Reply With QuoteIf Keith Richards was a spacecraft :)
I read this evening that they have managed to remotely fix Voyager 1 after its started sending back scrambled information. It’s travelling at some 38k mph and over 15 billion miles away. There are some supremely clever people in this world. JLR couldn't send us patch files successfully from Solihull.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...year-old-probe
If Keith Richards was a spacecraft :)
Mostly 1960s technology. Likewise, you could probably instruct the owner to repair his Series 2 over the phoneOriginally Posted by Franky Four Fingers
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
That's a story for movies (and yes, they've done a few with that theme). The old 'When you put your mind to it, you can make it happen!' In this case they needed a few people who have a 'free bus pass' to come back, I guess. (And I think that the JLR help desk employees in Mumbay or Delhi are too young to help you with these older Series LRs...)
If it has an accident that far away is it only covered Third Party?
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Getting the signal there is so complex but it's just "remotely" in the media :-)
B
Few things are as awe-inspiring to me as Voyager 1.
When I was 10 or 11, I had a book that described NASA's intention to launch a probe that would take advantage of a planetary alignment that only takes place once every 176 years. This was due to happen in the late '70s and back then the proposed mission was known as the "Grand Tour".
So Voyager 1 was launched in September 1977.
It's into the last few years of its useful life now - not because of the distance, but because it's running out of power. It converts heat from decaying plutonium into electricity to power its instruments, antiquated onboard computer and transmitters, and the stuff only lasts so long.
Its cameras were switched off in 1990, to save memory (the onboard computer only has 70k).
I find it a bit eerie to think about it out there in the bleak coldness of space.
On a cosmological scale though, it's still very close. If you imagine Earth to be the monument at Charing Cross Station and the edge of our galaxy (about 23,000 light years away) to be the closest bit of the M25, Voyager 1 has travelled about 2mm. It's not actually travelling in the direction of the nearest star but if it was, even at a bit over 10 miles per second it would take roughly another 75,000 years to get there.
Now for the inevitable, predictable Douglas Adams quote:
“Space is big.
You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
It amazes me just how they're still in contact with them, it takes nearly a day for the signal to travel the 15 billion miles. But I can't get a signal on my sky box from isleworth if the weather is a bit off
Just incredible.
Since Douglas Adams has been mentioned…
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
... or Terry Pratchet: 'In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.'
Always loved that.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
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