No way this is true about the WDW monorail!

[Ezekiel H]

I just read on my fun facts subscription http://wdwfactoftheday.com/start/ that the monorail at Walt Disney World has traveled enough times to encircle the moon 30 times. Say Whaaaa!?

 

[jsilvers]

Completely believable.

The Moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth. Times 30 = 72,000,000 miles. The monorails have been running for 45 years, 365 days per year. That yields just under 440 miles per day, or 73 miles each assuming a 6-train fleet. (Obviously, various simplifications have been made, such as that the Epcot beam was only added in 1982, etc., but still when broken down the numbers are entirely plausible.)

 

[minnie mum]

Actually, it says 30 trips around the moon. I read that as just circling the moon 30 times, not 30 trips to the moon and back. According to Wiki:The moon's equatorial circumference is 6,783.5 miles (10,917 km). So 30 times that is completely believable.

And if they did mean 30 return trips between the earth and the moon, with 3 monorail tracks with multiple trains on each track, running from 14- 18 hours a day for 16,425 days, each train would only have to travel, on average, 5 miles every hour on a normal park day.

 

[Tonka's Skipper]

Very likely totally correct!


AKK

 

[seashoreCM]

Encircling just the moon 30 times is a trick question, er, trick comment.

30 one way trips (or 30 round trips for that matter) probably mean straight line trips assuming that the earth and the moon are stationary relative to each other. This is where the 240,000 odd miles one way comes from.The actual trajectory of Apollo 13 or any other moon mission is a much longer trip in miles.