I just realized that Voyager 1 took 45 years to get to less than one light-day from Earth. Which is still a huge distance, but it just puts into perspective how daunting the task of covering several light-years with a spacecraft really is...
Yes, that's a really long time, but 20'000 years ago humans already existed. In fact it's "only" 10% back into the history of humans.
This gives me hope that actually while yes out of reach of humans, not out of reach of humanity. Even without FTL.
Or in other words: There will be humans out there for whom it's normal that we have sent equipment a light year away.
(I choose to believe we'll survive that long)
> New Horizons has been called "the fastest spacecraft ever launched" because it left Earth at 16.26 kilometers per second [...] However, it is not the fastest spacecraft to leave the Solar System. As of January 2018, this record is held by Voyager 1, traveling at 16.985 km/s relative to the Sun. Voyager 1 attained greater hyperbolic excess velocity than New Horizons due to gravity assists by Jupiter and Saturn. When New Horizons reaches the distance of 100 AU, it will be travelling at about 13 km/s, around 4 km/s slower than Voyager 1 at that distance.
And then you have multipliers like million/billion. I kinda just lose perspective over there.
There is plenty of interesting stuff within ten light years, so don't lose perspective too much ;)
There are about 5k visible stars, most indeed pretty close... but if you manage to make out Andromeda, I suppose you're technically seeing about a trillion, and they're all pretty far off...