The Voyagers spacecraft's speed is not measured by its proximity from earth, though there are minor conflicting sources for their relative speeds with respect to the sun, which is the gravity they have to escape, which ultimately is the gravity all exiting spacecraft have to defeat, so gravitational slingshots from planets on the way out are temporary boosts, lets look at some real numbers, (Voyagers are far from speed record holders).

JPL likes to give a vague AU speed for the Voyagers;
Voyager 1 is escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.6 AU per year.
Voyager 2 is escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.3 AU per year.
Some say V-1 is going a million miles a day, very wrong, but not far off considering. We get anywhere from 35,000 mph to over 41,000 mph, what do the experts say, what does NASA say?

Voyager 1 is departing the Solar System at a speed of 39,000 miles per hour.
Voyager 2 is departing the Solar System at a speed of 35,000 miles per hour.
My so coincidental we have such round numbers, but now we are getting closer.

Others like a more accurate number, in miles per hour (mph).

McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. vol. 17. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1992. 138-141.
16.49 km/s Voyager 1, 36,900 mph
14.90 km/s Voyager 2, 33,300 mph

Voyager Mission Status. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 1995.
17.46 km/s Voyager 1, 39,100 mph.
16.08 km/s Voyager 2, 36,000 mph

Voyager Mission Operations Status Report: Range, Velocity and Round Trip Light Time. Voyager Project. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Pasadena, CA.
"Velocity Relative to Sun (km/sec) as of 6/13/97:
Voyager 1 17.374, 38,900 mph
Voyager 2 15.957, 35 700 mph

Yet another update;
V-1, 17.46 kilometer/second = 39,056.907 659 mile/hour (mph)
V-2 16.08 kilometer/second = 35,969.935 576 mile/hour (mph)
This one must be correct, look at how far from rounded numbers those figures are.

Voyager 1 is escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.5 AU per year, 35 degrees out of the ecliptic plane to the north, in the general direction of the Solar Apex (the direction of the Sun's motion relative to nearby stars). Voyager 1 will leave the solar system aiming toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In the year 40,272 AD, Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear or Little Dipper) called AC+79 3888. 



Voyager 2 is also escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.1 AU per year, 48 degrees out of the ecliptic plane to the south toward the constellations of Sagitarrius and Pavo. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will come within about 1.7 light years of a star called Ross 248, a small star in the constellation of Andromeda.

Pioneer 10 is headed towards the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). It will take Pioneer over 2 million years to pass by one of the stars in the constellation. 



Pioneer 11 is headed toward the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle), Northwest of the constellation of Sagittarius. Pioneer 11 may pass near one of the stars in the constellation in about 4 million years.

Oh yeah, the Pioneers, well get this.

Pioneer 11 that came within a mere 26,725 miles (43,000 km) of Jupiter's atmosphere in 1974 and reached a top speed of 107,500 mph (173,000 km/h) in the process.

This speed was edged out by the Galileo atmospheric entry probe before being crushed at 108,000 mph, 48.2 km.s.

Hold on now I'm not finished.

New Horizons was traveling faster as it left Earth orbit than any previous vehicle launched into interplanetary space. New Horizons attained an escape velocity of about 35,800 mph (57,600 km/h) as it departed Earth orbit. This speed is so fast that the probe reached the distance of the Moon in only nine hours (compared to three days for the Apollo missions) and reached Jupiter in just 13 months, for a slingshot that propelled it to 52,000 mph.

Previous holders of this speed record included the European/NASA probe Ulysses, designed to study the Sun, that was launched at 34,450 mph (55,400 km/h) in 1990 and NASA's Pioneer 10 launched to Jupiter at 32,400 mph (52,100 km/h) in 1972.

New Horizons will only be traveling at about 31,300 mph (50,370 km/h) when it encounters Pluto, and any change in direction to explore other bodies will almost certainly reduce the probe's speed further. Given the small size of Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects, it seems doubtful that any gravity-assist maneuvers would have much of an impact on the probe's speed, so it is unlikely that New Horizons will ultimately leave the solar system at a higher velocity than Voyager 1. The fortunate flyby of Jupiter cut nearly 3 years off of New Horizon's journey to Pluto.

What about the 70's solar probes the Helioses illustronic? Glad you asked, because these are my favorites.

cont...

