Happy April 1st! We all know what day is today, right? So, I came across this great April Fools joke and I wanted to share it with you and give you my thoughts on it. Its from Southwest Airlines and their latest destination; Mars! Now lets review this and allow me to give you my suggestions. When you book your flight with SWA from Earth to Mars, dont fly before July 27, 2018. Why? Well, thats because we will be much closer to Mars that day, then lets say next week. On April 8, 2014 we will be 57.5 million miles away from Mars. But on July, 2018 we will only be 35.8 million miles away. Why is that? Well, planets dont orbit the Sun in a circular orbit. They orbit in an ellipse one. That is why in January Earth is closest to the Sun and in July Earth is the furthest away from our Star. The difference is a good 3.1 million miles. So no change. So the shortest distance from Earth to Mars is when both planets are on the same side of the Sun. And not only that. This should be when Earth is the farthest away from the Sun (aphelion) and Mars is the closest to the Sun in its orbit (perihelion). Remember, Earth is the 3rd Rock from the Sun and Mars is the 4th. So, thats why on July 27, 2018 we will be relatively close to Mars. Ok, now lets say you book your vacation, leaving towards the end of July 2018. How long should you book your vacation for? Lets work with round numbers to make it a little easier. It will be a 36,000,000 miles one-way trip to Mars. Southwest Airlines fleet consists of Boeing 737. Their latest model is the 737-800. It has a cruising speed of approx. 600 miles per hour. Not taking stops into consideration, the flight time would be 60,000 hours (or 2,500 days or almost 7 years). Now lets do take the re-fuling into consideration and the fact that the Boeing 737-800 series has a range of approx. 3,600 miles on a full tank. So the pilot would have to make 10,000 stops between Earth and Mars and each time fill up the airplane with almost 6,900 gallons of fuel. Thats 69,000,000 gallons of fuel just to get to Mars. Oh, and lets say one gallon of jet fuel costs $3, then the cost of fuel alone would be $207,000,000. There are 189 passengers on board the 737-800 - thats $1,095,000 per passenger in fuel cost. So jump on this $9,999 deal Southwest is offering. Just make sure you tell your boss you will be gone for some time... youtu.be/3otYXT3biPo
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 17:57:50 +0000