Reaching escape velocity is surely achievable without the special alignment. The point of the alignment, and the point of the Voyager program, was to visit the

Reaching escape velocity is surely achievable without the special alignment. The point of the alignment, and the point of the Voyager program, was to visit the outer planets. The alignment permitted unique trajectories that facilitated close fly-bys of each planet in order to collect a maximum amount of data with each visit. The alignment was merely a very opportune moment to jump on the gravity-assists. The extra velocity was icing on the cake. Without the alignment and without gravity assists, you could probably reach a direct escape velocity. Gemini (the LLM) tells me that that's about 42.1 km/s. More than would get you to the Moon, for sure. But a special planetary alignment is not strictly necessary to bail out of the solar system, just some powerful rocketry. But ask yourself, who or what would leave the solar system without visiting our planets first? That seems a silly way to go! Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 are out there as well, and New Horizons has only been launched in 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_lea...