Helios 2 perihelion velocity is 153,800 mph (247,510 km/h). For comparison, the aphelion speed of Helios 2 turns out to be only 45,360 mph (72,985 km/h) at its farthest distance of 0.983 AU.

The two probes completed their primary missions by the early 1980s but were still sending data as late as 1985. Though they are no longer functional, both craft remain in their eccentric orbits around the Sun.

They're still out there folks!! Scary.

Not so fast my friends, as JUNO spacecraft approaches Jupiter in 2016 the gravitational pull from 'Ol Red eye, will pull JUNO to over 160,000 mph, actual data yet to come, stay tuned. JUNO is going to perform a lengthy burn to not pass by Jupiter, which is only going about 29,100 mph around the sun, and this all will have to be done with a 53 minute delay in commands from earth, since we will be on the other side of the sun when this all goes down, Almost exactly directly behind the sun, check it out, July, 2016.

JUNO is currently traveling 49,900 miles (80,300 kilometers) per hour relative to the sun. Velocity relative to Earth is 60,400 miles (97,200 kilometers) per hour. April 2013, it heads back toward Earth for its gravity assist flyby in Oct. of that year, from around the orbit of Mars.

I think it's very simple really.
Check how much any organized scientific organization, some Contemporary or Future Scientist of America Solciety or 'Friends of NASA or Organized Astrophysicist of America donated to Obama's election campaign committee and note where space exploration sits on his priority list.
Then note the donations by groups high on his priority list that he is doing everything he can to assist usually by throwing money at them. See a pattern emerging?

IMHO the US needs a worthy rival in space to make it a race again. In a few years China might decide to send astronauts to the moon to prove they are the new superpower. That would stir-up American pride and something would really happen. If the Chinese decided to go to the moon, then the US would decide to go to moon plus mars regardless of the cost.

Originally posted by dilly1
There is no known technology at present that could propel a manned or even unmanned vehicle at anything near a small fraction of the speed of light. The fastest vehicles ever created by mankind, the Voyager probes, used a gravitational slingshot off of the planet Jupiter to attain a velocity of 100K mph — that's STILL the fastest speed ever attained by a man made vehicle, and it's about 5 times faster than the FASTEST man made propulsion system. The Voyager probes have been in space for over 33 years, and they haven't even escaped our solar system ,,Yet.

When the Voyagers FINALLY clears the Heliopause (where the solar wind terminates) in about 6 years, it will have traveled roughly ONE LIGHT DAY. One Light Day is the diameter of our Solar System. It is 4 LIGHT YEARS to the next nearest star system. So far, our FASTEST vehicles EVER require about 40 years to travel ONE LIGHT DAY. Multiply that by 365 for the amount of time required to travel ONE Light Year (over 14,000 years). Now multiply that by FOUR (nearly 60,000 years).We're talking about WAY OVER fifty thousand years to reach the NEAREST star to us, traveling 5 times faster than the fastest current manmade propulsion system. We need to start grasping reality and grasp the distances involved in NEAR SPACE travel. When you hear the "futurists" discussing FTL space travel, they are talking pure fantasy, it's not based on ANY current technology. We have NO IDEA of how to approach near-light-speed velocities, nor how to sustain human life for extended journeys in space. When you hear the String Theorists discussing non-local simultaneity, they're talking about subatomic particles — they're not talking about a 12-million-ton deep space colony probe with a crew of 60 human beings.

It took us about 200,000 years to travel 300 miles, from the surface of the Earth to low Earth orbit. Once into the realm of microgravity, it took us another 10 years to reach the Moon. So, realistically, from the time we invented powered flight, it took us 80 years to travel a quarter of a million miles.
And then we STOPPED. We abandoned our manned interplanetary (Apollo) program in the 1970s. Our best manned efforts have been stuck in low Earth orbit for the last 40 years.
In other words,
we hit The WALL, and we were barely out of Earth's atmosphere.
Not only do we NOT have the
propulsion technology, we don't have a
reliable power source; and, more importantly, we don't have the life-support(this is vital!!!) technology to travel in deep space.
We're not
hiding the technology, we're don't have back-engineered alien spacecraft hidden in a hangar somewhere. That's all fantasy.

MY god! you're such a liar.!
the fastest voyager went was 39,000 mph

HELOIS WENT 100k+ mph, THAT WAS DO TO GRAVITATIONAL ASSISTING, NOT BECAUSE OF OUR ROCKETS.

My god its like people on ATS will lie about everything!