I wonder how long it would take a satellite, with a plutonium generator and a leading-edge Hall Effect ion engine or VASIMIR engine, to travel to the boundary layer of the solar system where the solar wind ends and the galactic winds begin?
I believe Daedalus was to take about 50 years to reach Alpha Centauri with a VASIMIR drive at something like 12% light speed.
Seems like the last I read (a few weeks ago) that Voyager was something like 109 AU from the sun now and my likely faulty calculations put Alpha C at about 280,000 AU from here.
New Horizons is currently 23 AU from earth with another 10 AU to go before its Pluto flyby in 2015.