How many helveticas does it take to get to the moon?

I don't know about you but my favourite measurement is the moonandback. The distance to the moon is 385,000,000,000 mm.

The size of an unkerned piece of normal cut Helvetica at 100pt is 136.23 mm.

Therefore it would take 2,826,206,643.42 helveticas to get to the moon.

Comments

[Richard Holt]

NASA has used Helvetica on many of its spacecraft, so its probably possible to work out how many Helveticas HAVE gone to the moon.

Interestingly though, the typeface mankind chose to leave on the moon was Futura:

http://tinyurl.com/374d9wu

[coxy]

I found Richard's comment more interesting than the actual post. Well done, Richard Holt!

[J PTak]

This really does give a taste for how close the Moon actually is--if everyone on Earth owned a Helvetica unit only one in three would have to give their's up. Thanks for this.

[Ben]

Richard, that is brilliant.

[Matt Edgar]

So the race is still wide open for the first serif to reach the Moon?

[Russell]

Have you been taking drugs?

[Holger]

“Interestingly though, the typeface mankind chose to leave on the moon was Futura”

A poorly typeset Futura on top of it. Just have a look at “Peace”. I hope the moon people won’t notice. Oh, the shame.

[David Rice]

Helv etica?
That lovely gap between the [v] and the [e]... Yes, the one you could drive... steer... pilot... whatever... a very large spaceship through, say the Star Dreadnought Executor... is not attractive at all. And so large... I'm certain the moon people wouldn't be able to miss it.

Unkerned Helvetica indeed!

[Pam]

This made me smile. I now have a mental image of a bunch of little Heleveticas stacking themselves on top of each other trying to reach the moon.