as of as of today. There's there's there's a tracker

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Speaker 1: on on NASA nice where you can check all this out.

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Speaker 1: So uh and and uh. At that distance, it takes

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Speaker 1: hours for a for data to go from the spacecraft

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Speaker 1: to be picked up here on Earth. About seventeen hours. Wow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that's a long time. The way that let me

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Speaker 1: let me find my note on it that it's really

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Speaker 1: interesting the way that they receive those radio signals because

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Speaker 1: they're they're pretty far away, they're getting increasingly difficult to

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Speaker 1: detect all the times. They have a whole series of

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Speaker 1: two and thirty ft radio dishes right specifically to pull

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Speaker 1: Voyager data. These are the deep space antenna that they

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Speaker 1: have to pick up this information. Um and uh. And

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Speaker 1: they actually upgraded those over the course of the life

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Speaker 1: of the Voyager program. When they first started, they were

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Speaker 1: significantly smaller and they didn't have to be as big

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Speaker 1: because the Voyager spacecraft were relative leak closer to the Earth. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And now now we've got to a point where we

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Speaker 1: keep upgrading the antenna so that we can continue to

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Speaker 1: pick up these increasingly weak signals. So it's pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: According to NASA, the missions from Earth to Neptune required

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Speaker 1: the equivalent of eleven thousand work years of human work

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Speaker 1: eleven thousand work years, which they said there's only a

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Speaker 1: third of what it took to build the Great Pyramid.

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Speaker 1: So well, hey, so you know we're slacking, you know, really,

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Speaker 1: they're just saying, look how much more efficient we are.

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Speaker 1: They were piling up rocks, we were sending spacecraft into space.

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Speaker 1: Um and uh and again we've learned that the Solar

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Speaker 1: System is actually larger than what we have previously anticipated.

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Speaker 1: And um so, by the time the Voyager two flew

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Speaker 1: by Neptune, the two spacecraft together had transmitted about five

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Speaker 1: trillion bits of scientific data back at Earth and it

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Speaker 1: was someone's job to look at all that. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: the deep space tracking antennas are the ones we were

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Speaker 1: talking about earlier that have been up aid several times,

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Speaker 1: and that that kind of a that's the brief overview

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Speaker 1: of the mission. And next we're going to take a

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Speaker 1: look at the spacecraft itself and also some kind of

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Speaker 1: cool records that are above the two spacecraft. But before

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Speaker 1: we do that, let's take a quick pause to thank

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Speaker 1: our sponsored Okay, let's talk about the actual spacecraft for

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Speaker 1: a minute. We know what they were supposed to do

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Speaker 1: and what they have done. Um So, Uh. And one

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Speaker 1: thing I did not mention, I guess is that the

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Speaker 1: whole inner interstellar travel stuff that's totally planned as well,

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Speaker 1: in fact, has been added on as a secondary mission.

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Speaker 1: The primary mission was the outer planets. Secondary is what's

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Speaker 1: up with this interstellar stuff? We don't know anything about. Well,

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Speaker 1: they realize that their power sources would work until about

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Speaker 1: and so figured well, hey, let's just kind of roll

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Speaker 1: with it. Yeah. Yeah, So that's five. That's about when

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Speaker 1: we expect the power resources to be to the point

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Speaker 1: where they can no longer power the transmitter to send

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Speaker 1: us back that uh, And we'll talk about that. That's

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Speaker 1: one of the things that that's interesting about this spacecraft.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of interesting things. So both of them, uh,

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Speaker 1: because because they're identical, Yes, they are identical. So each

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Speaker 1: one of them weighs just under a ton, and now

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Speaker 1: when they were on top of the the launch vehicle,

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Speaker 1: they weighed a lot more than that. But the spacecraft

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Speaker 1: themselves are just under a ton each unearthed obviously its weight,

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Speaker 1: it's all relative to where you are. Uh. And they

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Speaker 1: are each made up of about sixty five foulsand individual parts.

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Speaker 1: But these parts are often made up of tinier components.

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Speaker 1: So they have a term they use which is equivalent parts.

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Speaker 1: And equivalent parts means like if you were to look at,

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Speaker 1: for example, if I were to say my computer is

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Speaker 1: part uh is one part of the equipment that I use,

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Speaker 1: someone else could point out, well, that computer has multiple

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Speaker 1: chips in it, and those chips have transistors, and so

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Speaker 1: really that one part is a representation of lots and

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Speaker 1: lots and lots of parts. So NASA was like, well,

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Speaker 1: if you want to know how many equivalent parts there are,

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Speaker 1: there about five million of them. Compare that to your

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Speaker 1: old standard definition color television there'd be about two thousand,

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Speaker 1: five D equivalent parts. So lots more than a color TV,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of what you want when you're space. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you need a little bit more than than your average

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Speaker 1: standard definition color television, I would hope. So, yeah, also

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Speaker 1: larger than your standard yes, well, unless you're a crazy

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Speaker 1: rich person. The main body is a is a ten

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Speaker 1: sided box that's about six ft or one point eight

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Speaker 1: meters across, and that's where the fuel tank, the and

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Speaker 1: and some of the electronic instruments. And we'll talk about

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Speaker 1: those instruments. There are a lot of them. Yeah, they're uh,

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Speaker 1: they were. They both have areas that are hardened against

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Speaker 1: radiation and shielded. And the reason for that is obviously

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Speaker 1: that when you go into space, you are going to

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Speaker 1: encou ter things that you would not encounter here on

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Speaker 1: the surface of the planet. And the reason for that

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Speaker 1: is that the Earth atmosphere and magnetos sphere mag magnetosphere

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Speaker 1: sphere still makes me think that we're watching x men.

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Speaker 1: I would say, I would say magnetosphere, you would butt sphere.

