It's no secret: some companies like SpaceX and Boom Supersonic want to speed up travel between continents, using supersonic planes or rockets capable of taking off and landing quickly, on suborbital trajectories. Compared to this, the airliner seems old-fashioned. Yet it remains our only means of transport to connect the world's capitals, and some companies are not hesitant to take advantage of aircraft manufacturers' latest innovations to launch record-breaking connections, lasting more than 19 hours.
At a speed of 900 km/h, an airplane can still connect destinations separated by more than 16,000 km, a far cry from the 5,830 kilometers separating Paris and New York. However, this distance scale seems quite ridiculous when we consider rockets, which can reach an altitude of 100 kilometers in just 3 minutes, as was the case with SpaceX's recent Starship test flight. Rockets are impressive in their attempt to encroach on the airliner market. A reverse comparison is rarely found: how long would a passenger plane take to fly from Earth to the Moon?
The answer to this question is simple, if we stick to the simplest calculation and without taking into account physical limitations, whether it be the extreme conditions of space for which airplanes are not prepared, the lack of lift for the wings, or the force of gravity. The idea is simply to give an idea of the distances based on the fastest known means of transport on Earth. Thus, we will take into account the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, which is 384,400 kilometers.
Without further ado, here is the answer: 18 days. At a regular speed of 900 km/h and a distance of 384,400 kilometers to cover, an airliner would take 427 hours, or a little over 2 weeks. Far from the maximum 19 hours of flight that an airliner can perform today, due to fuel constraints. By spending 18 days in flight, passengers would have time to watch many movies. They could watch 246 of them, to be exact, with an average film length of 1 hour 45 minutes.
Plan a few years of travel to Mars or Jupiter
Traveling from Earth to the Moon by airliner would be a short trip compared to other, more distant connections. Thus, a trip to Venus would take a little over 5 years. The trip to Mars would already take 5 years longer, or 10 years of travel (non-stop). Give or take a year, a trip to Mercury would also be feasible (11 years), provided you book a window seat and get along well with your row neighbors.
The journey seems much less comfortable when it comes to packing for Jupiter (80 years), Saturn (161 years), and Uranus (345 years). But the unimaginable still occurs with Neptune, located at an average distance of 4.5 billion kilometers. Still considering a speed of 900 km/h, the journey from Earth to Neptune would take 552 years.
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