Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!

**Helion Energy's fusion reactor produced electricity from controlled star power for the first time**

Helion Energy, based in the U.S., announced in mid-2025 that it had successfully tested its seventh-generation fusion prototype, Polaris. The company claims the reactor has produced electricity directly from fusion reactions, a major milestone if verified independently. This isn't just scientific achievement – it's the first step toward unlimited clean energy.

Unlike previous fusion experiments that consumed more energy than they produced, Polaris generates net positive electricity from controlled fusion reactions. The reactor fuses helium-3 and deuterium at temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, creating conditions similar to the core of the sun but contained within a machine smaller than a building.

What makes this breakthrough revolutionary is the direct energy conversion. Instead of using fusion heat to boil water and turn turbines like traditional power plants, Polaris converts fusion energy directly into electricity through magnetic field interactions. This eliminates energy losses associated with thermal conversion, making the process dramatically more efficient.

The technology could provide virtually unlimited clean energy without radioactive waste, carbon emissions, or dependence on rare materials. If scaled commercially, fusion power could generate electricity cheaper than any current source while being completely safe – fusion reactions automatically stop if containment is lost.

Helion plans commercial fusion power plants within a decade, potentially solving climate change through abundant clean energy.

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That thing is sooo cool! I hope this pans out.

Now, if we could just figure out how to actually store the energy,,,,....
 
high-level details (a little nerdy, heres an 8 minute video of flight 11 just completed--summay of what wants vs what they need from V3) of v3; .

tricky stuff.
 
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yerterday the "other guy" shows how he's (Bezos) going to Mars. Despite their collective success, i am getting hard-over on the idea of unmanned flights to Mars. Save the money. And lives. keep the cool tecnology.

Blue Origin launches twin Mars probes for NASA as New Glenn makes first landing – Spaceflight Now.
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3 minute vid of booster landing for reuse. happpens about halfway.

I’m torn on unmanned only efforts.
I agree that there’s a TON of work that can be done remotely. However, humans can do more than robots.
 
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I am well into my seventh decade as a space nerd. love sci-fy. love james webb telescope and the like. my pin ups as a kid were the Mercury astronauts. i am starting to believe the Fermi_paradox.
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No doubt we are better explorers than the machines we send, and its probably true, AI notwithstanding, for hundreds of years. well beyond my grandkids, and their kids, lifetimes.

As air breathers, we aint gonna evolve for billions if ever to live on Mars or anywhere else without oxygen, so figure out better ways to live on this rock.

let's figure out how to harvest Mars for whatever makes life better here. i just feel smart machines could do that harvesting as well as any man and save society's money and risk of death.

:thumbsup:
 
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On December 6, 1957, America’s first attempt to launch a satellite into space went up in flames after rising just four feet off the launchpad.

The event happened at Cape Canaveral in Florida, with the whole world watching. The United States was scrambling to catch up after the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik 1 and 2.



The rocket, called Vanguard TV-3, was meant to be America's answer. Instead, it lifted slightly, lost thrust, and collapsed into a massive fireball just two seconds after ignition.



The press had a field day. They mockingly nicknamed the failed rocket “Kaputnik,” “Flopnik,” and “Stayputnik.” It was a moment of national embarrassment during the tense Cold War.



Newspapers printed headlines telling the government to “Keep quiet until something is orbiting.” The pressure on American scientists and engineers was immense.



But this public failure had an important consequence. It forced a shift in strategy away from the Navy's Vanguard project to the Army's Jupiter-C rocket program, which had been developed in parallel.



Fueled by the sting of the Vanguard disaster, the Army's team, led by Wernher von Braun, worked quickly.



Just two months later, on January 31, 1958, they successfully launched Explorer 1, America’s first satellite, into orbit. The 'Kaputnik' failure, while humiliating, ultimately paved the way for America's entry into the Space Race.

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Every thing we see in space from earth is moving. Most of all of it is too far away to see such movement. Things like the sun, the moon, the planets, etc, that we can SEE moving, are IN our solar system (i.e., our sun and everything going around it, a huge space on human scale but cosmically quite small).

