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Comment by mystified5016 | Hacker News Reader

It is possible to catch up to them, but it's beyond our current political and economic abilities.

The Voyager probes took advantage of a rare planetary alignment to get up to speed. In order to catch up with them, we'd have to send a powered craft which would have to actively thrust for a long time.

Someone better than me will have to do the math, but I doubt that we currently have the ability to build or fuel such a craft.

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It's definitely doable. The "'Momentum Limited' Orion" concept[0] has a delta-v of 10,000 km/s, which should be plenty enough to catch up to either of the Voyager probes. It can also carry ~25,000 tons of payload - that's a lot of spare parts!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

If you're okay with just a flyby of the Voyager probes though, then you can use a laser sail. Breakthrough Starshot[1] is aiming for 60,000 km/s of delta-v. Lightsails have already been demonstrated several times in practice[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Projects_operating_...

> Lightsails have already been demonstrated several times in practice

Solar sails, yes. Starshot needs a Death Star Laser that makes the NIF look like a cat toy.

It's tough but doable; Parker Space Probe will reach 192 km/s and it'd take about 47 km/s to overtake Voyager 2 in 2 decades. A lot of gravity assists would be needed.

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