I’m not an expert on orbital mechanics, I just want to provide some data points.
The voyager craft, which not only had very good acceleration early on (the best we could do, really), combined with exceptional gravity slingshots and a lot of time - and are by all accounts some of the fastest man made objects ever - are going 15.4 km/s and 17 km/s relative to the sun.
3I/ATLAS is going so much faster than these objects they might as well be stationary.
Even ignoring the limited amount of time we have to intercept, catching up to 3I/ATLAS would be incredibly difficult to do. Perhaps impossible with our current technology*. Like catching up to a semi-truck going full speed on a highway with a bicycle. After it’s already passed us and is a couple miles down the road.
*barring theoretical (and kind of insane and dangerous) tech like Orion drives.
The voyager craft, which not only had very good acceleration early on (the best we could do, really), combined with exceptional gravity slingshots and a lot of time - and are by all accounts some of the fastest man made objects ever - are going 15.4 km/s and 17 km/s relative to the sun.
3I/ATLAS is going so much faster than these objects they might as well be stationary.
Even ignoring the limited amount of time we have to intercept, catching up to 3I/ATLAS would be incredibly difficult to do. Perhaps impossible with our current technology*. Like catching up to a semi-truck going full speed on a highway with a bicycle. After it’s already passed us and is a couple miles down the road.
*barring theoretical (and kind of insane and dangerous) tech like Orion drives.