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Comment by beamatronic | Hacker News Reader

I think we need a continuous stream of Voyagers. Each with the latest sensor suite but otherwise using proven designs. What could we learn with, say, a good telescope mounted to one of these. It’s also not out of the range of possibilities to have a high bandwidth telecommunications infrastructure deployed across the entire solar system.

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You need more broadcast power the further you’re away from earth and there’s less solar energy per m² the further you’re away from the sun (Neptune is 30 AU away, so there, per m² it’s about a thousandth of what we get around earth), and launching nuclear powered space probes (let alone a continuous stream of them) is a bit controversial.

Because of that, I think high bandwidth is problematic (Voyager 2 had 115 kbits/second at Jupiter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2#Communications) and currently has 160 bits per second; new Horizons, launched in 2006 has _less_ than that (smaller parabolic dish; less power ; dedicating fewer antennas on earth to receive data (https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/27450/why-is-new-h...))

You also would need a lot of large radio antennas on/around earth if you want to receive from these probes 24h/day (and if you don’t, you of course give up effective bandwidth)

I wonder what it would cost to build an exact replica of a Voyager and launch it on one of the newer launch vehicles? Obviously, we're not going to get a gravity slingshot off multiple gas giants, but considering that Voyagers were launched using Titan rockets, we should be able to give it a much better push from Earth orbit.

Or make satellites with relay capabilities? Why did they have to EOL Cassini when it had an RTG anyway?

From https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/mission/grand-...

"Having expended almost every bit of the rocket propellant it carried to Saturn, operators deliberately plunged Cassini into the planet to ensure Saturn's moons remain pristine for future exploration"

A series of relays spread across the Jovian orbit would be an interesting way to mitigate the effects of the inverse square law on transmissions from extra-solar probes.

sounds like a job for the intergalactice computer network

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