Oh it absolutely cannot be manned: 1) Must be as light as possible to reach ludicrous speed (plaid, for the uninitiated) and 2) We can't count on intercepting it before it reaches perihelion, so we'll most likely have to chase it out of the solar system. Well... I dunno, maybe if Bezos isn't busy that launch day...

"Jeff this is Houston. Come in, Jeff."

"HOUSTON! You ARE there!! I didn't think the radio link was working!"

"It works, Jeff, we've just been ignoring you for forty-seven days. Now, you are approaching a craft on your starboard side, do you have a visual?"

"YES! It's a... it looks yellow, and it's very nearly stationa-"

"JEFF! Jeff. I'm gonna cut you off right there. That's a painting of a school bus we taped to the window. We're using instrumentation to study the object, just as we'd always planned. No one gives a shit anymore what you say, Jeff."

"What? OHHhhh, hahah, it is a little school bus! Wow, how'd I never notice that before, hah, it's not even that small. Hey guys? OK so am I really close to something up here? Guys? HEY, I THOUGHT THIS WAS JUST MY SPACE TOURIST FLIGHT, YOU LIED, YOU SAID W-"

Static on the comm ends abruptly. The sounds of Jeff talking to himself as he slowly starves to death on a diet of packaging materials are suffered by exactly no one else.

Branding it as an extraterrestrial defense system and going through the military is, of course, the most likely way to score funding, totally agree. I'll legit think about doing that in the coming years.

Hey, at least it won't have branding this bad.