Voyager 1 reaches previously unexplored region of space

[seamusTX]

The "Nudes" were on the Pioneer spacecraft:

So sue me. Notice I didn't say "shoot me," because I wouldn't want that.

If any intelligent member of another species sees this stuff, a few ten-to-the-power-something years from now, I don't know what they will make of it. Either it will rock their boat, or they'll catalog it with other artifacts of previously unknown bipedal species in their equivalent of the Smithsonian.

I doubt any of that will ever happen.

P.S.: If there are other intelligent species, we don't know if they might communicate by sign language, blinking lights (like fireflies, before you scoff), scent, telepathy, or who-knows-what. Human language might mean no more to them than crickets chirping. Or they might have very imaginative scientists.

- Jim

[The Annoyed Man]

Being a ham and somewhat fascinated with weak signal work, I see this as the ultimate in QRP DX.

It's not converting an audio signal to an image, it is merely recording the analog signal for the image.

But is that related to FAX? Honestly, I have no idea how that works. How would one record the analog signal for an image? Or maybe the appropriate question is, how would one produce and analog signal for an image in the first place?

[The Annoyed Man]

The "Nudes" were on the Pioneer spacecraft:

So sue me. Notice I didn't say "shoot me," because I wouldn't want that.

If any intelligent member of another species sees this stuff, a few ten-to-the-power-something years from now, I don't know what they will make of it. Either it will rock their boat, or they'll catalog it with other artifacts of previously unknown bipedal species in their equivalent of the Smithsonian.

I doubt any of that will ever happen.

- Jim

Let's leave the lawyers out of it.

[Chris]

I doubt we'll be making contact with anything for a very long time. There is nothing close that could support life, and until we figure out wormholes, its all too far to get to.

[seamusTX]

We're not going to be doing the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" thing, ever. If aliens could get here, they already would have, and made earth into a zoo or all-you-can-eat buffet.

The best we might have is SETI turning up a signal that is millions of years old from a dead civilization. I'm not betting on that, either. More likely someone will find a piece of junk in space that might or might not be an artifact, and scientists can argue about it for decades.

- Jim

[sjfcontrol]

We're not going to be doing the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" thing, ever. If aliens could get here, they already would have, and made earth into a zoo or all-you-can-eat buffet.

The best we might have is SETI turning up a signal that is millions of years old from a dead civilization. I'm not betting on that, either. More likely someone will find a piece of junk in space that might or might not be an artifact, and scientists can argue about it for decades.

- Jim

Or perhaps they'd just infiltrate our governmental systems and try to destroy us from within.... Uh Oh....

[jimlongley]

Being a ham and somewhat fascinated with weak signal work, I see this as the ultimate in QRP DX.

It's not converting an audio signal to an image, it is merely recording the analog signal for the image.

But is that related to FAX? Honestly, I have no idea how that works. How would one record the analog signal for an image? Or maybe the appropriate question is, how would one produce and analog signal for an image in the first place?

I won't really go into the details, but TV was broadcast analog until very recently, recording the signal would be much the same as recording any other signal. Actually, fax is very crude in comparison, but could actually serve as a decent base for comparison. The original fax, developed in 1846 by Alexander Bain, primarily just did black and white (not greyscale) because it used Morse's telegraph as part of the basis for its function. The quick and dirty description would be that you took a picture that was printed in conductive ink and wrapped it around a drum, then using an electrified stylus, set the drum to rotating and as the stylus conducted it sent a signal down the wire, where a pencil attached to the receiver made contact with paper on another drum in response to the received signal. It was almost digital.

Improvements led to greys being produced in response to varying voltages, analog signals, and eventually to color.

We knew how to transmit and record those analog signals long before we figured out how to get the camera to feed the picture into the device without first making a hard copy to scan, TV.

[jimlongley]

We're not going to be doing the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" thing, ever. If aliens could get here, they already would have, and made earth into a zoo or all-you-can-eat buffet.

The best we might have is SETI turning up a signal that is millions of years old from a dead civilization. I'm not betting on that, either. More likely someone will find a piece of junk in space that might or might not be an artifact, and scientists can argue about it for decades.

- Jim

Or perhaps they'd just infiltrate our governmental systems and try to destroy us from within.... Uh Oh....

