re keeping spacecraft on after funding cuts prb access digex com pat pontificated some birds require constant management for survival pointing a sensor at the sun even when powered down may burn it out pointing a parabolic antenna at sol from venus orbit may trash the foci elements what i was getting at in my post is whether or not it might be possible to put enough brains on board future deep space probes for them to automatically avoid such things as looking at the sun or going into an uncontrolled tumble i heard once that the voyagers had a failsafe routine built in that essentially says if you never hear from earth again here s what to do this was a back up in the event a receiver burnt out but the probe could still send data limited but still some data even if you let teh bird drift it may get hosed by some cosmic phenomena since this would be a shutdown that may never be refunded for startup if some type of cosmic bem took out the probe it might not be such a big loss obviously you can t plan for everything but the most obvious things can be considered james t green jgreen oboe calpoly edu i know you believe you understand what it is that you think i said but i am not sure that you realize that what i said is not what i meant
