3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Take off! At last we have succeeded. We have a spacecraft that will take us to visit other planets, stars and galaxies in a short time and in comfort. Before the invention of this thing to travel the universe was a real roll.
Apollo 11 which was the first man on the moon in 1969 took 4 days and 7 hours (this means an average speed of 3500-4000 km / h!). Well, not so bad considering that in going from London to Sydney (Australia) took us on a plane one day and 6 hours.
The Apollo 11 spacecraft that carried the first humans to the moon.
But is that the Moon is not too far. If instead of going to the moon we would go to other planets in the Solar system things would be slower.
probe Mariner 2 was the first to land on Venus in 1962 and took about 4 months, almost the same as the Mariner 10 took to land on Mercury in 1974. The Viking landers took 1 year to land on Mars in 1976.
Note that even Christopher Columbus took only 2 ½ months on their journey discovery of America, and there were riots on board. So travel to other planets is beginning to be to think twice before leaving. And locked up in a tin of sardines.
Although you can do: Sergei Krikalev holds the record stay in space and spent 747 days and 14 hours (2 years) circling the Earth in the International Space Station (which incidentally is the only thing the astronauts do now circling the Earth. There is no traveling to other planets, or even to the moon).
Traveling to distant planets of course costs more travel time. Although it depends on the type of reactor that drives us. To give you an idea: To Galileo cost him 6 years to reach Jupiter in 1995 and the Cassini-Huygens probe about 7 years to reach Saturn in 2004. But instead, the probe Voyager 1 took only 2 years to reach Jupiter in 1979 and 3 years at Saturn in 1980 using a nuclear reactor. The downside is that to see who dares now sending radioactive material into space with so many countries willing to declare a nuclear war to others.
Voyager 2 took 9 years to reach Uranus in 1986 and 12 years to Neptune in 1989.
recently Voyager probes left the solar system. In 2003, Voyager 1 reached the heliopause (zone of separation with the interstellar medium) and Voyager 2 in 2006 reached 100 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Remember that were launched in 1977, so it has taken 30 years to travel this distance.
suppose you have heard once that nothing can go faster than light. If the Voyager had gone to the speed of light (about 300000 km / s, or 1000 million km / h) just would have taken about 14h to leave the solar system, rather than the 30 years it has cost them .
Beyond the Solar System have not sent any exploratory spacecraft. That is, we have not even sent anything to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri ). If the Voyager had taken 30 years to go so the light takes 14 hours to go, then to go the distance to Proxima Centauri would take about 75000 years (in contrast to the speed of light would take only 4.2 years).
So if you want to talk to our friends in other stars it is best in a video chat and forget to send us best for Christmas nougat in a bundle because for sure they would say when they arrived they could not remember the hard nougat was so hard.
In fact since we started broadcasting radio and television signals, these signals have been extended through space and the people of planets around other stars can enjoy our TV shows.
If you've seen the movie Contact , based on a book by Carl Sagan, you know that the first television broadcast strong enough to be issued was the greeting from Hitler to the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936. So our neighbors of Proxima Centauri learned in 1940 that Hitler was such a giving a speech. In the 75 years has given time for several of our neighbors will find out too.
But in any case, that message still has not happened in our neighborhood. Note that the center of our galaxy that signal will not reach in around 25000 years. We still have time invent a ship like the Enterprise of Star Trek that allows us to travel faster than light and explain that not all land has a mustache like Hitler.
With a ship like this will explore the universe in a jiffy.
Fortunately this ship there and just take off, as I said before. Plasma in a flash with this contraption we reach the other side of the galaxy. Do you think we start the journey and see what is the Universe?
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