Or maybe, as it drifts closer to the advanced civilization's satellite system, they will just shoot it down as space junk, kind of like we would.

[seamusTX]

Or perhaps they'd just infiltrate our governmental systems and try to destroy us from within...

Why bother? We seem to be quite capable of doing it ourselves.

If the aliens were in a hurry they could just develop a contagious, deadly virus. Come to think of it, we have those already.

- Jim

[sjfcontrol]

Or perhaps they'd just infiltrate our governmental systems and try to destroy us from within...

Why bother? We seem to be quite capable of doing it ourselves.

If the aliens were in a hurry they could just develop a contagious, deadly virus. Come to think of it, we have those already.

- Jim

I think you missed my point. Perhaps the problem with Obama's birth certificate is that it originated on Alpha Centauri??? It could also explain Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They aren't from this planet!

[seamusTX]

No, I got your point perfectly well. Obama/Democrats/liberals/Yankees are the spawn of Satan. But maybe we don't have to mention it in every thread.

I started this thread along with many other threads about the achievements of the American people, mostly in technology. These things are apolitical. The Voyager program started in the 1960s and was funded and managed more or less enthusiastically across four presidential administrations and congresses controlled by different parties. They will still be out there when Democratic and Republican are footnotes in history books along with the Whigs and Know-Nothings.

I'm going to climb off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening.

- Jim

[Dave2]

No, I got your point perfectly well. Obama/Democrats/liberals/Yankees are the spawn of Satan. But maybe we don't have to mention it in every thread.

- Jim

Hey now, just because I'm from a state that appreciates maple syrup, that doesn't make me evil.

[seamusTX]

I like real maple syrup, too; and I've never been east of Boston (on the ground). That sugar syrup garbage ought to be illegal.

- Jim

[jimlongley]

I like real maple syrup, too; and I've never been east of Boston (on the ground). That sugar syrup garbage ought to be illegal.

- Jim

When I was a telephone man in upstate NY, I used to drive by various of my customers to check on them from time to time, and you can bet during sugaring season I would make sure to visit my customer who had the fancy tap system, just to check and make sure she wasn't having any problems she hadn't bothered to report yet.

The same with the lady who allowed me to hunt on her posted property, around tree cutting time as well as just before deer and grouse seasons.

[Heartland Patriot]

My FIL was a gyroscope specialist, and he built the guidance package for Voyager I on his workbench in his lab at JPL. He also built the guidance packages for Voyager II and pretty much every other unmanned exploratory spacecraft built by JPL until Casini, which was his last project before he retired.

I have a funny story about the Galileo guidance package involving my FIL.....who was an eminently practical man. When he still had the finished Galileo package on his workbench and his crew was gearing up for Casini, the project director came to him and asked him to design a set of removable handles that could be bolted to the Galileo package so that it could be picked up from the workbench and set down elsewhere to clear space on the bench so they could start on Casini's package. Apparently the thing was large enough that it took two men to lift it safely without risking dropping it. So the project director budgeted X thousands of dollars for machining costs and materials to accommodate his request and left if up to Bob (my FIL) to solve the problem.

About a week or so later, the project director dropped by Bob's office and noticed a 4' long piece of 2" wooden dowel leaning up in the corner of his office, and he asked Bob what it was for. Well, it was the "handle" to pick up and carry the Galileo package with. It seems that the physical architecture of the device had a sort of hole all the way through it, so Bob figured he could just go to the local Ace Hardware and buy the dowel for $1.29/foot......or whatever the price was.....and if you ran that dowel through the middle of the Galileo package, two men could each grab an end of the dowel and hoist the package up off the bench and set it down out of the way. He spent a total of $5.00-$6.00 on the job instead of the $10,000 budgeted for it. The rest of the team, also being engineers to the bone, recognized the elegance of the solution and that was the end of development on that particular request from the director. They never did make the bolt-on handles machined from exotic metals. Didn't need to.

I found out about this when my wife and I attended his retirement party after 40 years at JPL. They handed him that very piece of dowel, with a "Remove Before Flight" flag pinned to it, as a retirement gift.....and that's when the presenter told the assemblage about that particular story. If you knew Bob, you'd just smile because that was so him.

TAM, that story truly warmed my aircraft mechanic heart...something simple is often, though I do understand not always, the best solution.