We now have found the THIRD thing (first thing was "Oumuamua" in 2017, the second was "2I/Borisov" discovered in 2019) that appears to be IN ("passing through") our solar system, but came from OUTSIDE (from some other "sun") of it. It gets here in October this year and it's a comet named 3l/ATLAS. (pronounced "three - eye - atlas")

It is NOT even remotely going to hit us on this pass through (closest approach to eath is 150 million miles, inside the orbit of Mars, but the Earth and Mars aare far apart when it gets here.).

Our sun's gravity will "bend" its trajectory, something else will affect it after it passes through. Or, it may crash into something, and its trek through the universe will end.

Basically, we found it in all that space/dots of light out there because its going 137,000 MPH, too fast and too far away for OUR sun to be doing that to it ... it got here with time, at a trajectory, that something else/somewhere else got it all moving (e.g., ejected from some OTHER solar system in the Milky Way, or [unlikely] another galaxy?).

Anyway, a lot of explanation at these rather nerdy sources if one wants to dig deeper into the following images: Interstellar invader Comet 3I/ATLAS is packed with water ice that could be older than Earth

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Comet 3I/Atlas: Astronomers spot object that's travelled from outside the Solar System

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now that govt is open, yesterday NASA released official photos is something flying by from another solar system.

There may be other things later, nothing that can kill us that we know of, but we ain't gonna see this again. closest it gets to earth is 167 million miles next month. still too far away toget great analysis.

that assumes this is a flying rock and not an alien spaceship. no doubt to me its a rock! since it aint from around here, it would be cool if we could study what its actually made of compared to Earth.

Comet 3I/ATLAS – frequently asked questions

https://nypost.com/2025/11/19/nasa-releases-new-high-res-images-of-manhattan-sized-interstellar-object-3i-atlas/

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assumes this is a flying rock and not an alien spaceship
Your assessment that its a flying rock is on the money. In fact all the hype otherwise is just a distraction. Intentional? I'll avoid that rabbit hole here. In any case I've always felt the odds of us being alone in the universe are pretty slim. Its always nice when someone way smarter than me agrees.
 
Your assessment that its a flying rock is on the money. In fact all the hype otherwise is just a distraction. Intentional? I'll avoid that rabbit hole here. In any case I've always felt the odds of us being alone in the universe are pretty slim. Its always nice when someone way smarter than me agrees.

i am a fan of probabilty and i like Hossenfelder when she aint dumpin' on the scientists.

I dig the the logic here, i vote they (e.g. another species) are just too far away. Will we find out in my lifetime? I doubt it but I keep hoping.:) i still got high hopes for Jimbo Webb (and other stuff in the queue)in the IR range.
 
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Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!

over a year ago here but longer ago for me - a space nerd. NASA was gonna try to intercept an asteroid and bring back a sample to Earth. Bennu - NASA Science
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Well last summer, seven years later, they actually did it last summer and analyzed the material they brought back. They found same of the same materials (e.g., amino acids, carbon chains, salts, etc.) ,in our bodies.

i wont bore yall with the details but what it may confirm that that stuff came to the primordial Earth from the stuff striking the Earth few billion years ago. Or the Earth formed from materials that became the Earth and the "leftovers' are still floating around in asterioids and moons.

Depending on what people believe as the to how "life" got here (a deity did it, or billions of years time and bio-chemistry did it), in my islifetime the evidence suggests the latter (same as we discovered the sun doesnt orbit the earth and other things science disproved in the last 600 years), "life" is all over the Universe.

Sophisticated enough like us to build the Voyagers? Who knows. Why have'nt they contacted us?

A deity did it? Evidence says "no". my family ain't inviting me to Thanksgiving dinner next year: i tore my a** yesterday.:poke:

Think about it. Everywhere we look, billions of miles/years from us, the chemistry/compounds for us are there. i hope we make it to the ocean on Europa(Jupiter) Europa Clipper - NASA Science in 2030 (blink of an eye):)

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