Are you sure? I believe this is travelling at 26 km/s heliocentric dv while the sunscraper comet was blazing at 600 km/s. So it's not the fastest thing observed in the solar system, by a long shot.
Voyaver 1 is going 17 km/s so it's not like it's ridiculously out of reach... And we launched that one a while ago.
And remember, when people who say things like "NASA needs decades to plan these things," Korolev got out of the gulag in 1945, fresh and ready to work with almost all of his teeth missing and a jaw broken so badly he could not turn his head, it took him 15 years to: develop the first ICBM, first satellite in orbit, and the first sattelite around the moon, as well as the first object to impact the moon.
Without his engineering expertise he would have rotted to death (based on false accusations) in the gulag.
Voyager 1 was launched a long time ago and has roughly 75% the dv that Oumaumua has. It is very doable. We just need to demand it.
The caveat to Voyager 1 is that it was launched during an ideal window and performed a pair of gravity-assist slingshot maneuvers, and took 30 years to do it. That is right out of the question as far as this intercept is concerned. It's direct-ascent or bust.
There is no chance of accelerating anything with any substantial mass to that velocity. Hence me plugging starshot - the only chance of us catching up to it with anything at this point is for it to be fairyweight or atomically powered.
The object has already slingshotted, we're mostly boned at this point. Unless we act now, with a cunning plan, we will never learn anything about this object in particular. Even still, we really can't put much onto any hypothetical probe.
You could put more smaller upper stages to some big rockets. And finally tank the spacecraft itself with a lot of hydrazine so it can fo course corrections later.
There is another option though. There's a tanker version of Musk's BFR being designed for filling up Mars bound rockets or propellant depots in low earth orbit. You could instead refill the tanker or two or three and stage them. Or use the Mars bound stage.
Voyaver 1 is going 17 km/s so it's not like it's ridiculously out of reach... And we launched that one a while ago.
And remember, when people who say things like "NASA needs decades to plan these things," Korolev got out of the gulag in 1945, fresh and ready to work with almost all of his teeth missing and a jaw broken so badly he could not turn his head, it took him 15 years to: develop the first ICBM, first satellite in orbit, and the first sattelite around the moon, as well as the first object to impact the moon.
Without his engineering expertise he would have rotted to death (based on false accusations) in the gulag.
Voyager 1 was launched a long time ago and has roughly 75% the dv that Oumaumua has. It is very doable. We just need to demand it.