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Speaker 1: It is the sphere in which magneto travels, and it's

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Speaker 1: also a magnetic field that surrounds the Earth, penetrates and

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Speaker 1: binds us together like the force. Now, what it does

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Speaker 1: is it actually repels certain types of waves and particles,

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Speaker 1: which allows us to remain. Yeah, we do. We're not

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Speaker 1: being bombarded by cosmic radiation or gamma rays or things

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Speaker 1: like that, because that would be a much worse sunburned

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Speaker 1: than that other saurn than we were talking. The combination

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Speaker 1: of the of our atmosphere and the magnetosphere or magnetosphere

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Speaker 1: protects us and so the thing is that when you're

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Speaker 1: out in space, you don't have the benefit of that protection.

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Speaker 1: So that's why both of them have these these shielding

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Speaker 1: areas and casings that are hardened against radiation to protect

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Speaker 1: them if they were to encounter any of these waves

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Speaker 1: or particles. Clearly very important, interesting little side fact. So

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Speaker 1: Earth has a magnetosphere, Mars doesn't, so if we were

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Speaker 1: to make a colony on Mars we would not have

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Speaker 1: that protection that we would we need to compensate for

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Speaker 1: it in some way, right, So you wouldn't want to

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Speaker 1: go on any long strolls on the Martian soil without

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Speaker 1: some serious protection. So that's all of those all of

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Speaker 1: those fashionable space bikinis that were that were really popular

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Speaker 1: back in the nineties would not probably be good. The

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Speaker 1: interesting thing I heard was I was, I was listening,

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Speaker 1: and I'll go ahead. It was a Skeptics Guide to

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Speaker 1: the Universe. A great podcast. Has no affiliation with us,

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Speaker 1: but they are fantastic, very fun, interesting educational podcasts. They

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Speaker 1: had a recent episode where um, they had an astronomer

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Speaker 1: on talking about things like Mars, and they were even

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Speaker 1: talking about all right, let's let's look into a science

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Speaker 1: fiction future where we can terraform Mars, so we're able

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Speaker 1: to transform Mars so that the actual surfaces habitable and

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Speaker 1: even then because of the lack of the magnetosphere, you

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Speaker 1: would still be prone to things like cosmic radiation, gamma radiation,

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Speaker 1: you would you would still be vulnerable with that, so

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Speaker 1: you would not be able to terraform it for any

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Speaker 1: extended length of time. Eventually that stuff would kill the

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Speaker 1: life on that planet. Right, because things like gamma radiation,

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00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:26,880
Speaker 1: for example, aren't as cool is for example to enage

427
00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: meeting ninch turtles make it sound or most mostly you

428
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:33,760
Speaker 1: just die. Yeah, yeah, it's not. It's not attractive. In fact,

429
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 1: uh NASA said that because of the distance from the

430
00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 1: the the Voyager spacecraft passed close enough to Jupiter that

431
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 1: it received more than a thousand times the radiation that

432
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:48,920
Speaker 1: would be a lethal level of radiation for human being. Yeah,

433
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 1: for a human person. Yes, um, So, moving on to

434
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:57,119
Speaker 1: more things that are on board this these spacecraft. It

435
00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:59,120
Speaker 1: has a it has a twelve foot or a three

436
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: point seven me are high gain antenna which looks like

437
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:05,120
Speaker 1: a satellite dish. Yeah, this is what allows it to

438
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:08,719
Speaker 1: transmit and receive data to and from Earth and no

439
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:11,920
Speaker 1: matter where it goes, the the antenna is programmed to

440
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:14,960
Speaker 1: always point towards Earth. Yes, that's it's actually got a

441
00:25:15,040 --> 00:25:20,399
Speaker 1: gyroscopic UH system so that no matter how it's oriented,

442
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: it can it can readjust its attitude so that the

443
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:26,840
Speaker 1: UH the antenna is pointing towards us, so we can

444
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:29,840
Speaker 1: have the best chants possible to pick up those radio transmissions.

445
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:33,360
Speaker 1: UM it has a lot of different instruments aboard, including

446
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:37,119
Speaker 1: besides the high gain antenna, it's got a low energy

447
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:41,360
Speaker 1: charged particle instrument and ultra violet spectrometer which currently only

448
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: the voyager one is using to collect data. Has both

449
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: narrow and wide angle imaging instruments also known as cameras.

450
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 1: It's got a fancy, fancy eight hundred eight hundred cameras

451
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,159
Speaker 1: because this has launched in the nineteen seventies and that

452
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,480
Speaker 1: seemed pretty cool at the time. UH as a cosmic

453
00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: ray instruments so it can detect and measure cosmic rays,

454
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:06,680
Speaker 1: a photopolarimeter, which I have no idea what it does.

455
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: I was. I ran into it and I thought that's

456
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 1: really cool, and I never actually looked more into it

457
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:14,880
Speaker 1: because I was lucky that I could say it. There's

458
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: an infrared interfometer spectrometer UH, and optical calibration targeting system,

459
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 1: a planetary radio astronomy and plasma wave antenna. Each spacecraft

460
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: have its two of those UM and also known as

461
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: the Planetary Radio Astronomy Instrument or p r A has

462
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: the plasma instrument. Voyager ones plasma instrument is non functional,

463
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:39,439
Speaker 1: but all other instruments are in working order, and Voyager

464
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 1: two is still collecting data through its plasma instruments. It's

465
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: got UH. It also gets its power from three radioisotope

466
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:53,400
Speaker 1: thermoelectric generators and currently it gets about three and fifteen

467
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,199
Speaker 1: lots of power. Now, the spacecraft are designed so that

468
00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 1: all of their systems can operate at about four hundreds

469
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: of power, so it's able to UH. It's still getting power,

470
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: but it's not enough power to operate everything, and in

471
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: fact they designed the Voyager spacecraft with this in mind,

472
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: the idea being that as the power as the power

473
00:27:14,520 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 1: supply begins to decrease, it begins to shut down unnecessary instruments.

