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Is it possible to fly to the moon in one day? |
Question Date: 2018-05-02 | | Answer 1:
Yes, it is possible to reach the moon in one
day (assuming you mean only the time between
liftoff and arriving at the moon, not the months
of planning, construction, etc. that also goes
into such an endeavor). In fact, NASA's New
Horizons craft made the trip in around 8.5
hours. The duration of the journey is
strongly dependent on how much you want to spend
on fuel and whether or not you want to stop at the
moon.
The New Horizons was just zipping past on the
way to Pluto, so it could be traveling at a very
high speed. The trajectories of the Apollo
missions were planned so that they conserved
energy (fuel), and several involved landing on the
moon. Both of these mean that going too fast is
undesirable, and contributed to their longer
travel times (~3 days each way). Another mission
(SMART-1) used an ion engine in combination with
gravity assist maneuvers to make an extremely
fuel-efficient trip, but arrived more than a year
after being launched.
| | Answer 2:
The first moon landing was on 22 July 1969. The
last moon landing was on 7 December 1972. Humans
have not been back to the moon since.
Since we've gone to the moon in the past, we
can certainly imagine doing so again in the
future. The reasons we have not been back have
mainly been due to politics, e.g. President Nixon,
who sent the astronauts to the moon in the first
place, also cancelled the program in order to
pursue the Vietnam War. To go back, some
organization would need to assemble the money,
people, and so forth needed to do it. Because
technology has advanced since then, going back now
would be less expensive than it was in 1969, but
still expensive enough that it would require
either a government or a very large corporation.
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