Joe is Vanguard's global chief economist and head of Vanguard Investment Strategy Group. He's also a member of the senior portfolio management team in Vanguard Fixed Income Group.
Apollo missions took about three days to reach the moon. But the quickest trip to the moon was the New Horizons probe, which zipped past the moon in just 8 hours 35 minutes on its way to Pluto. However, the spacecraft didn't even slow down or approach lunar orbit. Tidal forces.
The first mission to stop on the moon with astronauts on it, Apollo 11, landed about four days after leaving the Earth surface. I believe I remember reading that the Saturn V rocket took three days to make the trip to the moon. The moon is about 220,000 kilometers from the Earth. You do the math.