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danielravennest t1_jd8zgzp wrote

Reply to comment by teehuis in A New Mission Will Search for Habitable Planets at Alpha Centauri by Aeromarine_eng

Current technology is nuclear reactors and electric propulsion. We can feasibly get to 300 km/s with multiple stages. That makes Alpha Centauri 4250 years away.

But due to the "arrival paradox", a trip that long doesn't make sense to try. Assuming technology will keep improving, a later ship with better technology will be faster, and pass the older, slower ship before it arrives. Consider what our technology was like in 2,200 B.C. (4250 years ago).

Only if technology reaches a dead end, or the trips are short enough to not be passed before arrival (perhaps 50-100 years) does it make sense to try.

Our tech is already good enough to travel about 3 times the speed of the Voyagers, and catch up with them about the time their power gets so low we lose contact. If we really wanted to we could do that. We won't, since there are better and closer missions we can do instead.

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teehuis t1_jdakp4w wrote

But how do we control these at such great distances since it takes Looooooong to get a signal back and forth. Like a couple minutes delay is a bit different from a couple months delay

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danielravennest t1_jddsu44 wrote

You don't. You program them ahead of time. We rarely send commands to the Voyagers any more. They are a light-day away. Mostly we just point a Deep Space Network dish at them at the expected time, and collect the data.

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