- By space shuttle: 3 days
- By car: 160 days
- By bike: 267 days
- On foot: 8 years
Utopia for some, reality for others, human exploration of the Moon on a large scale occupies everyone’s mind and keeps more and more people dreaming. As proof, the keyword “moon” is typed on Google France more than 60,000 times a month on average, reflecting a real need for information about our only natural satellite.
So how long does it take to get to the moon? A question that cannot have a single factual answer because several criteria are involved. While the estimated time to make the trip to the Moon by car, bicycle and on foot may seem utopian (although it is calculated seriously; see sources at the bottom of the article for more details), the time on board a space shuttle is based on past expeditions.
While some took a long time, others were surprisingly fast. Many missions have arrived in lunar orbit and landed on the lunar surface. The 3 days announced at the beginning of the article refers to the mission of the American Apollo 11 space program, manned trip in which humans walked on the Moon on July 21, 1969. The journey from the Earth to the Moon took 3 days (exactly 73 hours) where the return trip was 11 hours (62 hours) shorter.
Sources:
- https://www.quora.com/If-I-started-walking-now-how-long-would-it-take-me-to-get-to-the-moon
- https://www.universetoday.com/13562/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-the-moon/
- https://www.wired.com/story/how-long-would-it-take-to-bicycle-to-the-moon/
- https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/A11_PressKit.pdf
