You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘NASA’ tag.
Voyager 1: Rest in Peace
By Shlomo Maital
Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun’s heliosphere.[1]
It is now 15.2 billion mi. (24.3 billion kms.) from Earth as of January 2024. And it is the most distant human-made object from Earth. Radio messages take 22 hours, 33 minutes and 35.0785 seconds to travel from Voyager 1 and arrive to us – round trip, that’s 45 hours! Say “hi!” to Voyager… and it will respond, “Hawarye?” back two days later.
Voyager was designed to send data for just a few years. But it has lasted… so far, for nearly 47 years! It’s data computer is 1970 technology. I did my Ph.D. on a Princeton mainframe in 1967, using punch cards to feed in data, and received printouts on big rolls of hole-punch paper.
Voyager is suffering from dementia. Yes, space probes, too, get addled brains. The data Voyager is sending back is just… gibberish. NASA engineers have tried turning it off and back on – doesn’t help. Voyager is way to far from the sun to use solar panels – it has nuclear batteries, amazing ones, that have lasted for 47 years. But they too will run out of juice soon.
Voyager, it seems, was built to last. Unlike stuff made to day, which is made to break – so we have to buy more of them. Or made to throw away, because it is too expensive to repair.
From 15 billion miles away, Voyager is sending a message.
Hey, planet. Keep using the old stuff. No, you don’t need iPhone 16, iPhone 12 is perfectly good. (Like mine). Look at me. I’m still (barely) alive. You don’t need to stuff your closet with stuff. You don’t need to respond puppet-like when the fashion gurus say, baggy pants today, tight pants tomorrow. Pink today, beige tomorrow. You don’t need to buy a heavy expensive SUV, just to drive to the corner store.
Thanks Voyager. Who knows? Maybe one day you will bump into an alien life form, maybe they will capture and revive you…and send us back an incredible ‘hello, Earth’. Just don’t say, Take me to your leader. Because…well, we really don’t have one at the moment.
[1] Source: Wikipedia
Flight Times Cut in Half? It’s No Dream!
By Shlomo Maital
Today’s Bloomberg Business Week reports that after 50 years, five decades, in which commercial aircraft observed a rigid speed limit of 660 miles per hour – an incredibly long time for a key technology to undergo zero change! — help is on the way. In August NASA – National Aeronautical and Space Agency – will take bids on a fast quiet supersonic jetliner prototype (see photo):
NASA says it will begin taking bids for construction of a demo model of a plane able to reduce the sonic boom to something like the hum you’d hear inside a Mercedes-Benz on the interstate. The agency’s researchers say their design, a smaller-scale model of which was successfully tested in a wind tunnel at the end of June, should cut the six-hour flight time from New York to Los Angeles in half. NASA proposes spending $390 million over five years to build the demo plane and test it over populated areas. The first year of funding is included in President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal.
The Concord, that beautiful supersonic jetliner built by France and England, now junked after a tragic accident, actually damaged the cause of supersonic flight. Supersonic planes generate shock waves that are noisy, irritating and can cause major damage on the ground. So the US banned supersonic commercial flight over land, allowing Concord to land only at east coast airports, flying supersonic only over the ocean. That ban made the Concord a technological triumph and an economic disaster, bringing big losses for British Air and Air France. Now, that may change.
Bloomberg: NASA is targeting a sound level of 60 to 65 A-weighted decibels (dBa), Coen says. That’s about as loud as that luxury car on the highway or the background conversation in a busy restaurant. Peter Iosifidis [head of design] says that Lockheed’s research shows the design can maintain that sound level at commercial size and his team’s planned demo will be 94 feet long, have room for one pilot, fly as high as 55,000 feet, and run on one of the twin General Electric Co. engines that power Boeing Co.’s F/A-18 fighter jet. “Now you’re getting down to that level where, as far as approval from the general public, it would probably be something that’s acceptable,” he says. By comparison, the Concorde, that bygone icon of the Champagne-sipping, caviar-scarfing supersonic jet set, had a perceived noise level several times louder, at 90 dBa. [Note: decibels are measurement units that are logarithmic; that’s why 90 is many times 65. Same goes for the Richter scale that measures earthquakes].
Looks like we will live to see supersonic commercial flight return big time. The business model will likely be ‘premium’ (as with Concord), for well-healed customers. But over time, the technology will as always get cheaper and trickle down to us ordinary folks.
So – start calculating. That long 12-hour trip from TLV to JFK? One day it will be just six hours. Or JFK to Heathrow? 4 hours. That means you could leave JFK at midnight, get to London at 9 a.m., put in a workday, and be home for dinner (you will arrive before you leave, i.e., leave at 7 pm UK time and arrive at 6 pm New York time) because at 1,400 mph, the jetliner travels faster than the rotation of the earth).
TIMnovate 