474
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:25,640
Speaker 1: So originally there were eleven different UM projects that were

475
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:28,960
Speaker 1: involved in gathering data from the Voyager systems and processing

476
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 1: that data here on Earth. There were eleven of them. Currently,

477
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: only five of them are still in operation because the

478
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: other systems have been progressively shut down to make sure

479
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: that the Voyager spacecraft can still send us information. And

480
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:46,439
Speaker 1: like you said, by five or so, that's when we

481
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 1: expect the power to have run down enough where we're

482
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get any more information

483
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 1: from them, because it's just not gonna have the power

484
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 1: necessary to broadcast right right, Well, because the way that

485
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 1: this this engine of sorts works is that pellets of

486
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 1: plutonium dioxide release through their own natural decay process, and

487
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 1: so once they have finished decaying, that's it. Yeah, yeah,

488
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:12,360
Speaker 1: that's true. And then I forgot also some magnet magnetometer boom,

489
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 1: which is designed to to measure magnetic fields. So that

490
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: was one of those things we didn't really know a

491
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 1: lot about the magnetic fields of the old planets before

492
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:22,920
Speaker 1: we sent these these spacecraft up. That's one of the

493
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:25,439
Speaker 1: really huge sources of information that it is it has

494
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,639
Speaker 1: sent us. And uh so, then it has a flight

495
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: data subsystem which handles all the information, and it has

496
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:35,879
Speaker 1: an eight track digital tape recorder, So you've got an

497
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,800
Speaker 1: eight track up there. It's uh so, the FDS configures controls,

498
00:28:39,800 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 1: collects data from the various instruments, and the tape recorder

499
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: handles the data from the plasma wave subsystem because that's

500
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 1: the one that gets the highest density of data and

501
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 1: the shortest amount of time. So the data tape recorder

502
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: was the cutting edge technology to handle that that information.

503
00:28:57,520 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: And according to NASA, the tape in the digital record

504
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 1: or won't wear out until the tape has moved back

505
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 1: and forth through a distance that is equivalent to the

506
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:08,040
Speaker 1: width of the United States. Uh. That is not terribly

507
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:11,960
Speaker 1: um precise, because the United States is not a perfect rectangle,

508
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 1: but in general, I would say that's probably about three

509
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 1: thousand miles, which is around four thousand, eight hundred kilometers.

510
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: I assume what they mean is that it's it's doing fine. Yeah,

511
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: So what they're saying is that that tape is capable

512
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: of traveling that collective amount of distance without breaking. So

513
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 1: you've got to remember the tape itself is not that long.

514
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:32,880
Speaker 1: It's just saying that they would you know, by the

515
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:34,560
Speaker 1: time you would go through all this tape and is

516
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: worn out, you could have gone all the way across

517
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: the United States using that same distance of tape being

518
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 1: played through. Just kind of that's kind of impressive. There

519
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: has a command computer subsystem which provides sequencing and control functions,

520
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: which includes fault detection, corrective routines, antenna pointing data, and

521
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 1: spacecraft sequencing data. The fault detection involves seven top level

522
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 1: fault protection routines and each one is able to detect

523
00:30:00,520 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: and correct for several possible failures. Basically, it just means

524
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: that there's the computer has multiple modules and they compare

525
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: data back and forth between each other and and it

526
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,840
Speaker 1: will decide if if one module is differing from the others,

527
00:30:14,840 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 1: that that one's faulty and to cut it out of

528
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 1: the system. Yes, And it also means that both of

529
00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: the spacecraft are capable of shutting down systems if it

530
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: needs to automatically autonomously, because which is so important, because

531
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 1: we can't broadcast to these things. They broadcast to us,

532
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 1: but they don't have receivers. Their antenna could receive information. Yeah,

533
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: but it means that it would take seventeen hours for

534
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: the information to get to us, in seventeen hours for

535
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: the information to get back and by then whatever the

536
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: problem was is probably not the biggest issue at that point, right, So, yeah,

537
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 1: that it's important to have something to connect autonomously if

538
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 1: if you know, if the communication is a barrier the

539
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: same sort of thing with the Curiosity Rover when it

540
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: was landing on the surface of Mars. You know, a

541
00:30:57,400 --> 00:30:59,480
Speaker 1: lot of that landing. In fact, all of the landing

542
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: was auto a miss because there was no time for

543
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: us to send any adjustments to the system. It's like

544
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: you're on your own. Yeah, by the time we would

545
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:08,719
Speaker 1: be able to send an adjustment, it would have already

546
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:12,400
Speaker 1: either crashed or landed safely. So you had to design

547
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: a spacecraft that could do this or else it just

548
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: wouldn't work. Pretty impressive in the nineteen seventies for for

549
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: the amount of computing power that was going. Oh yeah, definitely.

550
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: And it also had an attitude in art or still has.

551
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm using the past tense. It's

552
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 1: still out there. The Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem, which

553
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 1: is also known the A A c S. It's in

554
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 1: charge of maintain the spacecraft orientation and positions the scan platform.

555
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: So this is what we're talking about. The system that's

556
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: that's in charge of making sure that that antenna has

557
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: pointed back at Earth and also that the scan platform,

558
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 1: which is really you know, the instrumentation panel's pointing in

559
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: the right direction to get the data that needs and

560
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:53,479
Speaker 1: uh it's yeah, it's got a three access stabilization system

561
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: and use the celestial or gyro referenced attitude control to

562
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: make the high gain antenna point back to Earth. Now,

563
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: we talked about the fact that there is an interesting

564
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: gold plated copper disc on board each of the two

565
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: Voyager spacecraft, right, the Golden records they're referred to. Yes,

566
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 1: so this is uh, this was a really cool idea.

567
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: You know who, of course, was the chairman for this,

568
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan. Yes, he he had billions and billions of suggestions,

569
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: but not all of them can make it onto the

570
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 1: disc obviously, right. And these are these are these these

571
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: gold plated copper discs engraved like vinyl records. Yeah. Yeah,

572
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: And kids ask your parents, no, dear, no, no, no.

573
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 1: Kids are hipsters these days. They know they know things

574
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 1: about vinyl. It's cool. Kids, tell your older siblings because

575
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 1: they missed down the whole hipster generation. Um. Alright, so,

576
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: so yeah, you're talking about a disk that has physical

577
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 1: grooves that are in it that can be read using

578
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 1: a stylist and cartridge, which which were included. They included

579
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 1: the cartridge and stylists. They did not include a turntable,

580
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 1: so aliens aliens out, they have to build it. But

581
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 1: they did leave instructions written in a symbolic language to say,

582
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 1: here's how you would construct something that would be able

583
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: to play these things. They were there twelve inches in diameter,

584
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: and they are designed to be played back at sixteen

585
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 1: and two thirds revolutions per minute, so actually fairly slowly.

