Close Encounters
Of The Turd Kind.
That's what you get if you venture too close to Ur...
Guess it was meant to be, for it to have been Voyager "Number 2".
Voyager 2's close encounter with Uranus wasn't in the original plan
It is 40 years since Voyager 2 performed the first and, so far, only flyby of the planet Uranus. The resulting trove of data, however, was a bonus that almost didn't happen. At the time of Voyager 2's launch, Uranus wasn't part of the formal plan. The mission was referred to for a long time as the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn …
-
Tuesday 27th January 2026 10:52 GMT stiine
yur-a-nus
...that's how its pronounced. We're all adults here and we'll snigger and smirk if we want. If you really want to screw with a planetary scientist during a talk on Uranus, when you pose your question, refer to it as youranus, myanus, or heranus. Bonus points if you can work all three into your question.
-
Tuesday 27th January 2026 12:01 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: yur-a-nus
Reminds me of the time Penny Mordaunt made a speech during a debate in the Commons used the word c**k...
-
Tuesday 27th January 2026 16:48 GMT brainwrong
Re: yur-a-nus
I recall it being pronounced "you-rain-us" until the flyby, and television started fretting about the mis-pronounciation and gave us "yur-a-nus", this being the trigger for the spitting image sketch.
I always thought "yur-a-nus" was stupid, and anyone saying "your-anus" was an idiot. I've never understood why anus's are funny.
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 28th January 2026 09:55 GMT The Organ Grinder's Monkey
Re: Bloody Romans
Ref Greek planet names,
Yes it probably would be cooler, but it would be what we're used to, so we'd probably then think how much cooler it'd be if they were called Mercury, Venus, Earth etc.
(plus the Greek suggestion would break my aide memoir for names & order of planets:
"My very easy method just speeds up naming planets"
even more than the "is it or isn't it" about Pluto.
-
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 27th January 2026 11:50 GMT TVU
If any new probes are going to the outer solar system in the next few decades, then I think that Neptune would be a better target as it has a highly dynamic and active atmosphere featuring large scale storms plus there's the large and interesting moon Triton to look at (it is a captured Kuiper Belt object).
-
-
Tuesday 27th January 2026 15:31 GMT Maximus Decimus Meridius
Re: Connect TRITON
At a former employer, we used planets as server names. Mercury was the email server, Saturn and Jupiter were the big file servers.
We set up a very small network at a customers and decided to use Thomas the Tank Engine characters. Which was fine apart from the lady who used the server as her machine and wasn't best pleased to be The Fat Controller. The network was so small with so few users it didn't justify a separate file server, so NT4 was fine for file and print sharing.
-
Wednesday 28th January 2026 17:45 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: Connect TRITON
At the IBM AIX Systems Support Centre in the UK (aka Call-AIX) in the 1990's, the AIX servers were all named after types of whales and other cetaceans, the AIX/PS2 desktop workstations were named after cartoon characters (mine was Foghorn), and the slightly later X-Stations were named after American Indian peoples (I think mine was Algonquin, although I could be wrong).
When we later put RS/6000 model 43Ps on some desks, we started using professions, although I chose Magician (not strictly a profession, I suppose), but as I started that naming convention, I got to choose! I don't think anyone chose Hooker!
The TS/Channel Support group upstairs named their systems after Greek gods.
-
-
-
Tuesday 27th January 2026 12:40 GMT EricM
This brings up the awkward question of when the next mission might be launched, and who would do it.
USA: Improbable. Shrinking overall technical and science capability because of their "reverse DEI", which puts loyalty to their Dear Leader and its party above anything else. Science funding is being reduced. Science itself is being deprecated/ignored by large parts of the conservative population.
EU: Improbable. ESA is still underfunded and is politically pulled in too many directions. ESA programs are viewed primarily as funding opportunities for companies in close proximity to political decision makes, not as a means to reach a target, Science funding is too dependent on rapidly shifting priorities.
Japan: Improbable. Capable of building the mission, but probably unwilling to spend the money needed alone.
China: Probably. If their LEO activities are anything to go by: Rising technical capability, a steady will to succeed in space, assured funding and a plan.
Overall: As the world descends again into a spiral of rising military budgets to fight off Imperialism 2.0 globally, it probably will take 50 years or more, until we are capable and willing again, to spend large amounts of money on science in the outer solar system.
-
Tuesday 27th January 2026 13:43 GMT I ain't Spartacus
This brings up the awkward question of when the next mission might be launched, and who would do it.
Eric M,
If China have a plan for space, they've not shown much interest in the outer solar system. They're going for manned activities and a run to the Moon at the moment. Whereas both the Soviet and US space programs were sending out a lot of probes at the same time as doing both. Now it seems only NASA and the ESA are interested in that. And NASA's budget, even with some protection from Congress, is not going to stretch far under the current administration.
-
-
Monday 2nd February 2026 09:58 GMT weegie38
Those of a certain vintage will recall a Spitting Image sketch riffing on the pronunciation issue. The newsreader puppet (Alistair Burnet IIRC) closed the News at Ten sketch with the line "Voyager 2 will now proceed with the next part of its mission, an encounter with the moon "boom-whole-ay"
Biting the hand that feeds IT
