Comment by 001spartan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 001spartan | Hacker News Reader

This is so damn cool. It's humbling to realize the scale of the universe we exist in, and how small a part of it we really are. And we're flinging probes around the solar system, millions of miles away, to learn more about our universe.

These are machines that still work, decades after they're launched on top of the most powerful (and most violent) form of transportation we've created, and after they travel millions of miles through the extremes that space provides. It's awe inspiring that we can accomplish things like that, and it's incredibly disappointing that more people don't realize the scale of what is being accomplished.

Speaking of scale, Pluto is more than 2.6 billion miles from Earth at closest approach :).

To put it into context, the closest distance between Earth and Mars is 33.9 million miles, and distance between Earth and Moon is only 238,900 miles.

This checks out. Closest theoretical approaches:

    >>> "%e" % (Pluto.orbit.periapsis - Earth.orbit.apoapsis)
    '4.272109e+12'
    >>> "%e" % (Mars.orbit.periapsis - Earth.orbit.apoapsis)
    '5.455552e+10'
    >>> "%e" % (Moon.orbit.periapsis)
    '3.631042e+08'
    >>> "%e" % Earth.radius
    '6.371000e+06'

Earth-Pluto: 4.27 Tm = 4.27e9 km = 2.65e9 miles

Earth-Mars: 54.6 Gm = 54.6e6 km = 33.9e6 miles

Earth-Moon: 363 Mm = 363e3 km = 226e3 miles

Earth radius: 6.37 Mm = 6.37e3 km = 3.96e3 miles

Heh. s/millions/billions/g

This probe was launched 9 years ago, not decades. I think its speed is even more impressive :-)

> New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006, from Cape Canaveral, directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory

I meant that more in the general sense, many of the probes that we have in space have been there for decades. You're right that it is very impressive to have gone so far in so little time!

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