586
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we think about the uh, the

587
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: forty five or thirty three revolutions per minute for for

588
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 1: your average albums, and this is a sixteen and two thirds.

589
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: So on these Golden Records are lots and lots of stuff. Actually,

590
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 1: um it's including things like greetings from in fifty five

591
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 1: different languages, including some that aren't being used anymore, and

592
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: they have not been used in a very long time,

593
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:43,760
Speaker 1: like a Kadian, which is a Sumerian language which was

594
00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:47,719
Speaker 1: last used around four thousand BC, a selection of nature

595
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: sounds yep, yep. So if you ever wanted to hear

596
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: what frogs burping sounded like, and you were from from

597
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: some distant planet, here's an opportunity to a lot of

598
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,120
Speaker 1: So you're for Ford Prefect and you're on your way

599
00:34:00,120 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: to Earth. This is a good way to do some

600
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: homework before you get there. All right, a lot of

601
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: traditional music, some some Native American chance and Scottish bagpipes.

602
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 1: I've got to talk about some of the music that's

603
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 1: on here for African ritual music. There's a bunch of

604
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: classical music, all right. So I wrote down some of

605
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 1: my favorites. This is, this is. Obviously, there are lots

606
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 1: and lots of musical tracks that are on the records.

607
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:23,960
Speaker 1: These are just the ones that I personally wrote down

608
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 1: because I I they resonate with me. It's not to

609
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: say that the other ones are not as good, right,

610
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: I may not be familiar with some of them. But

611
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: there's the Brandenburg Concerto number two in f Actually it's

612
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: just the first movement. That's by a guy named Batch.

613
00:34:40,200 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: Johann Batch wrote that, Um, if you've heard he's just

614
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 1: some dude. Really yeah yeah, obviously box Brandenburg Concerto number

615
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:51,799
Speaker 1: two and f uh. Then there's a Melancholy Blues which

616
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:55,720
Speaker 1: was performed by Louis Armstrong. Stravinsky's The Right of Spring

617
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 1: was included. Bok actually was pretty well represented on this record.

618
00:34:59,880 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 1: He also had the well tempered Clavia on there. There

619
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: was the first moment of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, you know,

620
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:09,240
Speaker 1: the da da uh. There was a Navajo tribes chant

621
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:13,280
Speaker 1: and then of course the most important I think musical

622
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:15,920
Speaker 1: work that was included out of all the pieces that

623
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: were on there. As as we all know from the

624
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 1: documentary Back to the Future, It's saved Marty McFly, It'll

625
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 1: save the human race. We're talking about Chuck Berry's Johnny

626
00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: be Good. Yeah. Um, there's actually a book all about

627
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,279
Speaker 1: the process that they used to select which sounds went

628
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 1: on the Golden Record, right, Yeah. It finally came out

629
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:40,239
Speaker 1: with a CD companion at some point. I'm sure it's

630
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:42,840
Speaker 1: on digital. The book itself is out of print, but

631
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: you can sometimes find copies. It is called Murmurs from Earth,

632
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: So if you want to learn more about how they

633
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:54,040
Speaker 1: came about choosing which sounds go in there. Um, that's

634
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:57,160
Speaker 1: it's it's a really well done piece. It's it's something

635
00:35:57,200 --> 00:35:59,040
Speaker 1: that I've I've heard nothing but good things about it.

636
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:01,920
Speaker 1: I personally have not had chance to read it. By

637
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: the time I learned about it was running on a print,

638
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 1: so it's kind But there's also a bunch of images

639
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 1: on the desks, including a star map clearly showing the

640
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 1: location of Earth. Here's what humans taste like maps of

641
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:19,279
Speaker 1: Earth images. I'm just I'm just ignoring that entirely. There

642
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: are people who have said, what a huge mistake it

643
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:26,440
Speaker 1: was to essentially include directions directly, and I think, well,

644
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty ridiculous because the odds of anyone

645
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: in the odds of anyone finding the voyager space as

646
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:36,359
Speaker 1: big as it turns out, really big, no, no, no,

647
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:39,600
Speaker 1: bigger than that. Not. You might think it's a long

648
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 1: walk to the chemist style on the corner, but that's

649
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:44,279
Speaker 1: just nuts compared to space. But it's going to be

650
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of years before either the voyager craft

651
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: encounter anything near another star. Yeah, exactly. So really, by

652
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: the time, I'm betting we will have either kill ourselves

653
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:59,719
Speaker 1: off or hit the Singularity. And and plus on top

654
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,719
Speaker 1: of that, you know, it would all depend on from

655
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 1: one direction the other creatures were approaching Earth, because I mean,

656
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:09,319
Speaker 1: there's there are a lot of different vectors you could take,

657
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 1: and only a couple of them would intersect with the

658
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: pathway of either voyagers, way more vectors than most science

659
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: fiction movies are willing to acknowledge. There's more than just

660
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 1: ship spaceship battles than just the single plane. Yeah. Uh.

661
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 1: So there was also an hour long recording of the

662
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 1: brain waves of a woman named Anne Druian, who would

663
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:33,359
Speaker 1: become Carl Sagan's wife. Yep, she's an author. She concentrates

664
00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: mainly on cosmology and science, and she she signed up

665
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: for this. She volunteered to have her brain waves reported. Yes,

666
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:41,640
Speaker 1: she and Carl Sagan had talked about it, and she

667
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:43,840
Speaker 1: thought it was a really interesting idea, and so she

668
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:47,800
Speaker 1: went in for the process where her brain was waves

669
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:51,280
Speaker 1: and her heartbeat were read and then transferred into data

670
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: analog data, we have to say, because it's an analog

671
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 1: disc and um. She says that what she did was

672
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: she she thought about big historic whole moments that were

673
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 1: very important in the development of human history. And then

674
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:07,959
Speaker 1: she spent some time thinking about the current situation on Earth,

675
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 1: how what that's like the thing and and not sugarcoating it,

676
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: things like violence between people and the Yeah. So she

677
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: really spent some time thinking about things that she felt

678
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:22,560
Speaker 1: needed to be addressed. And then she said that she

679
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: took the liberty towards the end of the session to

680
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: take a little bit of time and think about what

681
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 1: it's like to fall in love, which I think is amazing.

