Voyager 2 Detects Odd Shape of Solar System's Edge

Seems it was the original movie. Geez, it's been so long. I remember being glued to the screen.


Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

The plot features an intelligent, logical entity that calls itself VGER. VGER is an innocent entity with one mission ... "learn all that is learnable... transmit that information to the creator." VGER in its incredible journey has in essence gained knowledge that spans the very essence of the universe. VGER now has set a course for Earth in an attempt to share its knowledge with its creator. VGER believes that its creator is on Earth.

VGER becomes a threat to life on Earth when its destroys three Klignon vessels and a Federation space station with incredible destructive power. To counter this threat, Admiral Kirk takes command of the Enterprise and leads the Enterprise in an intriguing battle with this alien entity.

While battling this alien entity, Admiral Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew learn about the relationship between human logic and emotion. They explore philosophical issues such as "Is this all that I am?" and "Is there nothing more?". I believe Spock summarizes the quest for answers to these questions by his statement about two-thirds of the way into the film that indicates that "logic alone is not enough". They eventually learn to appreciate the unique attributes that make us human ... "our weaknesses ... and the drive that compels us to overcome them."
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Source
 
I don't know, that quote describes the show I was thinking of to a T. I did see several references to a 'VGer cloud' episode/movie that I don't recall seeing. Perhaps that is the one you're thinking of?
 
Potential issue #1. Can the components survive the stress of launch?That why I say to launch them up to orbit as crated unassembled components and let the mission specialists build them on the international space station. The rocket won't have to be such an areodynamic tube with full dedications to weight reserves and whatnot. They can build a fairly large beast up there and point it in the right direction and build it up to steam under low Gs so the stuff wont shake apart.

Potential issue #2. Vaccuum and extreme cold. Will, say, an athy 64 survive that? They can send up the 1000x cost custom materials to build a good machine at said same space station. Being built directly in space, they can test the component all they need to the rigors of space before they shove it out the door for good.

Potential issue #3. How long is the mission? How long can a modern machine cope with the conditions out there?Unknown. The vast array of modern detection and camera equipment over what they had in the 70s would be a long term gold mine up there for decades to come. Any modern machines longevity would be a crap shoot at best... but with building a larger machne in space, there is room for quintuple redundancy.

All that shit (and more, I'm sure) has to be tested. By the time you've done that, your computers are waaaay outdated. I hear they'll be progressing to the equivalent of pentium 2's soon.Even if it is a P2 brain... its still 100 times better than the half dead pseudo Altair they have now.
 
Rob, you're missing one important fact. Actually, several, but we can distill it down to one. You've got to lift all the assembly machinery too. Any idea how large the machine is that prints a CPU chip? That's even before we discuss the waste production. Any idea of the dust involved in cutting a wafer off a crystal? On Earth, gravity keeps the mess unidirectional. In space ......
 
I'm not talking about a 100% from scratch operation. Make the components on Earth, secure them for high G resistance in whatever form they choose, launch it into orbit. The space station guys will carefully unpack everything, assemble, and test it in space.

I'm saying that you can still design and build the pieces of a durable super computer on the ground and ship them up as plug and play components.
 
And when you goof up one bit and break a lead or summat .... what the hell, it's only half a billion dollars to get a new one.
 
Thats why they would be sending up 2 of everything to start with. Mass redundancy.

Even if they screw up and keep breaking stuff at 100 million a pop, it still beats the hell out of launching a 4 billion dollar 'no second chance' rocket from the ground.

I still have visions of the two very costly Mars mission faliures within months of each other... and it took two years of everyone being on the payroll to have the failure be realized. At least Earth orbit is an easy redo on the order of weeks to months.
 
You have no concept of how expensive it is to lift even one pound. Believe me when I say, you don't even lift with more fuel than you absolutely need.
 
Weren't they working on synthetic spider's silk?

Synthetic Spider Silk

Scientists report in the January 18th issue of Science that they were able to make spider silk in cells grown in the laboratory. Made of a type of protein, spider silk is five time stronger by weight than steel and stretches better than nylon — a combination of properties seen in no other fiber.


Scientists cloned the gene for the protein, produced the protein in cells and spun the protein into silk fibers. The fibers exhibited similar toughness but lower tenacity than spider silk.
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Kevlar's several times stronger than steel..lighter and more flexible.
 
Professur said:
You have no concept of how expensive it is to lift even one pound. Believe me when I say, you don't even lift with more fuel than you absolutely need.
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Unmanned small rockets are getting cheaper all the time. Places like Guyana are sending payloads into orbit for like 20 million a shot.... mere peanuts in old school payload costs.
 
The great hope has been carbon nanotubes. Very recently somebody came out with a paper saying even this material can't be made strong enough, but I don't think the question has been settled definitively.

A company here in California is actively working on an alternative technology for getting payloads into space cheaply. It's a two-stage process, in which a huge airship carries the payload to a manned platform floating in the high atmosphere, where it is transferred to a second, even huger airship, which then commences a five-day, rocket-powered voyage up into orbit. If you think it sounds insane to suggest that an airship of any kind could reach space, check out jpaerospace.com. (They've built prototypes of the airships, and they've been doing tests on various components using small, unmanned platforms carried as high as 140,000 feet by weather balloons. The latter tests are documented in some cool videos.)
 
Inidentally, isn't it Pioneer 10 and 11 which have encountered the anomaly, not the Voyagers... or are there two different stories here?
 
TCP, UDP, and IP checksum offloads; 128 KB deep
packet buffering, Jumbo Frames, interrupt coalescing, and flow control
 
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