Thanks anon@68.3.

Also, it's surprising it took this many posts to see someone mention the space muck!

I found the article that CNN was supposed to have (on Reuters), here is a link:

http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=sciencenews&StoryID=660556

We've seen quite a few auctions of the wares of fuckedompanies lately, but I think I'll hold out for the Web Pinto (ala WebVan) to go to auction!

http://www.webpinto.com/

Maybe some day we'll have some kind of spacecraft to be able to catch up to it...

Pioneer 11 and one of the Voyager (probably Voyager 2, since it visited all 4 gas giants) will be in the Smithsonian Air & Space museum give a century or so...

Pioneer 10 will likely not be returned to earth because it was the first interplanetary spaceprobe launched that was intended to leave the solar system. It will be left to pursue its interstellar journey as a symbolic gesture. After all, it does have that plack on it that shows anyone who may find it how to find their way to solar system.

since no one has pointed this out yet I will take honors of admitting I know this. Veeger (was that how it was spelt?) was not from an episode but from the motion picture lol and as much as I think on it I am sure that was the only startrek episode with anything like that in it lol.

"Vger" was the name given by the automoton because the other letters of VOYAGER were encrusted over with some kind of "space muck". It was supposed to be a fictional Voyager 6 spacecraft, which never existed (there were only Voyager I and II). The Voyager spacecraft were contemporary to the release of Star Trek Motion Picture. They were both launched in 1977, which I think was about 2 years before Trek was released, and they had both completed flybys of the planet Jupiter in 1979. Even though it was a fictional craft, it appeared to be closely modeled after the Voyager I and II probes.

Its amazing that the transmitter still works after 30 years, and is still "audible" given its limited power and great distance. How much stuff do we still have around from 1972 that still works?

One of the most interesting aspects of these things to me is what is called "round trip light time", or how long before acknowledgement is received for a signal sent to a distant spacecraft. 22 Hours in Pioneer 10's case. But Voyager I is even further out, and I check the status of the Voyager probes on the JPL page once or twice a year: http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/voyager.html

23h 18m round trip light time- nearly a full day. Call the spacecraft at 8:00 today, and it will be 7:42 tomorrow before you get an answer. By comparison, when the Apollo astronauts were on the moon, the signal delay was just under 3 seconds.

I dunno I must be high...but that just sounds like a joke man... One thousand million dollors?!? That just cracks me up for some reason...

Mars is not the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact its cold as Hell.

I think it's pretty neat that we are actually able to communicate with the thing from such a far distance. Goes to show how much thought and workmanship went into building it. Too bad the cameras don't work on it would be kinda neat to see what (if anything) is out there.

Maybe some day we'll have some kind of spacecraft to be able to catch up to it...

says the guy posting on a video game message board....

star strek sucks its for nerds

Jesus $#&&^n christ! O_O
I'm going to have nightmares for weeks.

This comment was edited on Mar 5, 15:02.

So what's between a million and a billion for our Euro-friends?

A milliard, of course. You Americans must, at some point, have swapped milliards and billions (never get anthing right, concerning units, eh? :D).
The correct (i.e. European) order is: million, milliard, billion, billiard.

P.S. Before I start another flame war: I firmly believe in everyone's right to count however they want. Besides, is there really much of a difference between owning a billion dollars or owning a milliard dollars? I'll take any of the two

1,000,000,000 is indeed one thousand million.

That said, there are few people who would consider a billion to be anything other than 1,000,000,000 - even us weird Brits

That's the dumbest fucking thing I ever heard. So what's between a million and a billion for our Euro-friends? What would 1,000,000,000 be then? <Dr. Evil> One thousand million dollars? <Dr. Evil>.

You must be joking.

I think you win Pun of the Day, Blue.

Okay, at the risk of being exposed as the closet trekkie that I am...

'Veeger' appeared in the first Star Trek movie: Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The story was that a Voyager probe, lauched from earth in the distant past (distant past to Kirk and his boys), somehow ends up on a planet that is inhabited by a race of super-intelligent machines, which recognize Voyager as one of thier kind (albeit a bit on the primitive side). They give old V-ger a few upgrades (like a bajillion giga-quads of CPU power) and send it back out to fulfil its mission (which is to learn everything it can about the universe and return that info to its creator--us).

It's probably about the best plot in any of the Star-Trek movies to date (my opinion only, back off) and I'd recomend renting the re-released (2002) version with all new special effects (Shatners hairpiece is digitally restored).

-©-

This should be a link of the day, if it hasn't been already:

http://www.jaybill.com/~jaybill/article.php?articleID=49

Be warned, it's VERY shocking.

A US billion is a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000. A European billion is a million million, or 1,000,000,000,000.

Whats the difference between a US billion and a Euro billion?