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Apprehensive_Map863 t1_j5xnk27 wrote

Reply to comment by Sawdust-Rice-Crispy in TIL star systems are much closer together near the center of the galaxy, with some being only 0.4–0.04 light-years apart by yoguckfourself

And Voyager 1, the furthest man made object from Earth, has been travelling for 45 years and is still less than 10% of that distance

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silver-fusion t1_j5y2ak5 wrote

Voyager 1 was launched 74 years after we invented powered flight. That's a single generation.

Cosmologically the rate of progress is scarily fast. It took billions of generations to get from mammal to human. It took trillions of generations to get from multicellular life to mammals. It took billions of trillions of generations to get from single cell to multicellular.

It took one generation to go from land based organism to putting objects so far away from land they are measured in the speed of causality. The highest speed achievable.

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SuperSimpleSam t1_j5zudm5 wrote

Voyager 1 (61,000 km/hr) - 1977
New Horizons (84,000 km/hr) - 2006

Though by the 21st century, we aren't going all that much faster.

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UKSpaceChris t1_j60bniv wrote

Parker Solar Probe 690,000 km/hr

These craft go the speed they need to go to achieve their mission goals.

We can go much faster than Voyager if we choose to.

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theneedfull t1_j5zswsz wrote

Yeah, but 450 years actually seems like some humans can do unlike the bajillion years it would take us to get anywhere.

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