Well, they exited to the bow of the heliosphere, so I would think the OP means with an exit point heading towards the tail of our system

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The Voyager probes were able to do what they do because of a one in a century alignment which allowed them to get gravity assists and slingshot their way from each one. Orbital mechanics being what they are and the cost of bringing fuel along you have to wait until the planets are just right to do that. Now if you mean just flinging something out into the universe we've done that recently with the new horizons probe which is just now heading its way out of the solar system.

What do you mean by the opposite direction? The Voyagers visited the outer planets and many missions have been sent out since then (Galileo, Cassini-Huygens, New Horizons, Juno). Here's an extensive list. They were all state-of-the-art Voyagers in a way.

We kind of have done a voyager 3. We sent the New Horizons mission to Pluto and a Kepler belt object and it is continuing to explore as it heads towards Interstellar space.

because NASA would rather blow it's budget on a bloated, obsolete SLS than, ya know, EXPLORING

The first two are in good spots to look at stuff already, and there's probably not enough political will to send another similar mission with more modern sensor tech - especially when they took 50 years to get where they are now, and currently available rocket engines aren't much better than what was around in the '70s in terms of ability to propel something beyond the heliosphere.

It might make more sense when we've got nuclear rockets happening - some of those have mind-boggling Isp compared to chemical rockets, at least on paper!

Or perhaps if there's an upcoming favourable alignment of the interplanetary transport network or something..

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They served their purpose of imaging the planets in our solar system when we didn't have close up images

I guess its more useful to send new probes to do things like image a single planet and its moons rather than sending another craft to fly past all planets

I hope someone knowledgeable stumbles on this post!

If you get an answer reply to me so I can come back because I also want to know

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Well, got to align those chevrons.

>ng theory and the cosmological principles of the universe being roughly homogeneous and isotopic says that there no center of the universe.
>
>We are the center of our observable universe but there is no center of the entire universe at all.

If everywhere is a center, and nowhere is the center = the same statement.

Also the concept of an unobservable universe = pure speculation by definition.

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Yup same. Each little dot is a star like our sun and while I was looking at them, there might be someone on a planet out there looking back at me.

Except you are using a 2d example to represent 3d space. This is a common problem with trying to portray infinity in a way thats understandable to everyone. We, as matter, exist with a physical 3 dimension. The existence of matter allows us to determine a center as long as we can observe that matter in it's entirety. Thus is true whether or not we live within an infinite or finite space.

If space is finite, that center is defined by its edges.

If it's infinite, and assuming that the only matter within that universe came from finite number of big bangs, then its center would be defined by the distribution of matter within it.

If it's infinite, and assuming an infinite number of big bangs, then a center cannot be determined as there exists no definable edge or boundary of matter.

Going back to your ball example and why it is a bad representation of your argument, you could define a central point. First problem, the surface of a ball is finite. Ignoring that let's look at problem two. If you add any matter to the surface of that sphere, you now have a definable point in space. As it is a single point, it would become the definable center of that surface. As you add more points, the center would be defined by a point in space that would see an even distribution of points on the surface.

That core would be in a dimension that doesn’t exist in our universe. I was giving you a simple analogy in 2D space. I’m sure you fully understand this concept and are just being argumentative. A child can understand it.

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That depends. Even infinite space can have a defined center if there is a finite material within that space for which we can observe distribution and find the center

That doesn't make any sense and I believe you may be misunderstanding what was being said. According to big bang theory, matter existed as a singularity that exploded into what we see as our universe. Assuming even distribution of matter, the origin of the big bang would be our center.

Except a ball would have a center as a ball is a 3d space. The center would be at the core of the ball. Same with our space. Assuming the big bang is true and the universe was created out of a singularity expanding outward, then the center would be the origin of the big bang itself. We are a point in space somewhere within the expanding matter of this universe. We are not at the center or the edge of this universe

Whenever I see such photos, I imagine some alien craft might be hauling ass through it and we will never know…

We are yet to find inadmissible evidence that extraterrestrial life exists. Of course there are lots of planets out there, but it doesn't make it 100 percent certain that ET life exists. The true way of science concludes that there is a high chance of ET life existing, but we cannot rule out other possibilities yet.