NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto last week, which is amazing. It was a three-billion mile trip that took nine and half years.
But here’s what blows my mind. According to NASA, the trip “took about one minute less than predicted when the craft was launched in January 2006.”
That is astounding. In an untested, decade-long journey, NASA’s travel forecast was 99.99998% accurate. It’s the equivalent of forecasting a trip from New York to Boston and being accurate to within four millionths of a second. (Your move, Google Maps.)
This is a great reminder that some fields work with amazing precision. They are governed by pure math and physics, and aren’t burdened by the whims of human emotion.
It’s also a great reminder that investing is not one of these fields.
Written By: Morgan Housel