682
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:32,360
Speaker 1: It's the most wonderful suite. Yea. Yeah, so now we

683
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:34,880
Speaker 1: those aliens can't tell us they don't know how to

684
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: love because she thought about it for for a while,

685
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,919
Speaker 1: darn it. Um. So, yeah, those radio signals do take

686
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,560
Speaker 1: a long time to get to us. So but uh,

687
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 1: and and the record that's on there, if you want

688
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:51,160
Speaker 1: to hear some of the stuff, Uh, there are there

689
00:38:51,200 --> 00:38:52,919
Speaker 1: are a lot of different sites out there that that

690
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: keep all the things that aren't on there. It tells

691
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: you what's there, and most of that's pretty easy to

692
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 1: get access to and listen to. You. I'll try it.

693
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 1: We'll try to find one and link it up on social. Yeah,

694
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 1: we'll see if we can find something. And you know,

695
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:06,920
Speaker 1: maybe I'll see if I can make it a Spotify

696
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: playlist or something. Get a ukulele and play Johnny be

697
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 1: Good on the ukulele. That's uh, that would probably be

698
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: Johnny Please Stop. That would be the name of that song. Alright.

699
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: So um, anyway, that's that's kind of the the wrap

700
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 1: up of the spacecraft and the stuff that was aborted.

701
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 1: But we still haven't talked about the actual science that's returned.

702
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: So we're going to do that in just a moment,

703
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:30,759
Speaker 1: but before we do, let's take a quick moment to

704
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: thank our other sponsor. Okay, so we've talked about what

705
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:36,399
Speaker 1: the mission was, we talked about the spacecraft. Let's talk

706
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: about what the spacecraft found. So, out of the eleven

707
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:43,240
Speaker 1: investigation teams that were originally involved in the Voyager mission,

708
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, only five of them are still supported.

709
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: And those five are magnetic field investigation, low energy charged

710
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 1: particle investigation, cosmic ray investigation, plasma investigation which is only

711
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 1: active on the Voyager two because the Voyager ones doesn't

712
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: work anywhere, and plasma wave investigation. So plasma investigation plasma

713
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:05,439
Speaker 1: wave investigation two different things, right, and these are clearly

714
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: the more important ones because there's not all that much too.

715
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:11,959
Speaker 1: For example, take pictures of Yeah, once you're done taking

716
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:15,440
Speaker 1: the photo of the the solar system from way the

717
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: heck out there, there's really no purpose to keep power

718
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:22,240
Speaker 1: going to that. So yeah, that's been shut down. Um,

719
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:27,920
Speaker 1: and uh. The five instruments that support these five missions

720
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:32,360
Speaker 1: are the Magnetic field Instrument or MG, the low energy

721
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:35,800
Speaker 1: charged particle instrument, the L E C P Cosmic re

722
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 1: instrument that's the CRS, the plasma instrument that's p l S,

723
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:43,840
Speaker 1: and the plasma Wave instrument that's p WS. And really

724
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:47,240
Speaker 1: at this point, uh, now that we've finished taking photos

725
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:49,160
Speaker 1: and measurements of all the planets, which that was the

726
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:52,920
Speaker 1: main science before was really getting good images and getting

727
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: some good scientific data about the actual plants and their moons.

728
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: It was the origin of the program. Yeah, before they

729
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: kind of realized, oh hey, we and do more stuff

730
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,719
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, so now now we're we've switched it

731
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:05,760
Speaker 1: over to interstellar. But some of the stuff they found

732
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 1: because of these and then later on have have expounded

733
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 1: upon by sending out other orbiters like Cassini for example.

734
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:18,160
Speaker 1: But some of the stuff they discovered were like they

735
00:41:18,239 --> 00:41:20,239
Speaker 1: took a closer look at Europa, which is one of

736
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 1: Jupiter's moons, and saw that it had a water ice surface.

737
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:29,000
Speaker 1: And originally they thought that maybe Europa could have an

738
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 1: ocean underneath that ice, but some scientists now say they

739
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 1: think that it's probably more like a slush or maybe

740
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 1: even solid solid ice. But that was a possibility. Um.

741
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:45,640
Speaker 1: They Voyager spacecraft also observed Pale, which is the largest

742
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:48,439
Speaker 1: of the volcanoes on Io, which is the another moon

743
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:52,760
Speaker 1: of Jupiter, and they observed that Pale was erupting sulfur

744
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 1: and sulfur dioxide and h These eruptions were going up

745
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 1: to heights that are equivalent to about thirty times the

746
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: elevation of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth. Multiply

747
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:08,799
Speaker 1: that by well, tallest mountain on the surface, like not underwater,

748
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: because you could look at underwater and there's but above water,

749
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:16,879
Speaker 1: it's the tallest mountain on Earth. Multiply that by thirty times.

750
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:20,280
Speaker 1: That's how high up these eruptions were going. Not necessarily

751
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,439
Speaker 1: a good vacation spot. Now. The scientists also point out

752
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:25,840
Speaker 1: that Io's gravity is about six times weaker than that

753
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: of Earth's, so it's closer to what our moon has.

