(Voyager) in its ever remarkable journey is mapping intricacies of the helioshpere one apparently need to be their to measure.
Cool.
Looking at the other thingy which has gathered a fair bit of my imagination, this "HD 40307" is not a ridiculous distance away. O.K. sure it is.
Best imagination interstellar travel notions give ideas of acheiving, say, 0.1c .... that would make it 420 years away, certainly a greater Voyage than Columbus, basically 10 generations.
0.1 c is too slow to gain any sort of Einsteinian effect, it is essentially all Newtonion, but in say 100 years, if one could push the boat to 0.9 c, then you are talking something in the area or less than 20 years (for the traveler).
HD 40347 is not something that will happen today or tomorrow or perhaps ever, but it IS something one can reasonably fantasize about. It is within the envelope of not entirely unreasonable sci-fi.
Ramjets, nuclear impulse power, these things, one could imagine getting an unmanned thingy out there in the next millennium.
Probably should check the joint out for radio signals first.
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