All of us have looked at the moon and wondered how long it would take to fly there. The moon that we see is about 4.53 billion years old. It is 238,854 miles/384,399 km away from the earth.
The distance is always changing
One interesting thing about the distance of the Moon from the Earth is that it keeps on changing. The Moon travels around the Earth in an elliptical orbit, which means its distance from our planet changes all the time. Even after accounting for all of this, the distance answer is always shifting since the Moon is gradually retreating from the Earth as a result of their tidal interaction.
How long did Apollo take to get to the moon?
It might be sounding weird that the distance keeps changing but that’s true. The Apollo 11 mission is a good example of this. The Apollo 11 astronauts traveled to the moon in three days, three hours, and 49 minutes, but returned in two days, 22 hours, and 56 minutes. The Earth and the moon moved significantly closer together during the day that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent traveling to and exploring the lunar surface.
December 23, 1968#OTD 53 years ago, #Apollo8 was mere hours from the #moon for the first time in history. Neil Armstrong served as backup commander for this mission, and it was during this pioneering journey into cislunar space that he was offered command of #Apollo11. pic.twitter.com/uENVmsIbLx
— Armstrong (@ArmstrongDocu) December 23, 2021
A commercial Airliner to the Moon
A commercial airliner, let’s say a 747, flies at about 400 miles per hour. The moon is nearly 250,000 miles away. So If we do the math and divide 250,000 by 400, we find that it would take 625 hours — about 25-26 days — to fly to the moon! That’s a long time without pulling over for a bathroom break!
How long for a modern-day spacecraft to reach the moon.
So now let’s talk about how many days or how long does it take to get to the Moon?
The exact distance depends greatly on the path taken. A spaceship takes around three days to reach the Moon. A spaceship must travel at least 240,000 miles (386,400 kilometers) between Earth and the Moon during that period to reach the Moon in three days. American astronauts have made nine trips to the moon so far, six of which have landed on the lunar surface. In order to reduce fuel weight, some uncrewed missions have taken longer. The first unmanned mission to the moon, Luna 1, took only 36 hours and traveled at a speed of around 6,500 miles per hour (10,500 kph).
