That's A LOT of frequent flyer points ... If you travel to Pluto

[kamchatsky]

If you happen to be onboard on New Horizons .... Travelling from Earth to Pluto (3 BILLION+ miles).

Your trip to Pluto would have taken 9 and a half YEARS (it left earth on January 2006). But you would earn more than 3 billion frequent flyer points assuming 1 point per mile earn.

By then though you would probably be sick of travelling anyway, and you would have no idea how to spend 3 BILLION miles. Maybe burn them on gift cards perhaps? How much would 3 BILLION miles worth?

New Horizons has just passed the closest approach to Pluto a few minutes ago. What an amazing photo of Pluto:

https://instagram.com/p/5HTXKMoaFL/

https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons/status/620923200621412352/photo/1

https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons/

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

New Horizons will take whole bunch of photos and lots of measurements, and it would take 18 MONTHS to send all the data back to earth due to the vast distance the signal would need to travel. Even light takes 4.5 hours to reach between Pluto and Earth. It is that far away.

What an amazing achievement in human history. Incredible stuff.

 

[Revolio]

Radio waves travel at the speed of light. The transmission of just a packet or two therefore only takes 4.5 hours. 18 months only comes into play because of the vast collection of data; images and insights deduced in the last 24 hours are just from data of the previous day or so.

Most of the Moon and Mars have been sold off - how long will it be before someone claims selling rights and this dwarf planet is divvied up?

 

[Warks]

Pluto was always going to be a bit of a Mickey Mouse mission.

 

[chelzmalee]

Pluto was always going to be a bit of a Mickey Mouse mission.

I see what you did there.


As for how I'd spend 3 billion FF miles? Lots of toasters?

 

[Gabriel]

Would you receive LTG?

 

[Hvr]

The problem with getting FF points for this trip is that they would be assigned to your account on the day the flight left the launch pad and expire after 18 months of account inactivity. You would need to trust someone to use their EDR or similar to ensure the points didn't expire.

As for getting a redemption on the next trip, well assume one per flight in the cargo hold with very little chance of an upgrade and you can see it's really not worth trying for.

 

[kamchatsky]

The problem with getting FF points for this trip is that they would be assigned to your account on the day the flight left the launch pad and expire after 18 months of account inactivity. You would need to trust someone to use their EDR or similar to ensure the points didn't expire.

As for getting a redemption on the next trip, well assume one per flight in the cargo hold with very little chance of an upgrade and you can see it's really not worth trying for.

Well, some of Clyde Tombaugh's (the discoverer of Pluto) ashes is travelling with New Horizons for the last 9.5 years. I guess if he is awarded 1 point per mile, he surely would go into Guinness Records to have the most airline miles ever.

Clyde Tombaugh ashes will be first to leave solar system - Telegraph

Too bad he is dead so the airlines would close his account and all his points are forfeited anyway.

 

[whatmeworry]

I don't know about the miles but it was cheaper to get from Earth to Pluto per Km, then going from Essendon to a Geelong Golf course per Km.