Calculating My Travel Time

This is a post I wrote in 2015

and I feel it is worth repeating here since it has two story lines that I really enjoy.

Space & Humor.

*****

Have you heard?

"A team of astronomers has spotted three exoplanets orbiting around the same star – Wolf 1061 – one of which is in the habitable zone." by Natali Anderson for Sci-News.com. "Wolf 1061 is a red dwarf star located in the constellation Ophiuchus, only 14 light-years from Earth."

Only

14 light-years

away!

Do you know what that means?

Here,

let me get my abacus out.

OK,

  if light travels 300,000 kilometers

or 186,000 miles per second,

and there are 60 seconds in a minute.....

 Let me get my slide rule out.

Sixty seconds in a minute,

60 minutes in an hour,

and there are 24 hours in a day.....

I never did learn how to use this thing!

 I need a number two pencil

and some scrap paper.

  If light travels 300,000 kilometers

or 186,000 miles per second,

we have 60 seconds per minute,

60 minutes per hour,

and 24 hours in a day........

This is why they put calculators on cell phones.

I'm going to use miles instead of kilometers in my calculations because I was born in a country which decided a long time ago to go against the grain of the rest of the World.

Again,

we have 186,000 miles per second,

and we have 60 seconds in a minute.

That will give me 11,160,000 miles so far.

Since we have 60 minutes in an hour,

and if we times that by 11,160,000,

it will give us 669,600,000 miles.

With that said,

we do have 24 hours in a day

and if we times that by 669,600,000 we will have 16,070,400,000 miles!

Since 2020 is a leap year we will have 366 days in this year

and I'll just times that by 16,070,400,00

and we'll get 5,881,766,400,000 miles!

Now we're getting somewhere.

Take 5,881,766,400,000 and times that by 14,

as in 14 light years away

and we'll end up with only

82,344,729,600,000 miles!

Only?

If I write it out,

it looks like

eighty-two trillion, three hundred forty-four billion, seven hundred twenty-nine million, six hundred thousand miles from Earth!!!!!!!!! 

OK,

I can live with that.

Now my  

Vespa Scooter

tops out at a whopping 70 miles an hour.

It will take me....

carry the one....... 

Hell, I don't know!

It will take me a long time dammit!

Wait,

I know!

If I buy a Harley.........

This is,

Hoping If I Hitch-Hike Outside The Kennedy Space Center An Astro-Nut Will Pick Me Up And Take Me Away

Jim Hauenstein

And,

“No one goes out to play anymore. Simulation is becoming reality.” 

- Mary Roach -

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

 

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Thanks for reading

Be Kind To Everyone

I'll Be Seeing You