

Would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? - tocomment
http://what-if.xkcd.com/38/

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claudius
Anybody else disappointed by the rather descriptive title tags? I guess that
0.0005 FPS animation took some time ¬.¬

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tocomment
I thought gravity assists were more complicated than the tennis ball/truck
analogy?

Don't the spacecraft end up going faster than the planet they get the boost
from? I never understood...

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squozzer
I wonder why one would want to retrieve Voyager.

1) I think Larry Niven (who, among other things, invented a race a spare-
faring carnivores called the Kzinti) once described the Voyager plaque (the
one with the naked man and woman) as a "galactic 'eat here' sign."

2) Prevent it from returning as V'ger.

3) Keep the Klingons from shooting it. Though it seems to me that in the 2200s
it would still be deep in Federation space, where Klingon disruptor fire might
be detectable and unwelcome. Of course, with FTL ships, it would have been
trivial to recover once detected.

