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 Moon is much closer, so how long does it take spacecraft, possibly containing humans, to make the journey? The Moon orbits at an average distance of 384,000 kilometers. If you drove the distance from the Earth to the Moon at highway speeds, it would take you about 145 days of solid driving.