Monday, June 18, 2012

When V'ger comes back, I hope he's not too mad...

Voyager 1 signals that it has reached the edge of interstellar space - 11billion miles away

I didn't know the thing was still transmitting. That's cool.
The Voyager 1, built by Nasa and launched in 1977 has spent the last 35 years steadily increasing its distance from Earth, and is now now 17,970,000,000km - or 11,100,000,000miles - away, travelling at 10km a second.

Indications over the last week implies that Voyager 1 is now leaving the heliosphere - the last vestige of this solar system.
So how come nobody can make a breadmaker that lasts more than six months?

7 comments:

Woody said...

"So how come nobody can make a breadmaker that lasts more than six months?"

They do. It's called a Zojirushi. My first 2 lasted 15 years. I paid $185 ea for them. My latest I bought at a yard sale 2 years ago for $20. We make bread about 4 times a week. We don't bake it in the machine, though. We use the dough cycle and bake it in the oven.

Carl-Bear said...

My basic Breadman has been working fine for me for about seven years, and I got it used from a friend.

I think you just went somewhere you'll wish you hadn't. [evil grin]

Anonymous said...

Do you really want NASA to build you a $13B bread maker?



Buck.

Carl-Bear said...

Buck, V'ger was built a long time ago when NASA was still pretty damned bureaucratically inefficient, but hadn't yet run off virtually all of their engineering talent.

Now Joel's superbreadmaker would be projected at $60 billion, overruns would push it to $120 billion (standard procedure). Hansen at GISS would vet the tech for sufficient greenness (he actual tries crap like that when not in jail). NASA would lose the first prototype when they move it to the outside trash dump and it's sold for scrap (really happened), they'd accidentally destroy the next machine on the g-table (that'n, too), then ship a final unit to the secret lair and miss by several thousand miles (yep). The replacement _would_ make it to the lair, but would catastrophically impact his new power shed (you guessed it).

So, to answer your question:

OH DEAR BOG NO!



(Be glad the bread maker would be unmanned: think Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia.)

Mayberry said...

I think V'ger would be pretty damn disappointed in the "creator" and would probably start singing that Weird Al song ya got up there...

MamaLiberty said...

My $35. bread machine is still going strong after about 14 years... Just needs an 0 ring for the shaft - works without it, just tends to dribble a bit.

It is now sitting idle in my basement, however, because I got a new stand mixer with a dough hook. More versatile for the counter space it takes.

I looked at new bread machines for a little while, but I didn't trust them.

Considering what you've said in the past about your bread, I suspect yours have worn out prematurely because your dough is too dry and makes the machine work too hard. Just a guess... :)

Joel said...

I think you just went somewhere you'll wish you hadn't. [evil grin]

I do confess this isn't the direction I saw the conversation going...