Voyager 1 sending again!

[BruceH]

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voya...s-to-earth

Amazingly they've managed to work-around a hardware fault at nearly a light-day's distance. And I have trouble with a Prime connected by USB. ;-)

[Dands]

Hands down the highest engineering achievement in human history so far.

[pascal_meheut]

(04-23-2024 06:54 PM)Dands Wrote:  Hands down the highest engineering achievement in human history so far.

They is some competition for the title but this is indeed a marvel.

[Johnh]

It's a huge testament to the incredible ingenuity and foresight of the original designers, and all the teams involved since, to set up and operate a system that can be so reconfigured and controlled after such time and distance!

[JanS]

So, April 18th 2024 probably marks the date of the most accomplished OTA (and OTIS - over the interstellar Space) Firmware update of all time. Kudos to NASA's Voyager Flight Team at JPL !

[Pierre]

(04-23-2024 09:33 PM)pascal_meheut Wrote:  

(04-23-2024 06:54 PM)Dands Wrote:  Hands down the highest engineering achievement in human history so far.

They is some competition for the title but this is indeed a marvel.

I think that alone, without any previous technological references, with his unique inventiveness and at the age of 19, Blaise Pascal achieved without doubt the highest engineering achievement in human history so far by inventing the "Pascaline".
PS: Which "Voyager" was rescued in space? the HP10C? the HP11C? the HP12C? the HP15C? the HP16C?

Je pense que seul, sans aucune référence technologique préalable, avec son inventivité unique et à l'âge de 19 ans, Blaise Pascal a réalisé sans aucun doute la plus haute réussite technique de l'histoire de l'humanité en inventant la "Pascaline".
PS: Quelle "Voyager" a été dépannée dans l'espace ? la HP10C ? la HP11C ? la HP12C ? la HP15C ? la HP16C ?

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(Yesterday 08:19 AM)Pierre Wrote:  I think that alone, without any previous technological references, with his unique inventiveness and at the age of 19, Blaise Pascal achieved without doubt the highest engineering achievement in human history so far by inventing the "Pascaline".

As a local patriot to my chosen place of living (even if we have been here since 24 years only) I must say, that "our" Wilhelm Schickard built his calcualting machine, made on purpose for Johannes Kepler, but unfortunately lost in a fire during the 30 years war, almost a decade before Pascal. But anyway, I don't think that the calculating machine is the greatest achievement of mankind. I am rather with Voyager (or even more so, Apollo).

Regards
Max

NB: And Voyager also proves how long technology can work if it is not designed for "planned obsolescence"...

[Pierre]

(Yesterday 11:11 AM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  I don't think that the calculating machine is the greatest achievement of mankind.

Without a calculating machine, there are no calculators, no computers...
No trajectory calculations, no planes, no rockets...
No "Voyager"...
And what about the wheel!

PS: Johannes Kepler? The one who invented a machine that no one would have ever seen... lost in a fire... He is, among other things, considered the precursor of science fiction! especially fiction. (Sorry Max, it's just a little joke.)

[Dands]

Nikola Tesla is by far my favorite, he pretty much invented our modern way of life. But when we talk about a device or machine still communicating from this great distance, I have to praise the designers of the Voyager, it's just too impressive.

[Roland57]

Johannes Kepler didn't invent a calculating machine ! It was Wilhelm Schickard, who built the first calculator in 1623, this machine has been destroyed by a fire. He described the machine in a letter to Keppler 1624. Schickard's drawings of the machine have been lost for centuries. They have been discovered in 1960. Engineers built a working replika based on these drawings.

