So long Voyager 1

[xSilverPhinx]

How's about one of them ion drives? Those could accelerate for decades, no?  ???

A light sail would probably be better. What a fantastic mission and its not over yet!

Didn't it have one of those? Lots of free solar wind going to waste there

Anyways, it's been 35 years and Voyager is only just now leaving the solar magnetic bubble?  :oThat really (sorta) puts things into perspective. Our immediate neighborhood is huge.

I Think you are thinking of a solar panel which is used to generate electrical power. A light sail is used to harvest light photons to provide thrust.

No, I was talking about a "sail" for particles coming from the sun. I feel too lazy to google, it.

[McQ]

How's about one of them ion drives? Those could accelerate for decades, no?  ???

I would agree.

Ion propulsion...slow to get up to speed, but man it will gogogo and keep on accelerating.

[Asmodean]

Yes... I was reading this incredibly long article about that. The tech is surprisingly simple (I can understand it quite well, as opposed to many other weird new techs), but it shows potential. What if we combine it with some good old rocket boosters to give it the highest possible α₀? That would mean it would go even faster even sooner, yes?

[Steve Reason]

Even though it's an awe-inspiring thing to think that one of our spacecrafts is accomplishing this, it really can be quite discouraging when you realize it's been traveling for roughly 13k days, and yet if it sent us a message, it would get here in less than 1 day. We really have a practically Sisyphean task ahead of us to travel to the stars. We've gone such a short distance so far, in a galaxy and universe measured in 6 trillion mile increments -- very few of which are in the single digits. Still, this fills me with hope and giddy wonderment.

[hismikeness]

Our fastest rockets today take several days to the moon, six months to Mars (if optimum alignment occurs) and years and beyond to further planets.

To try and comprehend getting to another star system light years away is baffling.  ???