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Bon Voyage Voyager

Bob Park, who writes What's New for the American Physical Society (my professional organization), isn't too happy with the new priorities for NASA's budget. Neither am I for that matter, although my reasons are somewhat different. Nevertheless, I agree with him:

SPACE: VOYAGER 1 REACHES THE LIMIT OF BUSH’S ATTENTION SPAN.
It’s been traveling for 28 years and is now 8.7 billion miles from Earth. It just reported that it has entered the region of the heliosheath, where the solar wind begins to dissipate. It may be in this region another 10 years. Its Pt-238 radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) should keep operating until about 2020. When Voyager 1 crosses that final boundary, becoming the first human artifact to enter interstellar space, Earth won’t know. Communications with Voyager will be cut off to save $4.5M of NASA’s $16.5B budget (0.025%), for Bush’s Moon/Mars "vision."

[Bob Park, What's New, 27 May 2005.]

Posted on May 28, 2005 at 00.43 by jns · Permalink
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Speaking of Science, Splenetics

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