That's my point exactly. Don't wait. Send probes out every year. Because it takes so long for them to get to these places. A few may get lost on the way. Some instruments may malfunction. So better send out more. What would that cost? Half a billion dollars a year? Probably much less, because construction would get more efficient.

Well, the more reason to launch them now and not wait another year.

I don't think a new one would take 30 years.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/overview/overview.htm

It tops out at 90,000 meters per second.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html

The furthest one out is 17 billion kilometers.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

That's about six years, though I don't know how long it would take to reach the top speed.

well you got to think about the future or else voyager 1 and 2 never would been sent out.

they would have just thought "lets not do it because we may not get interesting stuff until 2011"

if something takes time, the smartest thing is to start as quick as possible so you get results that much quicker