Dave AndersonMar 14, 2024

I went down a Voyager rabbit hole again. And I came up with a factoid that entertains me.

The original Grand Tour program was canceled in late 1971, due to congressional pressure over cost. Voyager was the cheaper mission to just Jupiter and Saturn.

Voyager and its team are incredible, and they managed to pull off the entire grand tour anyway, and then 34 years and counting more science after that.

There's a good chance Voyager might outlive the entire congress that killed the grand tour.

Show threadDave AndersonMar 14, 2024

It's not clinched yet, but of the 534 members of the congress who chose to pass on a once-in-history opportunity for exploration, 24 are still alive. And the actuaries don't have _great_ news for those who remain.

Meanwhile, the Voyagers have another 1-6 years of science mission left, and could well keep returning engineering data until 2036, at which point they'll be too far away for the DSN to communicate with them.

So... I'd say it's game on, really.

Show threadPolychrome 
@danderson clearly the solution is to build an even bigger dish in orbit for twice the cost of the Voyager project to keep communications going just out of spite.
Mar 15, 2024 at 5:12pmWeb
Show threadDave AndersonMar 15, 2024
@Polychrome Correct. Disregard tradeoffs, build a dish the size of Texas.
Show threadBonkersMar 15, 2024
@danderson @Polychrome but shouldn't the orbital dish be more sensitive than the terrestrial one? Away from the electromagnetic noise and air. So, it probably shouldn't be that big.
Show threadMichael ☕️Mar 16, 2024
@bonkers @danderson @Polychrome
Let's build a refurbished Aricibo dish in a crater on the far side of the moon. That should avoid human interference pretty well.