754
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:32,920
Speaker 1: But the fallout zone for the the the sulfur dioxide

755
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:36,759
Speaker 1: that was being thrust into the atmosphere of Io was

756
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:42,480
Speaker 1: about the size of France. Yeah, so that was when

757
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 1: I read that, I was like, wow, that is a huge,

758
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: huge volcano. Um. Now, the we also had some information

759
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:55,360
Speaker 1: about Saturn's largest moon, which is called titan Uh. It

760
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: discovered the oceans of ethane and methane aboard a board

761
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 1: on titan, not a board titan. It is technically a

762
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 1: space that's not nothing. It's a satellite satellite, but it's

763
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: a natural satellite, not a man made one. And it

764
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:14,880
Speaker 1: has also discovered that has that tightened. The the largest

765
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 1: moon of Saturn has a dense atmosphere in lots of hydrocarbons,

766
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:22,399
Speaker 1: and maybe it could possibly at some point in the past,

767
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 1: have supported life. The methane is a possible indication that

768
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: living things once lived there. Now that does not necessary

769
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:31,719
Speaker 1: the hydrocarbons as well, but that does not necessarily mean

770
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 1: that life ever was untitened, but it's a possibility. Voyager

771
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: also took images of Uranus rings, which are very difficult

772
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,799
Speaker 1: to see. They're very faint, right, um and uh, But

773
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: they did that. They also observed Saturn's rings and saw

774
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: that they were made of about ten thousand strands of

775
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: ice particles and car sized icebergs, and that if you

776
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:58,879
Speaker 1: look at them proportionally, their thickness is much much much

777
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: much much smaller than the width of the ring. So

778
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:05,319
Speaker 1: if you think of it as like a one of

779
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 1: those things called they're not the frisbees, but you know

780
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:11,600
Speaker 1: the rings. Yeah, they're they're hollow in the middle. Right,

781
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: there's there, so it's just a it's a disc that

782
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:16,920
Speaker 1: doesn't have a center to it. Um. The width of

783
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:20,880
Speaker 1: the band is much wider than the thickness of the band,

784
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: is what they discovered. So that was kind of interesting. Uh,

785
00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: now we're talking more about the interstellar work. So they're

786
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 1: still inside the helio sphere, right, And I did want

787
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:34,400
Speaker 1: to mention at some point here on March, and we

788
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: mentioned this in another podcast that we were recording. Right

789
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 1: around March twenty UM, there were there were false reports

790
00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:43,919
Speaker 1: that that it had left the healer sphere and entered

791
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: interstellar space and those were those were false reports. Yeah,

792
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:50,439
Speaker 1: NASA came out and said, no, not, we've not seen

793
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:53,480
Speaker 1: the changes in the magnetic radiation that we are expecting

794
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: to see. That. They did say that they had seen

795
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 1: some changes in particle movement, which at first would have

796
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: indicated that the spacecraft had moved out of the heliosphere,

797
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:06,319
Speaker 1: but then they found from the magnetic movement that's not

798
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:08,879
Speaker 1: the case. So it's it's one of those things where

799
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:10,920
Speaker 1: again we keep finding out the Solar System is larger

800
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:15,120
Speaker 1: as we learn more about how it's behaving. So now

801
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: the next step in this, you could think of the

802
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: interstellar exploration and being in three phases. The first was

803
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: crossing the termination shock, which both of the spacecraft have

804
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 1: already done. The next is the exploration of the Helio sheath,

805
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 1: which is happening right now, and then the third is

806
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 1: interstellar exploration, which is when the spacecraft have passed beyond

807
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 1: the Helio pause boundary. Now, the Helio pause boundary, you

808
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 1: can think of this as kind of like a bubble

809
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: around the Sun that completely encompasses the the entire Solar System.

810
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:48,839
Speaker 1: It's not a perfectly round bubble, so don't think like that,

811
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:51,959
Speaker 1: but it's it's this whibli babbli area. Uh. And beyond

812
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: this boundary, there's no solar wind or magnetic field from

813
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:58,359
Speaker 1: the Sun. However, there's still the gravitational influence of the

814
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: Sun at that point. But particles and waves in this

815
00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:03,759
Speaker 1: area of space are unaffected by our son and we

816
00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:06,279
Speaker 1: don't really know a whole lot about them because we

817
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,879
Speaker 1: haven't been able to observe them directly through any kind

818
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: of spacecraft. Right. Yeah, and and this is this is

819
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:14,879
Speaker 1: a hypothetical Helio pause. Yeah, we have not encountered it yet,

820
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 1: so but it's still not technically the edge of the

821
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:19,359
Speaker 1: Solar system if you, if you ask NASA, the edge

822
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: of the Solar System would be that area where there's

823
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: no longer that gravitational factor from the Sun, which would

824
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: require us to travel about two light years away from

825
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 1: the Sun. So that will take us about forty thousand

826
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 1: years for those spacecraft to get there, which is a

827
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 1: you know, set your alarms because it's gonna take a while.

828
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 1: So in other words, if someone tells you that the

829
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 1: voyager has passed outside the Solar System, your response should

830
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:47,720
Speaker 1: be wow, which alien warped it away from there? Because

831
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:50,239
Speaker 1: there's no way that it's done that, at least not

832
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:52,480
Speaker 1: by the definition that NASA makes. Now, if they're talking

833
00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 1: about the helio pause, that's a different story. Different, that's

834
00:46:55,480 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: a different story. And I think they are anticipating that

835
00:46:57,680 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 1: within our lifetimes. Yeah, they said they said they expected

836
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 1: it to happen within ten to twenty years of passing

837
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:06,720
Speaker 1: the termination shock. So now it's just probably probably hopefully

838
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:10,480
Speaker 1: fingers crossed before before that plutonia and dioxide runs out

839
00:47:10,600 --> 00:47:15,719
Speaker 1: right before around that area. So, uh, Lauren, you had

840
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. One that an experimental idea that we

841
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 1: thought we would try, which is that you sent out

842
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 1: a tweet saying, hey, guys, if you have any anything

843
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 1: interesting that you want to ask or goofy that you

844
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: want to ask us about our podcast about the Voyager spacecraft,

845
00:47:31,680 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 1: now's the time to do it. And people did. A

846
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: couple of people did anyway, So hopefully we'll be able

847
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: to do this in the future and get even more discussion.

848
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: But this was a fun first attempt. So here's some

849
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:44,840
Speaker 1: of the questions we received. Ian on Twitter asked a

850
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: whole bunch of questions that I'm going to tackle one

851
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: at a time. The first was how fast are the

852
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 1: Voyager spacecraft traveling? Good question, Ian, So, Voyager one is

853
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: traveling at about three point six astronomical units per year

854
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: and Voyager two is poking along at three point three

855
00:48:00,760 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: astronomical units per year. Now that might not tell you

856
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: very much unless you know how long an astronomical unit is.

