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How fast is Voyager travelling? Could we send out a Voyage X at a faster speed and with better tech to catch up and surpass it?

by brador 14y ago

mylittlepony 14y ago
Sure, but even at x2 speed it will take decades.
randomaccount5 14y ago
You can go look it up, but IIRC, the slingshot method (using a rare alignment of planets) produced a higher "speed" (so to speak) than would be reasonable to produce even with today's technology. (i.e taking the same budget today and doing everything we can to get a probe out at the same "speed" would be impossible).
- kibwen 14y ago
  I'm not sure if it's actually impossible. IANA physicist, but if your singular all-consuming goal was to get out of the solar system as fast as possible you could probably get a better gravity assist from a single pass of the sun than Voyager got from the entire grand tour. (Feel free to correct me, physicists!) The bigger issue is convincing someone to hand you millions of dollars to literally throw away faster than anything in prior human history.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Well, technically most of the mission cost would be spend on Earth (paying Earth engineer salaries, and Earth factory bills), so the money never leaves Earth. The only money you are literally throwing is the material cost of the rocket and probe, which would be fairly low (the cost of a bunch of titanium (or whatever the rocket/probe is made of), silicon not worth measuring, the rocket fuel (which is surprisingly cheap), etc.
  - ars 14y ago
    > get a better gravity assist from a single pass of the sun No. The gravity assist is because of the motion of the planets around the sun. The sun isn't moving relative to itself. There are some other things you can do where the sun can help, but not a slingshot.
darklajid 14y ago
Catch up and surpass something we launched decades ago, travelling (according to Wikipedia, entry was last edited .. today) 3.595 AU per year [1]. The question you're asking is hard to answer: When do you want to catch up? If we send a new object to space today, which travels 5% faster, is that good enough? It won't pass Voyager 1 for a looooong time, but will eventually. Is that what you're aiming for? Why? Or are you asking for a magical way to cross that distance (35 years of traveling) 'instantly'? 1: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.595+AU+per+year&dataset= http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.595+AU+per+year&d...
- Jach 14y ago
  Considering c is 63,198 AU/yr, and Voyager 1's only about 123 AU away, there's still a lot of room left for future engineers in increasing the speed of our devices to very quickly surpass it. Will we achieve even a hundredth of c within the next 100 years? Depends.
  - iuguy 14y ago
    Just wondering, is there any technology we've seen actually used today that could produce a hundredth of c within the next 100 years? Would this be something we could see with ion propulsion for example?
    - madaxe 14y ago
      Not used, but planned. Nuclear propulsion. No real limit on speed, apart from C, although as you go farther/faster you need REALLY big ships to carry enough fuel. c.f. project Orion.
alayne 14y ago
Voyager did pass Pioneer 10 (1972) in the late 1990s. The alignment mentioned by others made the difference. New Horizons, which is going to Pluto, had the fastest launch speed of any man made object.
- kibwen 14y ago
  Launch speed isn't the whole story though. You can accelerate to ludicrous speeds once you're in space. Compare the following to New Horizon's launch speed of 16 km/s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes (70 km/s) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Probe%2B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Probe%2B (theoretical 200 km/s)
  - majormajor 14y ago
    Note that those are going towards the sun, not away from it, and so benefitting from the sun's gravity instead of having to fight it. Accelerating to ludicrous speed on the way out of the solar system is much more difficult. My understanding (though I'm no astrophysicist) is that gravity boost from a planet works because of the relative velocities between the planet and the sun, whereas trying to use the sun's gravity to boost your solar system escape velocity would fail since gravity would be fighting you on the way out just as much as it was helping you on the way in.
    - pdonis 14y ago
      My understanding (though I'm no astrophysicist) is that gravity boost from a planet works because of the relative velocities between the planet and the sun, whereas trying to use the sun's gravity to boost your solar system escape velocity would fail since gravity would be fighting you on the way out just as much as it was helping you on the way in. Yes, this is basically correct. What a gravity boost from a planet does is transfer a very small amount of the planet's orbital kinetic energy to the spacecraft; it puts the planet into a slightly smaller orbit, and boosts the spacecraft to a higher speed on its way out. Since the Sun is what the planets are orbiting, this trick obviously won't work the same way with the Sun. (Technically, the Sun itself, or more precisely the center of mass of the Solar System, is orbiting the center of the galaxy; so I suppose it would be theoretically possible to fly a spacecraft by the Sun in such a way as to transfer a very small amount of its orbital kinetic energy with respect to the center of the galaxy to the spacecraft, so it would fly outward faster than it went in, even after taking into account the slowdown climbing out of the Sun's gravity well. But I doubt we're going to be in any practical position to try this any time soon.)
jlgreco 14y ago
If you wanted to have a probe pass Voyager 1 in 10 years, you would need to launch it today and get it going 15.9 AU/year, which is blazing fast. Almost 5 times as fast as Voyager 1. New Horizon, if launched today, could almost do it (14.13 AU/year), but it's mission wasn't set up to leave it traveling as fast as Voyager 1. Although it's going out in the same direction and was launched faster, it will ultimately end up going slower. If you give yourself 10 years to design the probe and something to get it going that fast, then the speed you actually need jumps up to 19.5 AU/year. The longer it takes you to design your fast rocket, the faster it has to go in order to catch Voyager 1 in the same amount of time. Realistically, unless something exotic happens in space propulsion technology, we will never catch Voyager 1 within our lifetime. If we launched today at twice the speed of Voyager 1, then we could catch it in around 50 years, but that's not going to happen.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
We could but it wouldn't be easy. Likely what we'd do is use a really big rocket like the Delta IV Heavy or the upcoming Falcon Heavy to give the spacecraft a lot of extra speed. Then we'd use electric propulsion on the craft itself to continue to build up speed over its life. Ultimately, even with today's technology, we could catch up to these probes but it would take decades to do so.
suhastech 14y ago
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons Provided it survives that far out, New Horizons is likely to follow the Voyager probes in exploring the outer heliosphere and mapping the heliosheath and heliopause. Even though it was launched far faster than any outward probe before it, New Horizons will never overtake Voyager 1 as the most distant man-made object from Earth. Close fly-bys of Saturn and Titan gave Voyager 1 an advantage with its extra gravity assist. When New Horizons reaches the distance of 100 AU, it will be travelling at about 13 km/s (29,000 mph), around 4 km/s (8,900 mph) slower than Voyager 1 at that distance.

