When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
NASA engineers have narrowed down the problem with the Voyager 1 deep space probe to a single faulty chip. It may now be possible to work around the corrupted memory and return the 47-year old interstellar spacecraft to an operational condition.
Since November, NASA has been trying to repair the Voyager 1 probe, which has been sending back gibberish instead of science and engineering data. It's hard enough trying to fix a piece of technology that dates back to the time of paper tape memories. It's downright frustrating when it's over 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth and it takes two days to get a reply to any signals sent to it.
Then came the breakthrough on March 1, when one of a long string of commands was sent trying to get a response from Voyager 1. Two days later, a string of gibberish came back to Mission Control, only it was different gibberish that one engineer at NASA's Deep Space Network recognized and was able to decode.
This turned out to be a dump of the onboard computer's complete memory that gave NASA engineers vital clues to the problem and the hope of solving it. It was already known that the trouble was in the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), which controls packaging data for transmission to Earth. Now, the fault has been narrowed down to a particular chip that may have failed due to old age or being struck by a cosmic ray particle.
It's now hoped that sometime in the coming weeks or months a way might be found to bypass the chip. If so, then Voyager 1 can return to work until its nuclear power source fails completely sometime in the next few years
Thanks for the Voyager 1 posts. Apparently the spacecraft is not the only one getting old Think i was around eight years of age when they launched. I have a scrapbook stashed in a box somewhere with B&W newspaper clippings of the launches, mission details, etc. along with everything else I could find space-wise at the time. The Jupiter fly-by was huge, the discovery of the rings and additional moons was astounding. An amazingly adventurous time for noob-deep space-mankind, and now a great time to wax nostalgic looking back on all of it, even though all things must come to an end.
I did a thing. Took me almost a full year to get this done.
But someone told me, they quit making this stuff a LONG time ago. I figure i'm not getting any younger.
To be honest, it's not easy to find good "virgin" land 30 minutes from downtown of a major city like Detroit for a good price. I think the only compromise is that this land is kind of soft / wet... But it's SE Michigan, this entire area is a swamp. The property to the north(with all the junk) has a moat around it, and the property all to the south and west that seems fine. So i think i'll be okay. 8 acres in total. Not sure how i'm going to move forward with it. Short term, get an approach to the road and maybe a small parking pad. Then clear the brush and build an "on ground" cabin. Long term, i'd like to build a home.
Congratulations, that looks like a great property!
Building in that sort of ground will be doable I'm sure, but unless you have a basically unlimited budget, there may be practical restrictions - you may be limited to some form of lightweight construction (eg pole frame, sheet roofing and wall cladding), rather than say stone/full brick and tile roof which could be more weight than the soil conditions can support. Every site has its own set of opportunities/limitations, I am sure you will be able to build something that, as rleete says, will become a home.
There's reason most cabins and buildings built in lower ground areas or areas with high water tables have an air gap beneath them. You don't want that moisture trapped within the structure. I'm facing a similar situation if I ever build something on the family property up in south Georgia. Most cabins were and are built on piers to keep them off the ground. It will also definitely help you if it ever floods to have an extra foot or two of elevation.
It also lets you have a covered front porch up off the ground. That way you can have a bunch of hound dogs lying under it when you are sitting in your rocking chair with your big beard and your overalls smoking your corn cob pipe.
1
Think i was around eight years of age when they launched. I have a scrapbook stashed in a box somewhere with B&W newspaper clippings of the launches, mission details, etc. along with everything else I could find space-wise at the time. The Jupiter fly-by was huge, the discovery of the rings and additional moons was astounding. An amazingly adventurous time for noob-deep space-mankind, and now a great time to wax nostalgic looking back on all of it, even though all things must come to an end.
