Hmmnnn, let’s see …

Amidst everything that is currently going on in the word – let’s begin with Brexit, President Trump and the mayhem of the festive season as it swings into full-on mode – just occasionally it’s quite reassuring, if not refreshing, to come across something that offers a vision of a potential future featuring an idyllic location and a degree of escape from the hustle and bustle of modern existence.

I don’t know if other Rusters have spotted this one overnight upon the website of The Independent, but in case they didn’t I thought I’d provide a link to it here – FAROUT

To me this sounds a very enticing prospect indeed.

Later this morning, after I’ve done my latest chores and a spot of the dreaded Christmas shopping, I shall be composing and then sending a formal email to NASA putting my name in the hat as a candidate for the first flight to this newly discovered planet on outer reaches of the Solar System.

Plainly, there will be a number of practical complex difficulties and complications to be overcome – the first being the distance involved.

Assuming that I’ve been googling creditable websites and authorities to obtain my basic data and also that the calculator software contained in my computer is working properly, I have just worked out that –  if I was to be travelling at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) the 11,000,000,000 (11 billion) miles away that planet Farout is estimated to be – is going to take me approximately 16.4 hours to get there, which isn’t too bad by the sound of it.

On the other hand, a spacecraft travelling at 20,000 miles per hour – the best current estimate of what is physically possible – would travel 175,200,000 miles in a single year.

Since Farout is 11 billion years away, that (on my calculator) works out to suggest that it would take me 627.85 years to get there, which means that I’d be 694.85 years old by the time I did.

I can see that there are one or two practical issues still to be sorted before I set off.