How fast is Voyager travelling? Could we send out a Voyage X at a faster speed and with better tech to catch up and surpass it?

by brador 14y ago

How fast is Voyager travelling? Could we send out a Voyage X at a faster speed and with better tech to catch up and surpass it?

mylittlepony 14y ago

Sure, but even at x2 speed it will take decades.

randomaccount5 14y ago

You can go look it up, but IIRC, the slingshot method (using a rare alignment of planets) produced a higher "speed" (so to speak) than would be reasonable to produce even with today's technology. (i.e taking the same budget today and doing everything we can to get a probe out at the same "speed" would be impossible).

kibwen 14y ago
I'm not sure if it's actually impossible. IANA physicist, but if your singular all-consuming goal was to get out of the solar system as fast as possible you could probably get a better gravity assist from a single pass of the sun than Voyager got from the entire grand tour. (Feel free to correct me, physicists!) The bigger issue is convincing someone to hand you millions of dollars to literally throw away faster than anything in prior human history.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Well, technically most of the mission cost would be spend on Earth (paying Earth engineer salaries, and Earth factory bills), so the money never leaves Earth. The only money you are literally throwing is the material cost of the rocket and probe, which would be fairly low (the cost of a bunch of titanium (or whatever the rocket/probe is made of), silicon not worth measuring, the rocket fuel (which is surprisingly cheap), etc.
- ars 14y ago
  > get a better gravity assist from a single pass of the sun No. The gravity assist is because of the motion of the planets around the sun. The sun isn't moving relative to itself. There are some other things you can do where the sun can help, but not a slingshot.

darklajid 14y ago

Catch up and surpass something we launched decades ago, travelling (according to Wikipedia, entry was last edited .. today) 3.595 AU per year [1]. The question you're asking is hard to answer: When do you want to catch up? If we send a new object to space today, which travels 5% faster, is that good enough? It won't pass Voyager 1 for a looooong time, but will eventually. Is that what you're aiming for? Why? Or are you asking for a magical way to cross that distance (35 years of traveling) 'instantly'? 1: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.595+AU+per+year&dataset= http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.595+AU+per+year&d...

