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FellowConspirator t1_j4zohdz wrote

“Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.” - The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams

The nearest black hole is 960 light years (5.63e15 miles) away. The fastest spacecraft is the Parker Solar Probe at 430,000 mph. At that speed, it would take 1.22 million years to get the probe there. There’s both technical an economic issues in preparing for a 1.22 million year mission.

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Pharisaeus t1_j52qmap wrote

> The fastest spacecraft is the Parker Solar Probe at 430,000 mph

This is simply wrong. The value you provided is instantaneous velocity this spacecraft had when passing perihelion, and is mostly due to how close to the Sun it was. It has very little to do with actual velocity at which it would travel outside the solar system.

Highly elliptical or hyperbolic orbits look a bit like pendulum or a ball thrown upwards -> you have high velocity when it's deep in gravity well (eg. ball is the fastest right before hitting the ground) but the velocity drops when you're moving away (eg. the ball will essentially reach a point where it has velocity=0 before it starts falling back down). So while parker solar probe had high velocity when passing close to the Sun, it would be moving orders of magnitude slower when moving away, eg. in the direction of this nearby black hole.

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