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♪
Narrator: So, you're planning your next vacation to the cosmos.

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You've picked out a few potential places to go, you've marked your map…

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…and you've also somehow rigged up your spaceship to...travel
at almost the speed of light?

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How did you...so how are you going to...
uh..

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♪

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Well, here we go, I guess!

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Before you fly off all willy-nilly, however,

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there are some important things you should probably know
about approaching the speed of light.

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First, a lot of weird things can happen,
like time and space getting all bent out of shape.

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For example, If you’re moving at nearly the speed of light,

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according to the clock inside your rocket, you’ll only take
a bit more than half the time to reach your destination

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compared to what a clock on your planet would say.

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The end result is that while your clock might move normally to you,

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you’d see the clocks back home had moved further when you return,


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so you might want to reschedule your dental appointments
before you leave.

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Also, because you’re going so fast,

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what would otherwise be just a few hydrogen atoms
that you’d run into quickly becomes a LOT of dangerous particles,

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so you should probably have shields that keep them from frying
your ship and also likely you.

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And finally, you wouldn’t want to accelerate too quickly toward
the speed of light, because, well.

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♪

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However, since it looks like you’ve figured all that out already,

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let’s talk about how long it takes to travel around the universe.

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While you will be traveling very fast, the universe is also
a very big place, so you might be in for some surprises.

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For example, even though you’re traveling at almost the speed of light—

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and, as you remember, the time and space weirdness will make
the distance seem shorter to you—

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your rocket’s clock will still say it takes a bit more than nine months
just to get from the Earth to the edge of the solar system.

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According to a clock on Earth, it’s even longer—
over a year and a half.

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That's not too bad, but to get to the next star system,
your clock would say it took you just over 2 years.

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♪

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…Okay then!

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If you want to get to farther-out vacation spots, however,
you’ll probably need more than a few extra snacks.

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A trip to the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large neighbor galaxy,
could take over a million years,

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and a trip to the farthest known galaxy where it currently is
might take over 15 billion years,

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which…is more vacation time than I think I’ll ever have.

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Of course, again, since time gets all weird the closer you get to lightspeed,
your actual travel time will be...

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um...a bit shorter than that… depending on…just a couple of…

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(Narrator sighs)
That’s something we can talk about later.

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Either way, that should sum up some of the big things
you might run into with near-light-speed travel.

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But in the meantime, make sure to buckle up, enjoy your snacks,
and please…be safe out there.

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(silence)

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ON-SCREEN TEXT: EXPLORE SOLAR SYSTEM & BEYOND

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ON-SCREEN: NASA logo