Jach 14y ago
Considering c is 63,198 AU/yr, and Voyager 1's only about 123 AU away, there's still a lot of room left for future engineers in increasing the speed of our devices to very quickly surpass it. Will we achieve even a hundredth of c within the next 100 years? Depends.
- iuguy 14y ago
  Just wondering, is there any technology we've seen actually used today that could produce a hundredth of c within the next 100 years? Would this be something we could see with ion propulsion for example?
  - madaxe 14y ago
    Not used, but planned. Nuclear propulsion. No real limit on speed, apart from C, although as you go farther/faster you need REALLY big ships to carry enough fuel. c.f. project Orion.

alayne 14y ago

Voyager did pass Pioneer 10 (1972) in the late 1990s. The alignment mentioned by others made the difference. New Horizons, which is going to Pluto, had the fastest launch speed of any man made object.

kibwen 14y ago
Launch speed isn't the whole story though. You can accelerate to ludicrous speeds once you're in space. Compare the following to New Horizon's launch speed of 16 km/s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes (70 km/s) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Probe%2B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Probe%2B (theoretical 200 km/s)
- majormajor 14y ago
  Note that those are going towards the sun, not away from it, and so benefitting from the sun's gravity instead of having to fight it. Accelerating to ludicrous speed on the way out of the solar system is much more difficult. My understanding (though I'm no astrophysicist) is that gravity boost from a planet works because of the relative velocities between the planet and the sun, whereas trying to use the sun's gravity to boost your solar system escape velocity would fail since gravity would be fighting you on the way out just as much as it was helping you on the way in.
  - pdonis 14y ago
    My understanding (though I'm no astrophysicist) is that gravity boost from a planet works because of the relative velocities between the planet and the sun, whereas trying to use the sun's gravity to boost your solar system escape velocity would fail since gravity would be fighting you on the way out just as much as it was helping you on the way in. Yes, this is basically correct. What a gravity boost from a planet does is transfer a very small amount of the planet's orbital kinetic energy to the spacecraft; it puts the planet into a slightly smaller orbit, and boosts the spacecraft to a higher speed on its way out. Since the Sun is what the planets are orbiting, this trick obviously won't work the same way with the Sun. (Technically, the Sun itself, or more precisely the center of mass of the Solar System, is orbiting the center of the galaxy; so I suppose it would be theoretically possible to fly a spacecraft by the Sun in such a way as to transfer a very small amount of its orbital kinetic energy with respect to the center of the galaxy to the spacecraft, so it would fly outward faster than it went in, even after taking into account the slowdown climbing out of the Sun's gravity well. But I doubt we're going to be in any practical position to try this any time soon.)

jlgreco 14y ago

If you wanted to have a probe pass Voyager 1 in 10 years, you would need to launch it today and get it going 15.9 AU/year, which is blazing fast. Almost 5 times as fast as Voyager 1. New Horizon, if launched today, could almost do it (14.13 AU/year), but it's mission wasn't set up to leave it traveling as fast as Voyager 1. Although it's going out in the same direction and was launched faster, it will ultimately end up going slower. If you give yourself 10 years to design the probe and something to get it going that fast, then the speed you actually need jumps up to 19.5 AU/year. The longer it takes you to design your fast rocket, the faster it has to go in order to catch Voyager 1 in the same amount of time. Realistically, unless something exotic happens in space propulsion technology, we will never catch Voyager 1 within our lifetime. If we launched today at twice the speed of Voyager 1, then we could catch it in around 50 years, but that's not going to happen.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

We could but it wouldn't be easy. Likely what we'd do is use a really big rocket like the Delta IV Heavy or the upcoming Falcon Heavy to give the spacecraft a lot of extra speed. Then we'd use electric propulsion on the craft itself to continue to build up speed over its life. Ultimately, even with today's technology, we could catch up to these probes but it would take decades to do so.

suhastech 14y ago

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons Provided it survives that far out, New Horizons is likely to follow the Voyager probes in exploring the outer heliosphere and mapping the heliosheath and heliopause. Even though it was launched far faster than any outward probe before it, New Horizons will never overtake Voyager 1 as the most distant man-made object from Earth. Close fly-bys of Saturn and Titan gave Voyager 1 an advantage with its extra gravity assist. When New Horizons reaches the distance of 100 AU, it will be travelling at about 13 km/s (29,000 mph), around 4 km/s (8,900 mph) slower than Voyager 1 at that distance.