Gregory's ServerNASA recovered a space probe's 47-year-old computer with about as much memory as my old Commodore 64 over a distance of 15 billion miles so it can (hopefully) continue to do science work, and it reminds me of how much ingenuity used to go into computers back when the assumption was you couldn't consume the water and electricity of a small nation just to power Ask Jeeves.
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Nowhere Girl
37 comments
Nowhere Girl
@Kalshann Yeah! If it's returning engineering data then science work should go off without a hitch. It'll just take time to do it carefully. I'm impressed they worked around a dead memory chip at all.
Nowhere Girl
@Kalshann They were meticulous! Like, obviously mistakes happen even at NASA, but it is one of the few places that still tries to get it right the first time because there is no margin for error once a probe is launched. 
David J. Atkinson #🟦
@gwynnion @Kalshann Yes. I worked at NASA/JPL for 20 years. We ground out every flaw we could find, but we always knew we couldn’t anticipate everything. The role of on-board fault management is to “Fail operational” if possible, but always “fail safe.” In the most minimal case, keep the antenna pointed at Earth and listen.
Nowhere Girl
@meltedcheese @Kalshann Right, exactly, because if you lose antenna orientation the mission is dead no matter what.
David J. Atkinson #🟦
gnarf
@gwynnion @meltedcheese @Kalshann I visited a major ground station in Europe once where they managed to rescue a satellite that had a software error in the attitude control system and was tumbling uncontrolled. They used their 32m dish and continuously sent out the software patch for about a week on highest power until it locked in by chance. Also got some first-hand reports on how they rescued XMM-Newton in 2008 after the RF antenna switch failed. Really fascinating stuff.
Roger Moore
Habrok
@VATVSLPR @gwynnion @Kalshann Keeping an engineering model on the ground is done for newer missions, but for Voyager and older probes, there are no engineering models left on earth. In this case, they only have the documentation on paper and whatever people remember from previous work on the Voyager probes. 
Riley S. Faelan
@gwynnion Seems like they're going to implement an overlay scheme. There may be hitches, in that the overall onboard storage capacity will be diminished. But at least, it's not fully lost just yet. There will be data coming.
Nowhere Girl
I like a lot of things about modern-ish computers, hardware, and global connectivity, but there is so much lazy slop being produced as "innovation." 
Eli Wallach's favorite Bass
@gwynnion In so many ways it's generally the best thing to have a first iteration copy of any new tech It'll be overpriced for the time but also over engineered. My Sony professional from the early '90s still works Gives amazing analog sound Just advice from a musical coach of mine that applies everywhere.
fuckyducky
Warlock Of Wires
@fuckyducky @voxofgod @gwynnion there could be a much better balance though... Right now it is fully in the crapper... 
sumarstrákur
@gwynnion that sums up the feeling pretty much, for me. I never could be so clearer, I think  
Nowhere Girl
@IPmonger The two extremes are like Tesla, where "done is better than good or safe or even functional" is apparently the rule because there are no regulations anymore, and on the other hand, the assumption that cloud computing lets us waste massive resources on extremely stupid shit that nobody actually needs. 
JimmyChezPants
That ingenuity is gonna make a comeback. Computers are very useful, and they will remain so when all the unnecessary and useless capitalism goes away..
Andrew
@gwynnion I wanted to make a joke that the manned mission to Mars will probably have a giant touchscreen running a bloated UI (probably using Electron) on Windows, but it sometimes feels like we're closer to that than we are to the ingenuity you're talking about and it's hard to make a joke when you're bummed.
Casual Observer :donor:
@gwynnion OS Bloatware is a real thing. It stinks and is a direct result of laziness.  
337guanacos
Chapter five in this book is heavily related to the Voyager. I like to drop this link when the Voyager recovers from a malfunction. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880069935/downloads/19880069935_Optimized.pdf 
oldfartjmb says eh?
I have watched the voyagers with tears in my eyes ever since they launched. These intrepid little craft blow my mind and about bring me to tears every time I think about them. To have circled planets and then proceeded to go where no human has gone before and show us the way. Wow. They make me so proud to be a human.
Anton Lytvynenko, PhD
@gwynnion actually first computers were quite monstrous, but yes, a number of nonsense significanly rose since that times. |
@gwynnion
Seriously I got a giddy happy thing just reading about Voyager today.