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Science is awesome!
That thing's been flying through space longer than I've been alive. That's mind boggling!

Can we expect a post card if it gets somewhere interesting?

Well it might take a few million years to get anywhere else.....

That is the downside but it also means that I will not be around when the invasion fleet arrives.

Yeah the Americans are busy with Syria right now....... oh wait you meant aliens

No, but it'll be back eventually, looking for it's original designer.

My mistake. Apparently it'll only be 40,000 years before it reached another star.

Great news.

Still well outside my lifespan either way. It could be a million years without any difference to me.


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I just wonder if in that 40,000 year period, we will advance enough technologically that we can build a spaceship, fly after it and catch it up. Then we can bring it back and (presuming it's not now incredibly radioactive) put it on display as a lesson that if you do something right, just occasionally the results are wonderful.

Would there be a point? After all, there's been a full-sized replica on public display in a museum in the States since the original went on its voyage.

It's not the same though is it? It hasn't done what the real one has done.

Well, I guess so. Then again the real one's mission was to record stuff and return it to Earth. Would we want to go fetch a battered hulk when there's nothing left to tell? It won't really be able to tell anything more than it's done already, and then only probably for however long the tape memory lasts anyway.

I like the idea, I just don't think it's practical.

Plutonium has a half life of 80 million years, so yes it would still be radioactive.

I was thinking more its been exposed to the solar wind for decades and, even if one day we are capable of retrieving it, would have spent probably centuries out in the regions of deep space.