# Will Voyager 1 ever find its way in the Smithsonian? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 7, 2011, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425 "2011-12-07T23:05:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425/61 "2011-12-09T03:35:47Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > how can they be said to have left the Solar System when they haven’t even reached the semi-major axis (519 AU), much less the aphelion (937 AU) of Sedna? Doesn’t that planetoid count as part of the System? For NASA’s purposes leaving the Heliosphere is the interesting point as the instruments that are still working can then return measurements on true interstellar space which we’ve never been able to do before. If you count the Oort cloud out to 50,000 AU as the solar system it won’t leave for millennia. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425/62 "2011-12-09T04:09:28Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > Of course, by a long shot. > There are all kinds of forces on Earth–weather, plate tectonics, rust, erosion, artillery–that conspire in one way or another to make short work of everything we make, not just buildings. The oldest known man-made structures are no more than 6,000 years old. > > The Pioneers, Voyagers, and others we’ve sent out on the other hand face none of these challenges. They get hit by micrometeorites once in a while but as they get further away from a star (_e.g._, the Sun) and all its attendant debris they’ll come into contact with fewer and fewer objects of appreciable size. Even radiation–which doesn’t exactly _destroy_ them in any case–will be less of a factor. > > Current projections say Voyager 1 will come near a star again some 40,000 years from now. Voyager 2 will stray near Sirius 296,000 years hence. Pioneer 10: Aldeberan in 2 million years. > > You’re going to bet on the Sears Tower being here in the year 298,000 AD? Over a couple ~6 foot probes that will be floating through, for all practical purposes, _nothing_ for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of years? OK then, design challenge for what could be used as best-case OP: A monolithic 18x3 ft long, say, rectangular parallelepiped that lasts four million years in space. Motion control and one-time interplanetary signal to be designed later. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425/63 "2011-12-09T04:34:18Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > OK then, design challenge for what could be used as best-case OP: > > A monolithic 18x3 ft long, say, rectangular parallelepiped that lasts four million years in space. Motion control and one-time interplanetary signal to be designed later. Nope. Won’t work unless the dimensions are in a 1:4:9:16:25… ratio. ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425/64 "2011-12-09T07:32:37Z")
> [@sco3tt](#): > > Not to mention that ship 3 needs to accommodate both 1 & 2, #4 would need space for the preceding 3, ad infinitum. It’s going to get crowded out there. If our civilization is advanced enough to where we’re making a commute between the stars, why would we need a manned ship to stop and pick up the slow boat full of cold sleepers? Surely we’d have the old plans from the original ship on file somewhere, we’d send a robotic ship to retrofit the ship with faster engines. Or, build a ship that’s completely unmanned and have the AI go wake them up, then transfer everyone to the new ship. ---
**Author:** ![Jamicat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@Jamicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamicat)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2011, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425/65 "2011-12-11T01:08:51Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > Voyager 1 has been in the news lately. It’s ~120 astronomical units from here and moving away at about 38,000 MPH, soon to leave the solar system. > > **So will Voyager ever make it’s way back home?** The sun’s escape velocity is 42.1 (kilometers / second) = 94 175.0179 mph. At 35,000 mph, it will come back all by itself…eventually. :dubious: > **[Escape velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity)** > > In celestial mechanics, escape velocity or escape speed is the minimum speed needed for an object to escape from contact with or orbit of a primary body, assuming: > Although the term escape velocity is common, it is more accurately described as a speed than as a velocity because it is independent of direction. Because gravitational force between two objects depends on their combined mass, the escape speed also depends on mass. For artificial satellites and small natural objects, the mass of the... ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2011, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425/66 "2011-12-11T01:21:15Z")
> [@Jamicat](#): > > The sun’s escape velocity is 42.1 (kilometers / second) = 94 175.0179 mph. No the 42.1 km/sec figure is the suns escape velocity at the distance from the sun of Earths orbit. From the same table at Nepture’s orbit it’s 7.2 km / sec. Voyager 1 is on a true solar system escape orbit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-voyager-1-ever-find-its-way-in-the-smithsonian/605425.md?page=3)