As you read this, humanity’s first interstellar probe has left our solar system and is moving at nearly 17 km/s on its journey through interstellar space. Launched in 1977 and carrying a message from Earth on an inscribed golden disk, Voyager 1 completed its grand tour of the out
Selection note: Curated as a recent book-chapter overview linking Voyager-scale speeds to the propulsion and energy gap for meaningful interstellar missions.
Evidence boundary: NTRS lists open full text, but this pass screened metadata and abstract rather than independently reviewing each propulsion comparison. It is synthesis context, not automatic evidence for feasibility.
Stable record
ntrs-20230018678
Topic
propulsion
Type
Book Chapter
Publisher
Elsevier
Authors
Michael R Lapointe
Year
2024
Editorial state
metadata curated editorial draft
Reviewer
GShips Project editorial synthesis
Official link checked
2026-07-25
Source-supplied abstract
As you read this, humanity’s first interstellar probe has left our solar system and is moving at nearly 17 km/s on its journey through interstellar space. Launched in 1977 and carrying a message from Earth on an inscribed golden disk, Voyager 1 completed its grand tour of the outer planets and has since travelled more than 24 billion km on its outward journey; it’s twin probe, Voyager 2, has also left the heliopause and entered interstellar space, traveling over 20 billion km from Earth. Yet even at these speeds and distances, our intrepid Voyagers have barely moved beyond the influence of our local star. If the distance between our Sun and the closest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, were scaled to the size of a meter stick, Voyager 1 would be located just over the ½-mm mark, having traveled 0.06% of the way to the next star (assuming it was pointed in the right direction, which it isn’t). At this rate it will take the probe nearly 75 thousand years to cover the equivalent distance to Alpha Centauri.
Abstract text has not been adopted as a GShips conclusion.
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A newer or corrected version, a retraction, a verified duplicate, a material topic mismatch, a changed access state, or claim-level review would trigger a dated editorial update.
NTRS lists open full text, but this pass screened metadata and abstract rather than independently reviewing each propulsion comparison. It is synthesis context, not automatic evidence for feasibility.
Source-supplied titles, abstracts, authors, and dates may require correction against the canonical full text.
What would change this page?
A newer or corrected version, retraction, verified duplicate, material topic mismatch, changed access state, or claim-level assessment would change this record.
People, review, and conflicts
Prepared by
GShips Project
Editorial status
metadata-curated-editorial-draft
Editorial reviewer
GShips Project editorial synthesis
Last editorial review
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Independent review
pending
Independent reviewer
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Last independent review
No independent-review date exists
Last content edit
Not recorded separately
Official source or link verified
2026-07-25
Declared conflicts
The maintainer intends to explore a commercial venture based on some GShips work. No entity, outside funding, customer, sponsor, or indexed-organization relationship currently exists.