Does the New Horizons probe carry a message?

[Turbinator]

When every single object in the pictures you have posted is nothing more than stardust; Voyager 1 and 2, Pioneer 10 and 11, and New Horizons will still exist. An etched in drawing of human figures, actual sounds and music from Earth, and the location of a planet that no longer exists will still be there. And to me that is a monument. The point here is not weather they will ever be discovered, or what the chances of them ever being discovered are. The idea here to me, is that the thought of those 5 probes outliving our planet. When it is nothing more than stardust, they will still exist out there. And this gives me great comfort and makes the life-and-death cycle that much less cold and brutal. When I am dead, and everything else that ever comes after me, those probes will still be out there. The same probes whose pictures I - when I was alive - saw streamed down, giving us a look at our solar system. That is what this is all about. And not about some aliens discovering them

 

[statisticsnerd]

I know the Voyager probes achieved escape velocity from the Solar System, but what about the Milky Way galaxy?

Are they going fast enough to leave the galaxy, or will they be sucked into the center of the galaxy (and destroyed) one day?

 

[Turbinator]

In Earth's orbit, the escape velocity from the Sun's gravity is 42.1 km/s.
In our solar system, the escape velocity from the Milky Way is ≥ 525 km/s.

 

[T.Neo]

When every single object in the pictures you have posted is nothing more than stardust; Voyager 1 and 2, Pioneer 10 and 11, and New Horizons will still exist. An etched in drawing of human figures, actual sounds and music from Earth, and the location of a planet that no longer exists will still be there. And to me that is a monument. The point here is not weather they will ever be discovered, or what the chances of them ever being discovered are. The idea here to me, is that the thought of those 5 probes outliving our planet. When it is nothing more than stardust, they will still exist out there. And this gives me great comfort and makes the life-and-death cycle that much less cold and brutal. When I am dead, and everything else that ever comes after me, those probes will still be out there. The same probes whose pictures I - when I was alive - saw streamed down, giving us a look at our solar system. That is what this is all about. And not about some aliens discovering them

If that keeps you warm and fuzzy, well then... that is good for you, I suppose.

But it is also pretty meaningless, since nobody will find those messages, those monuments... they will be forgotten and lost, just like any Earth long fried by the Sun.

I also think you're forgetting the timescale of things here- Earth could still be habitable for 500 million to 1 billion years, but the Sun wouldn't swell to a red giant and go nova for several more billion. The Voyager record will degrade over time so as to slowly become unreadable- this depends on the interstellar dust flux, which might be quite low.

I think it is better to be a person long dead, who actually lived, rather than a statue on Mars to be seen by nobody...

 

[Keatah]

What I find useless is putting the legos on juno. Those are going to burn up anyways. AND they added $17,428 usd to pricetag.

I've never been a big fan of legos anyways except perhaps when I was a kid, because anything you build with them falls apart as soon as you pick it up and play with it.

As far as no one ever seeing the voyager and pioneer plaques. No one can fortell that fate. They could be targets of an interstellar competition in a hundred years. And perhaps aliens will find it. We just don't know.

 

[T.Neo]

AND they added $17,428 usd to pricetag.

Where did you find that information?

I've never been a big fan of legos anyways except perhaps when I was a kid, because anything you build with them falls apart as soon as you pick it up and play with it.

I played with LEGO a lot when I was a kid, and I didn't have that problem- unless I threw, dropped, or smashed a LEGO construct. But that is obviously just a cruel activity for any child to do willingly... :lol:

As far as no one ever seeing the voyager and pioneer plaques. No one can fortell that fate. They could be targets of an interstellar competition in a hundred years. And perhaps aliens will find it. We just don't know.

Well... no. But it is absolutely, exceedingly unlikely that they will ever be found.

 

[Keatah]

Where did you find that information?

I heard it 3rd hand from one of the folks working on the shutdown (prep for storage) of the manned portion of mission control.

It makes sense and sounds about right when you consider re-running the spin stabilization calculations and verifications. More than 1/2 of the cost was for ceremonies and speeches and PR related activities.

I played with LEGO a lot when I was a kid, and I didn't have that problem- unless I threw, dropped, or smashed a LEGO construct. But that is obviously just a cruel activity for any child to do willingly... :lol:

I always hoped the finished models were just more durable, I always like to play in the mud and do 'real' construction work. The only thing that ended up being suitable were those tonka trucks. When it was bad weather out we'd be inside making things simply way to big for them to support themselves.

 

[T.Neo]

It makes sense and sounds about right when you consider re-running the spin stabilization calculations and verifications. More than 1/2 of the cost was for ceremonies and speeches and PR related activities.

Do you have a source for that, too?

I always hoped the finished models were just more durable, I always like to play in the mud and do 'real' construction work. The only thing that ended up being suitable were those tonka trucks. When it was bad weather out we'd be inside making things simply way to big for them to support themselves.

