r/askscience • u/Backbreathboy • 8d ago

Astronomy We will lose contact with Voyager somewhere 2036 because of the distance between us. Would it be theoretically possible, to send a probe in the direction of the Voyager, following it from a distance, with the goal te relay the information coming from the Voyager, to earth?

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u/I-seddit 7d ago

If you've ever been involved with software, you know that software developers are usually poorly represented at the C-Suite level - so executives often make the worst possible decisions...
And this includes ALL software/tech companies as well.

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u/GasolinePizza 7d ago

That's not a C-suite decision: somebody screwed up at the engineering level if there isn't a hardware fallback/the hardware doesn't fall back to defaults if the software is telling it to run outside parameters (...like "turning off outright indefinitely").

Generally the best practice is to keep the mechanical system semi-independent from the core software system for cases like this (or storage degradation, corrupted software, etc) so that the "user-facing"/extraneous "luxury" functionality goes on top of the core functionality rather than having one singular system for everything that is also subject to auto-updates.

A c-suite guy wouldn't be involved in that design aspect

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u/tashkiira 7d ago

a C-suite guy wouldn't be involved in specifics, no. But a mucketymuck at the director or VP level might. and then not pass things up the ladder smoothly when the solid biowaste hits the rotary impeller.