Roland

[Thomas Klemm]

This reminded me of a similar story: NASA Programmer Remembers Debugging Lisp in Deep Space

Lisping at JPL
Section: 1994-1999 - Remote Agent

Formal Analysis of the Remote Agent Before and After Flight

[Pierre]

(Yesterday 04:11 PM)Roland57 Wrote:  Johannes Kepler didn't invent a calculating machine ! It was Wilhelm Schickard, who built the first calculator in 1623, this machine has been destroyed by a fire. He described the machine in a letter to Keppler 1624. Schickard's drawings of the machine have been lost for centuries. They have been discovered in 1960. Engineers built a working replika based on these drawings.

Roland

Thank you Roland, indeed it was Wilhelm Schickard who invented the first calculating machine but never used at the time because it was not really perfect...
Only Pascal's machine, although later, was used by many people and was marketed with some success.
And its operation was renowned for being excellent and flawless (today we would rather say "bug")

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(Yesterday 04:11 PM)Roland57 Wrote:  Johannes Kepler didn't invent a calculating machine ! It was Wilhelm Schickard, who built the first calculator in 1623, this machine has been destroyed by a fire. He described the machine in a letter to Keppler 1624. Schickard's drawings of the machine have been lost for centuries. They have been discovered in 1960. Engineers built a working replika based on these drawings.

As written above, I live in the same town as Wilhelm Schickard, who was a professor for Hebrew and astronomy at the University of Tübingen. So I must do some nitpicking now ;-)
Schickard built two of his calculating machines around 1623, one for himself and one for Johannes Kepler. Both were destroyed by fire a few years later and Kepler never received his machine. But some letters written about it to Kepler survived the centuries, which included drawings of the workings of the machine. These letters were unearthed and published in the early 20th century but remained mostly unnoticed until the mid 195ies.

Based on these drawings, Bruno von Freytag-Löringhoff, then professor emeritus for philosophy at the same university as Schickard but 300 years later, personally built a replica of the machine at his home using amateur tools.
Schickard's drawings are not very precise and Freytag only fully understood the working principle after it was revealed to him in a dream. Really, no kidding! Freytag-Löringhoff personally told this story to one of my astronomer colleagues who used to play chess with him. He bulit two replicas, one is here in Tübingen in the town museum ("Stadtmuseum" - free entrance! and you are allowed to touch and work the machine) and the other at the "Arithmeum" in Bonn. But there are more replicas in other museums built by different people, occasionally one keeps popping up at eBay for a ridiculous asking price of 49.000 Euros. If you make one yourself you spend maybe 50 Euros for wood and brass.

Some people say that, had Kepler ever received his calculating machine, the progress in astronomy would have gained at least a century. Because at that time, astronomers like Kepler wasted 95% of their working time performing stupid routine calculations by hand in order to compile their tables and almanachs. If he could have spent that time looking forward, who knows what discoveries he could have made.

Different from the machine of Pascal, which could only add and substact, Schickards machine included a section with devices like Napier bones used for multiplications. It was not a true multiplication machine, but combined the adding/substracting machine and a crude predecessor of the slide rule (which was invented only ten years later) in the same housing.

Regards
Max

NB: I am quite sure that the trajectories of the Voyager spacecraft could have been worked out without computers and calculating machines, using only pen, paper and slide rule. But without an onboard computer to steer the spacecraft, collect data and images and send them to Earth the mission would have been quite pointless.

[Pierre]

Thanks for all this historical information.

[Johnh]

(Yesterday 02:08 PM)Pierre Wrote:  And what about the wheel!

Yes I'm still working on that one.....

I'm thinking that something like that would be great at each corner of my car. So far I've found that 6 sided wheels give a much smoother ride than the four-sided square ones.

So now I'm thinking that perhaps 8 sides might be even better! Who knows where this could lead?

[lrdheat]

Re calculations with pen and paper, mechanical adding machines, slide rules…the boundary between partial and total of total eclipse New York City in January 1925 was just 4 seconds late, and 14 city blocks north of the forecasted time/position! I am floored at this! Observers were on each corner on Manhattan from ~30th to ~130th street. Forecast boundary between partial and total was between 82nd and 83rd street. Actual was between 96th and 97th street!