There was one other thing that cinched it (IIRC) - the original mission goal for Voyager was to explore the Jupiter and Saturn systems (NOT to do the "grand tour"). For the planning for Voyager I, the mission goals hadn't been completed (as neither Voyager had gotten to Saturn at that point), and Sagan made a strong case that the mission goal should include Titan, and that the mission goals should be completed to the extent possible with Voyager I. When Voyager II came to Saturn, the mission goals had been met (by Voyager I), so they could take the gravity assist to go on to Uranus and Neptune on an extended mission.

Well, how do you think the Golden Record got on the side of the spacecraft? I am sure your favorite search engine will reveal something on that.

How do you think these decisions are made? Carl Sagan was involved with basically every NASA planetary mission (including Apollo) from 1960 through Voyager and Viking. He proposed that Titan might have a lot of hydrocarbons (it does) a thick atmosphere (it does), haze (check) and maybe a biosphere (the jury is still out). (He did propose a strong greenhouse for Titan, and struck out there. The surface is not as balmy as he hoped.) As far as I can remember, no one was proposing a biosphere for Pluto (we didn't even know Pluto had a moon at that point). The decision to do a Titan close approach was rational, and (while it certainly wasn't his decision alone) his advocacy for it carried a lot of weight.

Carl Sagan thought it was more important to get close to Titan, which made a gravity assist for Pluto impossible. I think he hoped that there would be good pictures of the hypothesized Methane seas, but in the event the Titan haze made the surface just a blur.

What the close Titan approach did provide was a radio occultation of the Titan atmosphere, showing how deep it was and something of its structure.

In space flight, as in life, you have to chose, and they chose Titan.

Hey AC, dont worry too much.

You can boot UEFI bios systems into legacy OSes pretty easily with a second stage loader scheme.

Such as GRUB2.

It works in the reverse too-- allowing UEFI expecting OSes to boot on BIOS systems. Since upgrading to a 4tb drive, I had to switch to GPT instead of MBR. I use GRUB2 on the "fake" MBR of the GPT table as the primary loader to satisfy my legacy BIOS's need for a primary boot sector and MBR partition table, and since GRUB2 is GPT aware, it can read the GPT partition table and then chainload the proper bootloader.

Works like a charm.

The real challenge would be getting UEFI expecting OSes that make use of UEFI features after bootup to run on legacy BIOS systems. For that, you need software implementations of UEFI, and those are a pain in the ass.

One way that windows 7 (in particular) slows down, comes from the use of the winSXS folder.

Basically, because the windows software ecosystem is so... Plagued.. with legacy software that expect older versions of system libraries, Microsoft invented a solution to detect those dependencies and satisfy them with those older libaries in a sandbox-- the WinSXS folder.

As time passes, and updates happen, system libraries get updated-- instead of being replaced, they get moved to the winsxs folder and archived. This is so when your bitchy internal-only legacy application that is oh-so-mission-critical that it simply cant be rewritten for a modern OS gets run, it can continue to run.

The downside is that as this treasure trove of old libraries grows, the penalty of the checking routine becomes more and more apparent. (also, it consumes more and more disk space.)

Other forms of slowdown are not specific to windows 7 and newer however.

The registry is a binary file that must be parsed to find entries inside it, and it too can become fragmented. As changes are CONSTANTLY happening to the registry, the (actual) structure of the registry can become more and more byzantine. Since such changes are completely unavoidable with daily use, the slow degradation of this system is also unavoidable unless you boot from a golden image each and every time. This has been a problem since at least the 9x days. Back then, you could automate registry defragmentation with a bootup script because of the complete lack of filesystem security on FAT-- (Tell regedit to dump the registry in its totality into an exported text file, then tell it to rebuild the registry from scratch using that text file dump, then cleanup the temporary files afterwards.) You cant do that with modern flavors of windows because 1) you cant invoke scripts that easily on bootup anymore 2) the registry files are protected with NTFS security descriptors, 3) the OS locks the registry basically as soon as NTLDR finishes, so you cant replace the registry files while live.

There are of course, the other causes of slowdown that come from cumulative misconfigurations that happen from automated updates, but meh.

Even with disk cleanup removing redundancies in the winSXS folder, it can still swell to be over 12gb in size.

A better solution is to turn NTFS compression on for the folder, then defragment the living shit out of it. (NTFS compression causes epic fragmentation.)

You dont want compression turned on as a rule, but when windows is basically warehousing data against an uncertain future, you might as well treat it like a "rarely used, if ever" archival store. The space is more valuable than the access speed in this case.

Just be wary! the compression cycle is very harmful to SSDs, but once compressed, the files dont change, so its fine afterward. Better to do with a disk image on a spinny disk, then port the whole image to the SSD.

Does your other OS hold on to outdated versions of system files for compatibility reasons, like windows 7+ does?

(Note, research the purpose of the WINSXS folder.)

Part of the issue is also that newer versions of windows want to move away from just being an OS, and toward being an entertainment venue all of its own.

That's MS marketing and the UI graphic designers faults though.

Fun little thing to do:

Take a weak kneed intel Atom board, and do some simple office use tests with it with various older versions of windows. Start with NT4, then use Win2k, the XP, then 7, then 8.1. See how the ability to do simple things degrades as the OS expects more and more hardware just to draw the damned UI.

Now, realize that the biggest selling point for new windows versions is NOT a new shiny UI-- but continued security updates. Now you will understand why corporations get bitchy. They have something that works, on the hardware they already have-- but are going to be forced to buy a whole new iteration of hardware, to get updated software that gets updates against security threats-- because otherwise MS does not get money.

If it werent for the lack of security updates, win2k would be ideal for nearly all corporate drone installations.

(Note, there are other useful features that were added with each version of windows, and I am not discounting that. What I am saying is that even with those kernel space and user space feature enhancements, they could have been rolled into service packs for the older products, and you would have had more responsive product overall. The need to reinvent the OS constantly drives the need to constantly make it look different, (to set it apart from its predecessor), which constantly increases the HW requirements. It is pathological.)

Bowditch Navigation Systems had a similar video navigation system, but for ships at sea. It included an integrated navigation system (LORAN, OMEGA and dead reckoning), and displayed the user's location by projecting microfiche cards of the usual navigation charts. Unlike the car system, this was a practical product with a number of customers. GPS integration was planned but never implemented; the company was caught up in a lawsuit against one of its main investors and collapsed in the 1986 time frame due to a lack of cash.

Please help me understand how castigating someone for their 'astounding stupidity' isn't a personal attack. Or do you simply prefer to bitterly snipe from obscurity?

Were this a observation factual I think it unlikely I'd have the mental capacity to reply to you in this manner. Astoundingly stupid people don't tend to be able to string much of a sentence together in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience.

I put it to you Mr. AC that you are just as likely to be Prune, butt-hurt about being called out for his or her unnecessary rudeness.

Perhaps, if you disagree, you can provide some sort of explanation for why my original post still counts as 'astoundingly stupid'? It seems wilfully-ignorant of you to ignore the explanatory post I made in reply to Prune, suggesting you possess a degree of immunity to rational argument. Surprise me and prove me wrong, please.

Surely you mean figuratively? I'm not sure faeces are the best possible material for recording and storing health metrics, but I'm open to debate.

Thanks for the personal attack, it's always a nice way to ensure you are taken seriously.

Thanks also for the science lesson; I am actually well aware there are different types of EM.

My point was that people who fear EM don't know and don't care about the difference, so why would they take the 'risk' of the embedded wiring in their house any less seriously?

Try not to make foolish assumptions so much in future, you might even manage to avoid coming across as a rude prick.