857
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:09,759
Speaker 1: It's a measurement of distance that's based upon the mean

858
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: distance between Earth and the Sun, and that's equivalent to

859
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:16,319
Speaker 1: about a hundred and forty nine million, five hundred seven thousand,

860
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:19,919
Speaker 1: eight hundred seventy one kilometers or ninety two million, nine

861
00:48:19,960 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: hundred fifty five thousand, hundred seven miles. And because Jonathan

862
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:25,799
Speaker 1: loves you, he did the math yep. So let's talk

863
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: about how this sucker breaks down. So remember, Voyager one's

864
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 1: going at three point six astronomical units per year. That

865
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:36,439
Speaker 1: means it's traveling about five hundred thirty nine million kilometers

866
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:41,399
Speaker 1: per year or three hundred thirty five million miles per year,

867
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:44,080
Speaker 1: and that breaks down to sixty one thousand, four hundred

868
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:47,240
Speaker 1: thirty kilometers per hour or thirty eight thousand, one hundred

869
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: seventy six miles per hour. Either way, it's going wicked fast.

870
00:48:51,760 --> 00:48:54,799
Speaker 1: Voyager two is three point three astronomical units per year.

871
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:57,960
Speaker 1: That breaks down to four hundred ninety four million kilometers

872
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: per year or fifty six thousand, three under eighteen kilometers

873
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 1: per hour, And in miles, it's three d seven million

874
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 1: miles per year or thirty five thousand miles per hour.

875
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 1: Slightly less wicked fast, but still wicked fast, but still

876
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 1: faster than than me. For example. His next question. Ian's

877
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 1: next question was are they accelerating? No, next question was

878
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:20,799
Speaker 1: how long will you remain in contact? Well, like we said,

879
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: we're not really sure. It's all going to depend upon

880
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:25,319
Speaker 1: the power supply. Uh. And also whether or not our

881
00:49:25,400 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 1: antennae here on Earth can continue to pick up that

882
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:32,279
Speaker 1: week signal, but we expect around five will be the

883
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:35,319
Speaker 1: last we hear of them. Uh. And then Ian and

884
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:38,719
Speaker 1: also a listener named Jonathan. Also they both asked that

885
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:44,080
Speaker 1: we somehow reference a film, Star Trek the motion Picture. Okay,

886
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:46,719
Speaker 1: what does Voyager have to do with Star Trek the

887
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:50,279
Speaker 1: Motion Picture? Well, in a way, Voyager is the bad

888
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:53,439
Speaker 1: guy in Star Trek the Motion Picture. In another way,

889
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:55,799
Speaker 1: the whole film is the bad guy, because the thing

890
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 1: is slow as heck. I watched it. I watched it,

891
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:01,400
Speaker 1: not for and to sivation of this podcast. I watched

892
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:04,319
Speaker 1: it justly. And I have not seen it since I

893
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 1: was a kid. And I don't think I ever sat

894
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: through it all the way through when I was a kid.

895
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:09,520
Speaker 1: I don't think I sat through it all the way

896
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:11,480
Speaker 1: there was an adult, I can't. I can't say that

897
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 1: i've seen it since I was about as laundry. Now,

898
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: Star Trek two amazing movie, Star Trek the motion Picture

899
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: not so much. But in that story, and this is

900
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: gonna sound really familiar, to anyone who watched Star Trek four,

901
00:50:23,600 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: because it's a very similar story. A probe that has

902
00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 1: this weird energy field around it enters our solar system.

903
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: Actually first it's just moving through space, but everything that

904
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:38,440
Speaker 1: encounters it's starting to deactivate, and everyone's kind of upset

905
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 1: because that's terrible, and it's head right to Earth. So

906
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:44,960
Speaker 1: what do we do? How do we stop this? And

907
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:47,160
Speaker 1: of course the only person who can stop its Kirk,

908
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:50,960
Speaker 1: who commandeers this starhip, Starship Enterprise. He is no longer

909
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:53,320
Speaker 1: the captain of the Enterprise at that point. He's teaching

910
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 1: a star fleet, but the Enterprise is is docked in

911
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 1: a space station around Earth, and so he, after a

912
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:02,520
Speaker 1: very long tour of the ship, of the outside of

913
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:06,520
Speaker 1: the ship that Scotty takes him on, eventually gets on board.

914
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:08,839
Speaker 1: And this movie moves slowly, is what I'm saying. And

915
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,359
Speaker 1: just they go and investigate this, uh, this probe that's

916
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:18,239
Speaker 1: called VJER and UH and VJR is this artificially intelligent

917
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:23,320
Speaker 1: vehicle and actually the vehicle contains a smaller probe like

918
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:27,000
Speaker 1: vehicle inside of it. Ultimately they discovered that what Vijure

919
00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:32,000
Speaker 1: really is is Voyager six, which doesn't exist yet. No,

920
00:51:32,200 --> 00:51:34,440
Speaker 1: there's only Voyager one and two. But in this in

921
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: the movie, it was Voyager six that was supposedly launched

922
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: towards the end of the twentieth century, which I don't

923
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:41,279
Speaker 1: know if you notice, we're not in that anymore. Um

924
00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: so you know, same thing like I think the Eugenics

925
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:47,239
Speaker 1: Wars and Star Trek two that are ever mentioned that

926
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 1: con was part of that was supposed to take place,

927
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:52,319
Speaker 1: So we had a lot of catching up to do. Uh,

928
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:54,840
Speaker 1: Not that I want those to happen anytime soon. But

929
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: the the vjure was called Vigor because it could no

930
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:03,920
Speaker 1: longer uh see the letters that were missing, So all

931
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:06,120
Speaker 1: the missing letters were gone, so all that was left

932
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: was the v g e er. So it's Vider uh

933
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,640
Speaker 1: and uh. And in the story, what you find out

934
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: is that aliens had encountered the Voyager six probe and

935
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: had enhanced it so that it could learn everything that

