How Long Would It Take?
Pick a destination; see the honest travel times, from a family car to the speed of light.
Saturn (average): 1.43 billion km · light makes it in 79.5 minutes
| How you travel | Status | One-way time |
|---|---|---|
| Highway car, 100 km/h A steady 100 km/h with no stops (and no road). |
Everyday comparison | 1,631 years |
| Airliner, 900 km/h A commercial jet's cruise speed. |
Everyday comparison | 181 years |
| Apollo-style spacecraft, about 39,000 km/h Roughly Apollo 10's record speed returning from the Moon. |
Flown technology | 4 years |
| Ion-propulsion probe, about 90,000 km/h Sustained speeds reached by deep-space probes like Dawn (relative to the Sun). |
Flown technology | 662 days |
| Voyager 1, about 61,000 km/h Voyager 1's speed leaving the Solar System (relative to the Sun). |
Flown technology | 3 years |
| Parker Solar Probe, about 690,000 km/h The fastest human-made object at its closest solar pass (2024). It needs the Sun's gravity to go this fast. |
Flown technology | 87 days |
| Nuclear-thermal rocket, about 120,000 km/h cruise A plausible sustained cruise for a nuclear-thermal transfer; test programs exist, no crewed vehicle yet. |
In development | 502 days |
| Laser light-sail at 20% of light speed Breakthrough Starshot's target for gram-scale probes. Nothing like it has flown. |
Proposed concept | 6.6 hours |
| Light itself, 299,792 km/s Nothing with mass can reach this speed; it is the universe's speed limit. |
Physical limit | 79 minutes |
Simplified straight-line times at constant cruise speed, ignoring acceleration, orbits and stopping. Real missions fly curved paths and take longer. For distances that vary (planets), the average distance is used.