stux⚡️Next year in November, the Voyager 1 spacecraft will be ONE full light day away from the Earth!
Launched in 1977, it took almost 50 Earth years to reach "just" distance of 1 light day
Space is so big and we are so tiny 
PetterOfCats@stux yeah. It’s like that Douglas Adams quote: “ Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Kim Possible 
@stux It's amazing how much distance there is between objects in space. I have to think of it in graduated steps: between us and the other planets, between our solar system and other stars, between our solar system and other galaxies. It's amazing how long it takes for our galaxy to make a single rotation.
them#tic@kimlockhartga @stux Not to forget between particles, in "solid" stuff.
Jules 🍺@kimlockhartga @stux it always amazes me just how far away things are, even the moon is not exactly close and when you start looking at places like Neptune the distances are just vast
Wm.sonNot to mention (and this is what always stops me in my tracks) we aren't at a standstill...all moving along, dragged behind a sun that is on it's own spiraling path, in an arm of a galaxy that is also moving through space.
@Sfwmson @kimlockhartga Awesome huh!
Nothing is "still" 😀 It was such a revelation for me that the speed of light in a vacuum is one of the few constants we have 
Michael Stanclift
Random Damage 🌻
Michael BuschWe are not "dragged behind" the Sun. The Sun and the planets orbit around their common center of mass.
Half of the time, the Earth is in front of the Sun's center as compared to the direction the solar system is moving through the galaxy and half of the time, we are behind the Sun's center as compared to that.
I write this because there is that one misleading video that keeps getting shared around.
@michael_w_busch @kimlockhartga @stux
That's the exact one I saw and I can't shake it!!
Thanks for setting it straight.
This one or one like it... https://youtu.be/aFUDnIsIJRg?si=9RbhA4U09aFSe7mO
How Our Solar System Moves Through Space: The Galactic Orbit and Cosmic Dance Explained
Faraiwe@stux Also: Voyager WOOOSH.
rdfrkian@stux I was 5 years old when it launched 😳
Walrus 🏴Now try explaining this to the goons that keep on about how we must take our place in the stars...
Sérgio Machado@stux long live to voyagers :)
Incredible times when we did really good stuff without AI crap, etc.
since 70's that we stop in time and become bubblefied ...
Incredible times when we did really good stuff without AI crap, etc.
since 70's that we stop in time and become bubblefied ...
Brian GordonTruly remarkable. Impossible to imagine. Looking back at all the sci-fi I’ve read, every one had to come up with some ‘magic’ to get around how immense space is.
"Launched in 1977, it took almost 50 Earth years to reach "just" distance of 1 light day"
Nohaironheed@stux And in 346 years Voyager will be stranded in the Delta Quadrant, facing a 75 year journey back to Federation space.
I only JUST started rewatching Voyager, because I didn't see the last few seasons, due to life. 😎
satire
Gregory@stux I really hope the speed of light isn't a fundamentally insurmountable limit. Because if it is, this would mean the universe is a rather boring place.
Ahimsa@stux I follow @NSFVoyager2 . When I see a message like:
"I am currently ~19h 32m 21s of light travel time from Earth (2025:284:000000:2L)"
It gives me some much needed perspective. The account also posts about Voyager 1:
NSFVoyager2 (@[email protected])
Sister ship Voyager 1 is ~23h 24m 36s of light travel time from Earth (2025:284:120000:1L)
Ian K Tindale
Space Is Deep (Live) (2007 Remaster)
botvolution@stux space is big and we are so slow
Helgi Crookehorne@stux in the 1980s the most wise idea was, they'd travel in sleeper ships to encounter some Xenomorph. Because nobody managed to invent the warp. Except maybe Albert Einstein, and he meant you can't warp anything unless you are as massive as a star itself.
Adam Trickett 
@stux reading A Deepness in the Sky, a Vernor Vinge novel. In it humans have started to colonise the galaxy but at a fraction of the speed of light, so it's no space opera, and it takes centuries to get anywhere...
Space is big...
Richard Michael Blaber@stux That = 25,902,068,371.2 km, which is a VERY long way!
60sRefugee@stux Voyagers 1 & 2 weren't optimized for maximum velocity, they followed the trajectories needed for their flybys. And that's not even considering what we could in principle build today (nuclear-electric). So I don't think "At Voyager's speed it would take xxx..." is really the best yardstick.