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Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
... BTW: V'ger was the name of the returning "improved" Earth probe in Star Trek I....at least until someone scraped off the carbon covering the rest of its name 
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...BTW ... I was wrong about hanging up thermistors in "V ger" (it was over 30 years ago) ... that was on a smaller satellite and not the large MJS probe (Mars/Jupiter/Saturn probe, aka "Voyager"). I think that satellite was probably the Viking orbital, compliment to the Viking lander which was the first Mars lander. I had spoken with the creator of the first Mars lander on several occasions though he could no longer enter the materials labs (where we constructed the satellites) due to developing sensitivities to the solvents that we used there. I do recall helping lay up the sizable Voyager substrate, which used a much thicker aluminum honeycomb and was much more of an undertaking than the smaller satellites. It was certainly fun building these spacecraft but you were always very careful as you were working with very expensive materials (carbon graphite sheets were $100 a piece in '74 prices) and the finished product represented a very large investment in time and materials. Then there was the time the JPL QA inspector dropped the height gauge into the Viking dish.
He turned so pale! Luckily, he didn't break the graphite fibers and the dish was still able to be salvaged.
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