How many mph did the Apollo 11 travel to land on the moon?

Question

How many mph did the Apollo 11 travel to land on the moon?

Answer 1

In addition to the fine pair of answers before mine, I will add that the final landing speed of the Apollo 11 LM, Eagle, was 0 MPH.

At peak, their velocity was almost 25,000 MPH, but that dropped off quite briskly, right after the TLI burn was completed. Lunar orbit velocity was about 5,000 MPH, and so on.  

Answer 2

to go between worlds involves changing ones orbit.  to go to the moon, you need to first get into LEO, then change to an elliptical orbit who's apogee is the moons distance.  and as Kepler points out, your speed changes with the distance from the orbited body.  and then when you get to the moon, you must change your speed to be caught by gravity into a lunar orbit.    

Answer 3

There's no one speed associated with a translunar trajectory.  The fastest portion of the trip is actually just before they engage the atmosphere upon their return.  The next fastest speed is just after they leave Earth orbit, a speed near 24,000 miles per hour -- not quite the escape velocity of Earth.

Real spacecraft don't operate their engines continuously as you see in movies.  The Apollo spacecraft left orbit by means of a single powerful "burn" from the the still-attached third stage of their rocket, then coasted to the Moon.  They naturally slowed progressively as they climbed higher and higher, until they crossed over into the Moon's area of dominant gravitational influence, where they began to speed up again as they "fell" toward the Moon.  The speed at the crossover point was down to about 2,000 mph.