To the Moon, Alice

April 16, 2008 – 7:30 am

One of the things that inspired me to create this blog was a blog post about CafePress where I expressed unhappiness about how much time a new policy of theirs would cost their shopkeepers. I came up with a figure of 25,000 hours, then did some Rough Equivalents. One of my favorites (and the one I was thinking of when it hit me that I should do this blog) is that 25,000 hours is how long it would take to drive to the moon and back in rush hour traffic (assuming traffic was moving at 19.2 miles per hour).

So today I wanted to do some Rough Equivalents based on the distance from Earth to the moon.

Now, just as the Earth has an ellipitical orbit around the sun, the moon's orbit is elliptical too. In simple terms, that means the moon isn't always the same distance from the Earth. At apogee (its greatest distance), it is 253,560 miles away from the Earth. At perigee (its closest approach) it's 226,940 miles away. For simplicity's sake, we'll split the difference, shave off another 250 miles, and put the distance at a good, round 240,000 miles.

Now, I was wrong about the speed of rush hour traffic way back when. According to an ABC News story on rush hour traffic statistics, the national average in 2006 was 26 minutes to go 16 miles, or roughly 36.9 miles per hour. So, if instead of commuting to Redmond, you were commuting to the moon, your morning commute would take roughly 6504 hours. Same for the trip home.

So, a trip to the moon and back in rush hour traffic, both ways, would take 13,008 hours. Some rough equivalents for 13,008 hours are:

• 77 weeks and 3 days (driving 24/7)
• 6.775 years at work (driving 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, with 2 weeks vacation, 5 sick days, and 5 paid holidays)
• 1362 viewings of the 30th anniversary edition of Roots
• breaking the record for balancing on one foot 169 times in a row.
• 14.5 feet of watching grass grow (assuming an average of 2.25 inches a week)
• 7 litters from a rat, and another on the way.

What are some Rough Equivalents you can come up with for a trip to the moon and back in rush hour traffic (13,008 hours)?