Twin Voyager Probes 25 Years In Flight 16
pbranes writes: "CNN has an article discussing the 25th anniversary of both of the Voyager spacecraft and what the next few years hold for the spacecraft. Scientists believe that they can maintain contact with the spacecraft for at least 20 more years, and they hope that the spacecraft passes the heliopause, the boundary for interstellar space, during this time." We've mentioned the long-term prospects of these probes before; it's not long until they may meet Termination Shock.
One hell of a commute (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, it's a slow day at work... The Voyager 1 probe has traveled roughly 7.8 billion miles from Earth.
If you were commuting every work day around 25 miles each way, plus an extra 50 on the weekends(assuming current day prices and vehicles):
You would have had to work for 500,000 years before retiring to drive this far.
You would have had to have used roughly 260 million gallons of gas (around $390 million).
You would probably have to buy around 52,000 vehicles before retirement. This would run you somewhere in the range of $936 million.
You would need 2.6 million oil changes (unless you procrastinate like me and do it only every 8-10K miles, in which case, you would only need around 870,000 oil changes.) This would set you back around $52 million.
The repairs the the vehicles could run you anywhere from $100 - $156 million, (not including the towing costs... Zoikes!)
If you chose to do it as one long road trip (assuming 8 hours rest per day), it would take you around 21,370 years. To the above costs, you would have to add the $52 to $100 million in road munchies.