How long would it take to get to Saturn going at 200 000 km an hour?

Answer 1

In order to get a feeling for an answer to this question, we'll toss around some
very approximate numbers.

The plane of Saturn's orbit is inclined about 2.5 degrees to the plane of the earth's orbit.
But to make things simpler, let's assume that both planets orbit in the same plane.

The earth's average distance from the sun is about 149.6 million km.
Saturn's average distance from the sun is about 1.433 billion km.

So the closest Saturn can ever be to earth ... when both planets are lined up in the same direction
from the sun ... is about (1,433 - 149.6) = 1,283.4 million km.

Now to pick the route. For reasons too complex to go into here, you could never travel a straight line
from one planet to another. But let's say you could ... that's the shortest possible distance.

Now the problem is: How long does it take to travel 1,283.4 million km at a speed of 200,000 km/hr.

(1,283.4 million) / (200,000) = 64,170 hours

= 2,673.75 days

= 7.32 years