Re: How long would it take to get to Pluto from Earth in years?

Of course, the answer to your question depends on how fast you go. Pluto has an average distance from the Earth of about 39.5 AU (5.9 billion kilometers). If you could hop in your car and drive to Pluto at highway speeds (100 km/h), it would take about 6,700 years for the trip! Fortunately, we have better ways of getting there. The New Horizons spacecraft was launched towards Pluto in January 2006, and will reach it in July 2015. That's a 9.5 year trip, which requires an average speed of about 20 km/s relative to the Sun. The rocket that launched New Horizons didn't have enough fuel to reach this high velocity, so the probe first traveled to Jupiter, where it stole just a little of that planet's angular momentum and converted it into more speed. Such gravity assist "slingshot" routes are common for planetary exploration spacecraft, both to speed them up and to slow them down without requiring much additional fuel. See www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf4-1.html for a nice graph showing how a probe's velocity can be changed by planetary flybys.