Suppose that you were planning a mission to Jupiter, using an airplane like vehicle that would spend many days?
Don't make it an airplane - make it a blimp.... Airplanes can only run so long, and - when their engines run out of fuel (or, just quit....) the plane goes down.... that's bad news on Earth - and *really* bad news on Jupiter. A blimp will just float along, engines running or not, when you ride a thermal higher into Jupiter's sky, the weight of your blimp will keep you from getting *too* high, and likewise, when a low pressure area makes your blimp's altitude sink, it can only go so low before the outside pressure forces you to rise again like a bubble under water. Conditions... well, there's lightning pretty much all over the surface, and that's because the surface we see are the tops of clouds. As long as you're running in a particular band, winds - although very fast - will be relative to your motion... but, you'll still have turbulence and some shearing if you venture too close to a neighboring band. You might have to deal with some temperature extremes as well... in the upper layers of Jupiter's atmosphere, it can be very chilly, but dipping into the clouds can raise you temperature rapidly, because most of Jupiter's heat comes from within.
How long would it take for a plane to circulate Jupiter?
That depends. How fast is the plane going?Jupiter is 272,946 miles around its equator. Earth is 24,901 miles. Therefore, using the most basic math, we could conclude that a plane would take almost 11 times as long, since it is covering almost 11 times the distance.Your average commercial airliner could circle the world in 44 hours or so (depending on wind directions and speed). Therefore we could assume it would take about 480 hours to fly around Jupiter (20 days straight).Or, you could hop into a much faster plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, which can circle the Earth in 12 hours. It could therefore travel the distance needed to circle Jupiter in 131 hours (5.5 days).Of course, no plane could actually make that trip without refueling, which would generally add some time to your flight plan. Further complications arise when we look at the differences between Earth’s atmosphere and Jupiter’s. Exactly what point in Jupiter’s thick and diverse atmosphere you are flying would hugely affect your speed and lift. See Caelan BK's answer for some of those reasons why this wouldn’t be nearly this simple at all.All things considered, the best way to get around Jupiter quickly is to go higher — out of the atmosphere entirely. That means you can traverse the planet faster, because you don’t have to deal with any air resistance. In fact, once you get going, you can even cut the engines and enjoy your orbit indefinitely without ever needing to refuel.The International Space Station, despite its total lack of aerodynamics or large booster engines, travels much faster than either of our previous options, circling the entire Earth in only 92 minutes — an hour and a half. So if you want to circle Jupiter in less than one Earth day, you may be able to pull it off using a satellite with the right velocity and altitude. It doesn’t have to be a plane, but it could be. It could even be a Tesla Roadster if you want.
Do we know how long it would take to fly around Jupiter in an airplane?
Like all good hypothetical questions, the answer is - It depends.The circumference of jupiter is about 450,000 km. And an airliner speed could be around 800 km/h so unassisted / unhindered by wind, it would take about 560 hours to complete.But Jupiter isn't classed as a gas giant for nothing. It appears to have jet streams like no other. Look at this picture of Jupiter wind speed v Latitude.From this it would appear that we could be helped or hindered by up to 500 km/h of wind. That now gives our 800 km/h aircraft a Jupiter circum navigation time of between 346 hours (Just over 2 weeks) and 1,500 hours (Just over 2 months). There are obviously too many engineering issues with this idea but that is the joy of hypothetical questions. To comment on another answer, pressure in flight is not a problem. The aircraft would in theory cruise in gas which had the density of earths atmosphere at 30-40,000 feet. That means that the aircraft would have to fly very high in the Jovian atmosphere where gas pressure would be very similar to that experienced by an aircraft cruising on earth. The Jovian winds in themselves are not a problem if the winds are smooth but I suspect that turbulence and windshear may well prove to be too much for any aircraft structure. Especially given the biggest problem an aircraft would experience - Gravity.Because Jupiters gravity is about 2.5 x earths, an earth designed aircraft could not fly around Jupiter because the aerodynamic lift forces created are not designed to keep 2.5 times the weight of aircraft and contents in the air.Of course an aircraft here would have to fly forever because if it ever tried to "land" then yes the air pressure would crush it very quickly.
How long would it take to reach Jupiter's moon, Io?
From the six probes we have sent to Jupiter already, probably anywhere from 1 to 3 years. From the source shown below: "Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 and flew within 81,000 miles (130,000 kilometers) of Jupiter on Dec. 3, 1973."
How long would it take a rocket to get to Jupiter?
The best example is the New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Jupiter in order to gain a gravity slingshot boost to take it to Pluto. The rocket that launched New Horizons was a Lockheed Martin Atlas V with five boosters. The gross mass of the rocket at takeoff was 575,000 kilograms - to get the 473 kilogram payload to Jupiter. A mass ratio of 1,215.Launch was on January 19th 2006, and closest approach to Jupiter was February 28 2007, 405 days later. At closest approach New Horizons was travelling at 42,000 miles per hour and had no means of slowing down. The encounter increased its speed by 9,000 miles per hour.
How long would it take to circumnavigate Jupiter?
Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. But if he had his ships of 3 how long would he sail in a Jupiter sea?The average speed of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria was about 4 knots - about 7.4 km/hr. The circumference of Jupiter is 439,264km. Distance divided by velocity is time, so in this case 59,360 hours or about 6 years and 9 months. Yikes. But Columbus (and many others) were able to sail using the wind. Jupiter has much more powerful winds than the Earth does. Winds of over 600 km/hr have been recorded on Jupiter. If you could ride along in a stream of that wind (which might actually be possible as there is no water or land here - only gas) you could complete a circumnavigation in around a month. This is actually a little faster than Columbus' first trip to America, which was thought to have taken about 35 days.