Most of us have a way of remembering the distance of the planets from the sun.

M V E M J S U N P

(My way is to simply remember the phrase "M vem J sun P")

However, do you know the order of the planets in increasing distance from the earth? (without looking it up!)

By "distance", I mean the *shortest* distance that the earth and another planet can be apart when travelling in their respective orbits.

Which planet (on a good day!) would we be able to reach with the shortest distance to travel?

I remember when Neptune was farther away from the sun than Pluto, for a while.

The way I was taught to remember the order of the planets from the sun was:

"My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets"

Besides, even that isn't very accurate, as Pluto is occasionally closer to the Sun than Neptune.


Let's see if we can come up with a mnemonic, however, for what you suggest.

Since you refer to traveling to each planet on a "good day", I'll use the distance that is the closest each planet gets to Earth in millions of miles (I cheated - I looked it up):
Venus: 26
Mars: 35
Mercury: 57
Jupiter: 370
Saturn 744
Uranus: 1,607
Pluto: 2,670 (Surprise - Pluto's closest point to Earth is closer than Neptune's!)
Neptune: 2,680

How about:

"Vehicles may meet jawdropping speeds, using planetary navigation."

Which translates to:

"Vehicles (Venus) may (Mars) meet (Mercury) jawdropping (Jupiter) speeds (Saturn) using (Uranus) planetary (Pluto) navigation (Neptune)."

To help remember that Mars comes before Mercury, note that "may" begins with "ma", just like Mars, and "meet" begins with "me", just like Mercury.

Here's a very cool set of pictures showing Earth's size in relation to the other planets and the sun.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/earthrelation.html