Ed Stone, scientist and salesman for the Voyager mission, has died

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/ed-stone-head-of-the-voyager-mission-that-introduced-us-to-solar-system-s-outer-planets-has-died-1.7235038

by impish9208 • 2 years ago

168 40 2 years ago

cbc.ca

tocs33• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Stone

It would be nice to see an occasional mission like Voyager. Every few years just send something out to take some pictures of something we have not seen close up yet. Let it keep going and looking around (and back).

dylan6045• 2 years ago

looking around at what though? there's nothing else out there. when Sagan proposed to turn the cameras back to look at earth, ultimately resulting in the Pale Blue Dot and family portrait, there was push back that looking back at the Sun might ruin the sensor. the response was essentially, so what if it does. there's nothing else it will ever be close enough to that would require using the camera.

New Horizons was the closest attempt at what you are suggesting in that they were able to aim for another body after the Pluto fly-by, but that was just luck in the alignments.

The only thing I can think that might be useful would be having observatories with opposite trajectories for ever increasing parallax info, but I don't know what that would actually be useful for. The fact that nobody is doing it means people much smarter than me don't think it'd be useful either.

jgalt212• 2 years ago

New Horizons was the closest attempt at what you are suggesting in that they were able to aim for another body after the Pluto fly-by, but that was just luck in the alignments.

An orbital mission to Pluto would be amazing. Maybe we can get its planetary status back. It is interesting and important to note that New Horizon's computers crashed for a bit as the probe was nearing Pluto. During the time the computers were down Horizon was scheduled to be scanning for as yet undiscovered moons of Pluto. If it had found a bunch more, perhaps Pluto would have already regained its rightful planetary status.

tocs33• 2 years ago

Another comet,asteroids, another mission to Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and moons. More data on heliosphere. A modest space telescope measuring parallax. I am not proposing flagship missions just something so we can see something new a little more often.

whycome• 2 years ago

Amazon Prime (Canada) has "It's Quieter in the Twilight", a 2022 doc about the Voyager team, and they have an interview with Ed. It features some of the interesting stories of the people involved throughout the project -- and it also deals with the challenge of moving the project headquarters, a failing system, and the pandemic.

https://www.itsquieterfilm.com/

anotherhue• 2 years ago

It's well worth your time

WanderPanda• 2 years ago

I enjoyed the docu recently and I‘m still in awe how „software-defined“ the voyager system was/is for it’s time

dylan6045• 2 years ago

Makes me wonder if Ed was aware that Voyager was fixed and once again operational before he passed. One of those situations where he held out long enough to see that, and then was able to let go knowing his project would long out live him.

bobowzki2• 2 years ago

I'm still looking for a place to watch that documentary from Sweden. It doesn't seem to be available on any platform.

fragmede2• 2 years ago

Just checked, and it's available on the 2003 platform I most associate with Sweden, as a foreigner.

sgt• 2 years ago

Such a legend. Warrants a black bar, IMHO.

dredmorbius5• 2 years ago

Email suggestions such as this to mods at hn@ycombinator.com

joecool1029• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/vnKYp

dredmorbius5• 2 years ago

NB for late readers: above was for the originally-submitted WSJ link. Unfortunately it doesn't capture the full obit.

See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40934189>

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

NASA JPL page from last month:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ed-stone-former-director-of-jp...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40651715

ISL• 2 years ago

Here's a vote for a black bar.

wanderingmind• 2 years ago

They recently debugged voyager remotely 25 billion kms away from earth. Its fascinating how much thought went into software design to enable such remote debugging even possible

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40687660

rodgerd• 2 years ago

I always recommend https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6223974/ The Farthest; a wonderful film.

dredmorbius5• 2 years ago

The WSJ article is paywalled and the archive.today link submitted fails to capture the full text: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40930022>

(HN also seems to have disabled replies to that comment, or I'd be noting this there.)

A paywall-free obit is available from the CBC: <https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/ed-stone-head-of-the-voyager...>

There's also a NASA/JPL obit <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ed-stone-former-director-of-jp...> commented by ChrisArchitect here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40930393>

Which was discussed a month ago, making this submission a dupe as well.

I've emailed mods on the first two issues.

dang2• 2 years ago

Thanks! I've changed the URL from https://www.wsj.com/science/space-astronomy/ed-stone-scienti... to the cbc.ca link above.

dang2• 2 years ago

Url changed from https://www.wsj.com/science/space-astronomy/ed-stone-scienti..., which points to this.

vmh1928• 2 years ago

Here's a fairly detailed description from NASA of the space craft and subsystems and science experiments as well as a list of subcontractors.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19810001583/downloads/19...

Ed Stone, scientist and salesman for the Voyager mission, has died

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