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.
A rocket ship, on its way to the moon, can get up to almost 25,000 miles per hour in order to escape the Earths atmosphere. However, it does not go that fast the whole way. Also, the ship cannot fly directly from the Earth straight to the moon surface. When it gets to the moon, the rocket needs to fly around and figure out a good spot to land. The first mission to stop on the moon with astronauts on it, Apollo 11, landed about four days after leaving the Earth surface.