Carl Sagan wrote about the MASER amplifier technology back in the 70s with an almost reverent and magical perspective. The technology really is amazing; exotic materials, cryogenic equipment, and years of tweaking and perfecting.
Bruce Murray wrote quite a bit about the struggle to get 117kbps from Mariner 10 at Mercury in the early 70s. That was a challenge for the technology and for the bureaucracy that had developed in parts of NASA. The department operating the downlink equipment wanted slow data rates to guaranty 100% perfect reception of every single bit, Murray realized a little 'noise' in imaging data was not that big a problem, so he wanted a very high data rate. He wanted the output of the camera electronics to go directly to the transmitter circuitry and not be buffered on the on board tape drive. The craft could take so many more pictures that way and it worked.
Just a few years later, the Voyager project achieved very nearly the same data rate from Jupiter, 5 times further away. Some really smart and careful work went into making long range data transmission work.
Bruce Murray wrote quite a bit about the struggle to get 117kbps from Mariner 10 at Mercury in the early 70s. That was a challenge for the technology and for the bureaucracy that had developed in parts of NASA. The department operating the downlink equipment wanted slow data rates to guaranty 100% perfect reception of every single bit, Murray realized a little 'noise' in imaging data was not that big a problem, so he wanted a very high data rate. He wanted the output of the camera electronics to go directly to the transmitter circuitry and not be buffered on the on board tape drive. The craft could take so many more pictures that way and it worked.
Just a few years later, the Voyager project achieved very nearly the same data rate from Jupiter, 5 times further away. Some really smart and careful work went into making long range data transmission work.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
