The one-way light times are at the bottom of https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov roughly 17.5 hours for Voyager2 and 21 hours for Voyager 1

Just About 1200 times longer and it approached the same distance as our nearest star at 4 ly

If we started pursuing nuclear pulse propulsion we could have our first probe arrive in the next star system in a hundred years or so, and eventually get the travel time closer to 40 years.

If?

Theoretical is still theoretical. We have no functioning propulsion that can exceed what the probes are currently travelling at.

At least for something like Project Orion, all the individual components are either verified in prototypes or proven technology. We have existing stockpiles of nuclear bombs. Propelling a craft by exploding something behind it is demonstrated in smaller prototypes with TNT. We know how to do radiation shielding, we know how to do shock absorbers.

Or course combining technologies in a new way comes with lots of engineering challenges, but it's a smaller leap in technology than e.g. the first moon landing.

21h https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

I can't say I'm surprised, but it's still pretty crazy to think about that it took us 44 years to get an object to a place it takes light less than 24 hours to get to. It feels both pretty far and also not far at all at the same time.

Yeah, I had this reaction of like "yeah, only 21 hours? that's not too long"… Then it occurred to me, it's 21 hours at the _speed of light_, something we generally consider effectively "instant" here on Earth. Pretty fascinating stuff. I'm really happy to hear we're still getting transmissions back from Voyager 1 - from nearly 23 billion kilometers away, for that matter!

Also really interesting is the Voyager FAQ, even from the first question (about whether the cameras could be turned back on). "Mission managers removed the software from both spacecraft that controls the camera. The computers on the ground that understand the software and analyze the images do not exist anymore."

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/

> something we generally consider effectively "instant"

We are in one of the very few professions where the speed of light is considered annoyingly slow. Just three days ago there was a thread of people lamenting that the closest Hetzner datacenter is about 50 light-milliseconds away

I don't know enough to say, but it wouldn't surprise me if our speed of thinking (and perhaps also time in general) is indirectly tied to the speed of light; meaning, if the speed of light were faster, we'd be thinking faster, and thus the round trip speed to Hetzner would appear just as annoying. I'll be happy to be corrected.

Given the distances involved, here's lightspeed travel from the sun: https://digg.com/video/light-speed-solar-system-travel

I think new horizons is much faster, and will catch up. Still the same order of magnitude though

Not according to this stack exchange answer[0]. It quotes a page from John Hopkins University, although that source page doesn't seem to exist anymore.

> Though New Horizons will also reach 100 AU, it will never pass Voyager 1, because Voyager was boosted by multiple gravity assists that make its speed faster than New Horizons will travel. Voyager 1 is escaping the solar system at 17 kilometers per second. When New Horizons reaches that same distance 32 years from now, propelled by a single planetary swingby, it will be moving about 13 kilometers per second

[0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3520/when-will-new...

Wikipedia disagrees:

> Provided Voyager 1 does not collide with anything and is not retrieved, the New Horizons space probe will never pass it, despite being launched from Earth at a higher speed than either Voyager spacecraft. The Voyager spacecraft benefited from multiple planetary flybys to increase their heliocentric velocities, whereas New Horizons received only a single such boost, from its Jupiter flyby. As of 2018, New Horizons is traveling at about 14 km/s, 3 km/s slower than Voyager 1, and is still slowing down.

Oh, cool

Thanks for the that link. I just spent an hour in the Eyes on the Solar System web app and listening to Carl Sagan wax poetic about our Voyagers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H92iCnecYGQ

"…and far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on."—C. Sagan