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Voyager 1 (1977) travels at 38,210 mph.

The ISS (1998) travels at 17,400 mph.

There's abundant precedent of accelerating to high speeds in space, where there's no friction with an atmosphere that slows you down and where you can use gravitational fields as sling shots.

0.3c might seem high but if you keep accelerating you will eventually reach that speed.

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> There's abundant precedent of accelerating to high speeds in space

But there's zero precedent for slowing down once you get somewhere (in 10,000 years)

Why would they slow down? Fly by and beam back the results.

At 0.25c the probes would blast through the centauri system in minutes. Hardly enough time to collect data more useful than what we already can sitting here practically stationary, even if absurdly far away.

How much power is needed to beam back the results from that distance? I ask because I suppose the probes are going to be very small.

About 75,000 years away at voyager speed.

The difference is that these spacecraft will be smaller, and use light sailing as propulsion mechanism.

Which means that a ground station can keep beaming light at them causing them to accelerate.

And maybe enough deceleration at the other end to drop into a large eccentric orbit ?

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