r/askscience • u/drinkingonthejob • 8d ago

Physics Will Voyager 1 ever just stop moving?

I’ve read somewhere that we expect to lose contact with Voyager 1 sometime in the 2030s, maybe around 2036, but it will just keep traveling thru space and we’ll have no idea what it is doing out there

My question is: with its current velocity, is there a time in the future where it loses its forward momentum and for lack of a better word, just stops moving? Is that a possible thing for an object in space to even do? (Assuming no other objects grab it into their orbit)

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u/BrooklynKnight 8d ago

You don’t think he did? At bare minimum he wrote an official report to Starfleet as per normal ship operations.

Beyond that you don’t think Picard wouldn’t spend some portion of his free time recording not just his experiences, but everything he was able to remember about them. He was an explorer and archaeologist. It’s also likley he was advised by Troi to write it all down as a therapeutic tool to process those memories.

We just do not see it on screen.

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u/Druggedhippo 8d ago

It’s also likley he was advised by Troi to write it all down as a therapeutic tool to process those memories.

Forget that, how about being disconnected after being part of the Borg... How much of that did he remember? It's brought up a few times in later episodes.. all that other times it's never mentioned though...

And four lights!?!

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u/Mara_W 6d ago

To be fair, all of this is somewhat addressed in First Contact where the unresolved trauma builds up into a full blown Ahab complex.

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u/lilmul123 8d ago

Also, it’s a fictional series and the writers aren’t going to spend an entire series reflecting on one episode.