I have made no secret of my disdain for the state of America’s manned space flight program. Since the end of the Apollo program, it has been little more than a glorified re-tred of the Gemini program……and at least Gemini had the virtue of being a precursor to a manned mission to the Moon. The Space Shuttle ? Basically, just a big, dangerous version of a UPS delivery truck.
In contrast, we have the story of the Voyager spacecraft
(SPACE.com) — Voyager II could pass beyond the outermost layer of our solar system, called the “termination shock,” sometime within the next year, NASA scientists announced at a media teleconference today.
The milestone, which comes about a year after Voyager 1’s crossing, comes earlier than expected and suggests to scientists that the edge of the shock is about one billion miles closer to the sun in the southern region of the solar system than in the north.
And, the amazing thing about it is that there is an entire generation of human beings who have been born since Voyager I and II were launched:
Both Voyager spacecrafts were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida: Voyager II headed out on August 20, 1977, Voyager I on September 5, 1977.
Currently, Voyager I is about 8.7 billion miles from the sun and traveling at a speed of 3.6 AU per year while
Voyager II is about 6.5 billion miles away and moving at about 3.3 AU per year.
And yet they keep on transmitting. Cool
May 24th, 2006 at 8:46 am
Hmm… Termination shock. Never heard of it before.
So I looked it up…
Interesting stuff, but I gotta say, if we don’t figure out how to travel faster than light, this whole interstellar travel thing is going to be a real bore…
June 19th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
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