Chapitre 385: Chapter 377 Houston, we..._1

How long does it take to fly to the Moon?

Light needs only 1.2 seconds, while Apollo 11 took 80 hours. The subsequent missions raised the fastest record for manned spacecraft to 69 hours.

Although this includes the time from launch to entry into low-Earth orbit, which is a matter of about ten minutes and can be neglected.

The straight-line distance between Earth and the Moon is 380,000 kilometers. Theoretically, at a velocity of 11.2 kilometers per second, one could arrive in just over ten hours. However, this is not the case in reality.

Spaceflight is not like racing on the ground. The Moon rotates around the Earth, so the trajectory of the spacecraft is an arc rather than a straight line, and the velocity of the transfer orbit is constantly changing.