• Question: Why does it take years to get to space?

    Asked by prugzino and simrin to Tom, Jen, Hephzi on 17 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Thomas Barrett

      Thomas Barrett answered on 17 Mar 2015:

      It doesn’t 🙂 it takes a few hours on a big rocket to get into low-Earth Orbit which isn’t space but is close. It takes about 3 days to get to the moon and about 6 months to get to mars. But they are relatively close by in the bigger picture. Our nearest solar system is about a light year away meaning it takes light (the fastest thing we know) 1 year to travel from there. The reason for that is the distances are just mind blowingly large.

      With better space ships and rockets we could get there faster. But we are building them at the moment. We can do some clever things like slingshoting around a planet to speed ourselves up but that takes time to do.

      In short. For nearby things it’s not that long but going past say Mars and the Moon it will take years as things are just really far away.

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