I guess that is just the result of children on a rainy day... :shifty:

Aren't those toy trucks made of unobtanium? :lol:

 

[Keatah]

Do you have a source for that, too?



I guess that is just the result of children on a rainy day... :shifty:

Aren't those toy trucks made of unobtanium? :lol:

I never researched any more into the price breakdown, and filed it away as trivia. It's not really that much when you consider the cost of the juno mission is something like a billion dollars. The Lego figures are 1/58,000th the cost of the program.

As far as the trucks being made of unobtanium, sure, we'd use them as clodhopper rollerskates. And getting a slab of wood we'd set it up like the crawler and ride down the driveway.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Well... no. But it is absolutely, exceedingly unlikely that they will ever be found.

And why are you so sure of that?

 

[T.Neo]

And why are you so sure of that?

Do you know how big interstellar space is?

Do you know how absolutely, unimaginably, inconcievably big it is?

Please provide a case explaining why it is likely it would be found. "It is likely because in the universe I imagine we live in, random chunks of inactive debris are found light-years away from stars all the time!" doesn't count.

The likelihood of these probes getting within 1000 AU of a star, let alone through the middle of a planetary system, is miniscule. And even then, they would not really make their presence obvious, due to the fact that they'd be inactive, and potentially not that discernable from a random meteoroid.

The Voyager probes were not targeted at a particular star, they were just sent off in random directions after their flybys (this was because getting scientific data was the important bit- why the mission existed in the first place). They will by chance come close to some stars, thousands of years in the future... but these will be flybys on the order of light-years out, and a light year is a really, really long distance.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Do you know how big interstellar space is?

Do you know how absolutely, unimaginably, inconcievably big it is?

Please provide a case explaining why it is likely it would be found. "It is likely because in the universe I imagine we live in, random chunks of inactive debris are found light-years away from stars all the time!" doesn't count.

The likelihood of these probes getting within 1000 AU of a star, let alone through the middle of a planetary system, is miniscule. And even then, they would not really make their presence obvious, due to the fact that they'd be inactive, and potentially not that discernable from a random meteoroid.

The Voyager probes were not targeted at a particular star, they were just sent off in random directions after their flybys (this was because getting scientific data was the important bit- why the mission existed in the first place). They will by chance come close to some stars, thousands of years in the future... but these will be flybys on the order of light-years out, and a light year is a really, really long distance.

In the event of humans spreading further into the solar system and beyond, it's hard to imagine that there won't be archaeologists and the like looking for these things, something as big and important as that isn't just going to be glanced over by everyone.

 

[T.Neo]

Yeah, well that's a different kind of implausible compared to aliens finding it...

The inactive-spacecraft-is-difficult-to-find problem is still... problematic. It gets worse as time goes on, and frankly I don't see a reason to set a magic-explosion-into-space date tens or hundreds of thousands of years into the future.

Of course, there is also the issue of who would bother spending the money to collect this spacecraft, given the cost of doing so (even with 'advanced technology').

And the over-arching theme of "humanity expanding into the solar system and beyond" becomes sillier and sillier the more you look at it, because space is such a poor environment to live in (compared to the Earth, which is coincidentally also where all humans live). Of course, that doesn't stop people believing in the idea blindly...

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Of course, there is also the issue of who would bother spending the money to collect this spacecraft, given the cost of doing so (even with 'advanced technology').

You'd be surprised how much money people have spent in the past on looking for things that might not even exist, at the very least we know the probes exist for a fact and we can assume that we will still have some idea of their trajectory even after they have no power. :tiphat:

 

[Keatah]

This is all very amusing, but if was gonna build a shuttlecraft and retrieve this thing and sell it on epay I'm sure I'd get millions of dollars. Perhaps even from jpl itself, they'd love to see the effect of materials out in interstellar space for so long.

 

[T.Neo]

You'd be surprised how much money people have spent in the past on looking for things that might not even exist, at the very least we know the probes exist for a fact and we can assume that we will still have some idea of their trajectory even after they have no power.

Well, at least we have that advantage. But it can't perfectly tell you were the probes are, without a continuous beacon, it could get pretty difficult, and there could be forces at work changing the trajectory of the probe (remember the Pioneer effect? etc).

Of course, so much money was spent on finding the Titanic, or Grissom's Mercury capsule... but we are talking about whole other sums of money here, the kind of sums of money that are intrinsic to spaceflight.

This is all very amusing, but if was gonna build a shuttlecraft and retrieve this thing and sell it on epay I'm sure I'd get millions of dollars. Perhaps even from jpl itself, they'd love to see the effect of materials out in interstellar space for so long.

While it would be awesome to see those craft in museums and have JPL do tests on parts of them, if you sold a recovered craft for several millions of dollars, you would still be at a huge loss... the spacecraft for recovering it would likely cost multiple billions of dollars, assuming the technology needed for such a mission actually existed.

I really, really wouldn't want to try to look for an object the size of Voyager within a 1 AU search field that far out...