936
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 1: is learnable and then returned the information to Earth. So

937
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:26,480
Speaker 1: it was trying to do a uh. Originally it was

938
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:29,839
Speaker 1: supposed to be a benevolent thing, but because vjer had

939
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 1: gained sentience, it no longer completely understood the parameters of

940
00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: its mission, and so it started to go a little

941
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: bonkers um and then of course the some crew members

942
00:52:40,440 --> 00:52:44,520
Speaker 1: aboard the Enterprise end up essentially reasoning with the artificially

943
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 1: intelligent probe. So Vjer, like I said, is kind of

944
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:50,080
Speaker 1: the bad guy and Star Trek the motion picture. If

945
00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:53,040
Speaker 1: you feel like I spoiled that movie, I didn't. It's

946
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: really I mean, your better skipping it, just bet. I mean,

947
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:02,880
Speaker 1: and I say this as someone who loves Star Trek. Okay, don't,

948
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, I just I feel like that

949
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 1: movie was a lot of the movie is played for grandeur,

950
00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:11,120
Speaker 1: and the problem is that we've all gotten used to

951
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,520
Speaker 1: seeing these amazing sort of visuals that are even more

952
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 1: amazing than what was available back then. So to kind

953
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:20,799
Speaker 1: of have this big reveal moment and you look at

954
00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: the picture and you're like, yeah, okay, it happens on

955
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 1: TV every week. Yeah, So that's that's the problem, alright.

956
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 1: So uh then we also had a listener who has

957
00:53:29,160 --> 00:53:32,600
Speaker 1: the handle REDNA maybe that's his name, who asked, what

958
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:35,800
Speaker 1: about future missions with better equipment? Well, we had the

959
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:39,320
Speaker 1: Casini orbiter, but we also NASA had proposed a couple

960
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: of joint missions with the European Union. Um, but they

961
00:53:43,239 --> 00:53:45,520
Speaker 1: haven't really worked out. One of them was the Jupiter

962
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: Europa orbiter, but that was essentially scrapped because of budget problems.

963
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:53,160
Speaker 1: And the other was the Titan Saturn system mission, which

964
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 1: was shelved in order for NASA to concentrate on the

965
00:53:57,239 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 1: Jupiter Europa orbiter. Yes so, but but originally those were

966
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:05,480
Speaker 1: supposed to launch in twenty Now because of the budget

967
00:54:05,520 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: cutbacks and everything, and you know the fact that there

968
00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:09,919
Speaker 1: just hasn't been the time to develop it, that that

969
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 1: launch window is kind of closed at this point. So, um,

970
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 1: as far as I know right now, there are no

971
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:21,759
Speaker 1: definitive deep space or outer planet missions planned. I think

972
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: right now people are really concentrating on Mars, Mars and

973
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:28,680
Speaker 1: the Moon and Earth orbit. Those are those are I

974
00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:32,880
Speaker 1: mean the things that are I hesitate to stay easier

975
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 1: but maybe more achievable. Yeah. I have I have heard

976
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 1: that that that future Moon landings have been scrapped in

977
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:42,880
Speaker 1: favor of future Mars lands. Yeah. I mean, it's you know,

978
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 1: and this changes from one administration to another because because

979
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:50,040
Speaker 1: a lot of these considerations are not just technological or scientific,

980
00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: they're also political. I mean, the whole space race was political.

981
00:54:53,840 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 1: The fact that if there had not been that rivalry

982
00:54:57,040 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 1: between the United States muscle, but you know, we we

983
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 1: can send we can send this rocket not only to

984
00:55:02,080 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 1: your face, but all the way to the move. Yeah so,

985
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:07,000
Speaker 1: I mean that was that was you know, without that

986
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:11,560
Speaker 1: kind of pressure than it makes it harder for scientists

987
00:55:11,560 --> 00:55:13,160
Speaker 1: to get the money they need to be able to

988
00:55:13,160 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 1: do the science they do. That's a sad fact of

989
00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:16,839
Speaker 1: the world, is that, you know, money in a way

990
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: does make the world go round. Um So, anyway that

991
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: those are the answers to the questions we received. I

992
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:25,080
Speaker 1: really liked this idea, So we're going to try and

993
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:29,319
Speaker 1: incorporate more frequently, so much who played along for yeah so,

994
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:30,960
Speaker 1: so this will be a bit of a spoiler alert.

995
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:32,440
Speaker 1: You guys will find out what we're going to talk

996
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:34,400
Speaker 1: about before we get a chance to talk about and

997
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:36,759
Speaker 1: you'll also have to wait a few weeks between when

998
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:39,400
Speaker 1: you've submitted a question and when we answer it because

999
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 1: we record so far in advance. But I think it's

1000
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:44,360
Speaker 1: a fun way to kind of get an idea of

1001
00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:45,759
Speaker 1: what you guys want to hear about, because I would

1002
00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:47,480
Speaker 1: hate to do a full podcast about something and then

1003
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: everyone's like, wow, I had some real questions about this,

1004
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:52,759
Speaker 1: and you guys completely failed into which we actually get

1005
00:55:52,760 --> 00:55:54,760
Speaker 1: all the time on Facebook, not not in a negative

1006
00:55:54,920 --> 00:55:56,920
Speaker 1: well most of the time, not in a negative way. Actually.

1007
00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 1: Usually it's one of those, hey, you need to do

1008
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:00,759
Speaker 1: another podcast on such and such, which I think a

1009
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:04,640
Speaker 1: positive thing. Yeah, all right, So if there's some other

1010
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: topic he wants to cover, or perhaps there's something about

1011
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:09,560
Speaker 1: the voyage or spacecraft that we did not talk about

1012
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: that you think we definitely need to address, you can

1013
00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:15,240
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. Our address is tech stuff

1014
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:18,600
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com, or let us know on Facebook

1015
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:21,560
Speaker 1: or Twitter. Our handle at both those locations is text

1016
00:56:21,560 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: stuff H. S. W. Lauren and I will talk to

1017
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:34,759
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For moral thiss and thousands of

1018
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:46,560
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it has to works dot Com