"Pioneer 11 & 12, Gravity, and Occam's Razor" Topic

Interesting article: link

Nearly thirty years later, they're still helping us understand the Universe— even if only to confirm what we already knew.

Those are an impressive piece of engineering.
The fact that they are still working after 30+ years is just fantastic.

What John said. Absolutely awe-inspiring. Excellent engineering, and excellent analysis of the scientific data they're sending back.

I remember when they launched. Too damn cool.

This was an imporant lesson learned? "it is critical to archive long-term data on spacecraft'. Well, DUH!!! I mean, did anyone ver say "Oh, hey let's spend a few million bucks to fling a nuclear reactor out into space with all kinds of insturmentation. But, tell you what, let's not keep the data. Then we could save on data storage."

oh, they saved the data, technology nad time just moved past it before anyone thought "hey, we should transfer this"

"did anyone ver say "Oh, hey let's spend a few million bucks to fling a nuclear reactor out into space with all kinds of insturmentation. But, tell you what, let's not keep the data. Then we could save on data storage."

And yet, they only just found the original footage from the Apollo 11, and Neil Armstrong's stepping onto the moon's surface for the first time, a few years ago, stuffed in a disused closet at the Jet Propulsion labs. And they were carting them to the trash when someone noted the dates on the film cannisters. Do not under estimate the power of human being's stupidity, you will lose every time. And that goes double when Government gets involved.

Jeez Eclectic, I am not sure I could make a case that the very people who were responsible for putting a man on the moon, arguably the most imncredible technological achievement in world history, were also emblematic of the "power of human stupidity."

Actually, the "original" tapes were not lost. They were erased and reused. The tapes, recorded in "slow-scan TV" were not viewable with the standard TV technology of the time. In order to televise the moon walk in real time, NASA techs set up a TV camera in front of one of their SSTV monitors, hence the dodgy quality of the original telecast.

A large number of copies were converted for distribution and telecasting on standard television equipment. Some were circulated and some were put into storage. After the copies were made, the original SSTV recordings were deemed to be no longer needed and erased, which was SOP. SSTV tapes were very expensive and in very short supply, so they were routinely resused after the data was converted and copied to a different medium. I believe there were also SSTV tapes made in Australia too, and likewise once the conversion copies were made, these were also erased and reused.

Recently a couple of the post-conversion tapes were found, and I think are being edited for distribution. Having not been touched for 50 years they are probably in better shape than those that have been kicking around for a while.

I could be wrong, but I think one of the "found" tapes was discovered by a retired tech, who had brought them home and had them all of these years. He had them in a box under his desk or some-such. But don't quote me on that.

I think people have a totally wrong idea about how data is gathered, used and saved by science projects in general and speciflly space programs. Most are individual projects that only those on the projects ever care about, and this is true of space program projects as well.

Example – The Lunar orbital data from 1966, 1967, which mapped the moon and allowed NASA to determine where to land the Apollo space craft. Very important work and data that, if compared to the data coming from the current lunar orbitor, could tell us much about how the moon has changed from then till now. Where was this important data kept? In a farmers barn for 40 years. Researchers are resorting to a kickstarter project to try to keep the data secure.

link

It's not unique to governments. I've been through several 'mergers' of pharmaceuticals. All the data of the munchee is 'archived' and then most of the people who know where it is and how to retrieve it are 'downsized'. As an acquaintance said, 'I'd like to set up one of those companies that archives data for corporations. Toss it all in the trash, they'll never come looking for it.'