Why did they go to visit the first water planet in Interstellar?

fixit_fiona

In interstellar, the first planet they visit is the closest one to Gargantua, and hence the one with the biggest time dilation effect (1 hour on the planet = 7 years in the Earth). Now, if we make some maths: The trip from Earth takes 8 months + 14 months = ~2 years to reach that system. We are told the Lazarus missions departured from Earth ~10 years ago. This gives the Astronaut (Miller) around 12 years (In earth time) as maximum to reach that...

Originally asked by Daniel Ortega on Stack Exchange (movies) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

This planet should have been left many more years so the astronaut there could have enough time to perform some tests and exploration. They didn't know that the miller's planet is that close to gargantua, as Romilly mentioned: The planet is much closer to gargantua than we thought. So, they had no idea about this to consider sending pioneers sooner. Even if they did, 2 days on that planet is equal to 336 years on earth, before even the Apollo 11, or Apollo 0! As Doyle mentioned: Dr Mann's data is promising, but it's gonna take us months to get there, and Edmund's is even further. Miller hasn't sent much, but what she has sent is very promising. It's water, it's organics... And think about...

Full answer by Johansson: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/83550 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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