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d3 | Travelling to planets

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Travelling to planets

Came across this vintage data viz (the b/w image), not sure how they got the figures, perhaps plane speeds at the time? I’ve added some more recent ones for comparison, referenced from astronomycafe and also dustbunny. note: dustbunny had the data from the Sun, so used it to calculate it from the Earth as the reference.

Just move over the planets to view. As the planets move along their orbital paths they move nearer and further in comparison to each other all the time, so all just for play.

It’s very hard for us to understand just how large the solar system is. Scientists tell us that the largest number our minds can really comprehend, or grasp, is about a hundred thousand (100,000). When you begin talking about the distances between planets, which are measured in millions, or billions, of miles, our minds just don’t keep up very well. When you add the habit that adults have of making things more complicated than they need to be, it gets even harder …

… we will also tell you how long it would take to drive to the planets in your car at seventy miles per hour, as well as fly there in a jet plane going 600 miles per hour. Remember, the planets are not in a straight line going out from the Sun. They are always moving around the Sun, so they are hardly ever lined up in a row. The distances we use are from the Sun to the planets’ average distance from the Sun.

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How long will it take to get to each of the planets by various means?

It depends a lot on the particular trajectory that you take.

The Space Shuttle, of course, can’t leave Earth orbit but its speed is typical of manned spacecraft. The Galileo spacecraft which recently explored Jupiter traveled twice as fast. Ion rocket motors get their speed by being constantly accelerated 24-hours a day for many months, and two versions of this technology are given for a low-power and high-power ion engine. Finally, solar sails can reach speeds of nearly that of the solar wind, and engineers are hopeful that this technology will be tested in space very soon. As you can see, we are currently stuck in the mode of travel where it takes nearly 10 years to get to Pluto. Perhaps in another hundred years, this travel time will be reduced to a year or less…assuming Humanity feels a compelling economic need to continue this kind of exploration.

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