I'm glad you enjoyed it. Took several weeks to program and render. Getting the atmosphere for Venus and Mars to be so close to photo-realistic was tricky.

I wasn't happy with the way I phrased that line. The dates represent the time at which two planets are at their periapsis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsis). This significantly reduces the time to travel between two planets. For the gas giants, this happens once every 172 years (http://tinyurl.com/d6r3rnn).

This is first shown at 3:15 when the date flips from 2153-02-27 to 2154-06-16, which marks the closest date that Mars and Jupiter approach each other. Voyager spacecraft were launched to take advantage of this relatively short distance.

The video is a small part of a longer video I had envisioned to excite kids about space exploration:

https://github.com/thangalin/flyby/wiki/_pages

Got it; thanks. I wasn't aware (til I went back and watched it again) that the text of the date actually flipped. My first thought was, "isn't the date continually flipping?" Now I'm trying to think of alternative ways to phrase that. Maybe something like: "Before departing a planet, the ship will rest until the distance to the next planet is minimized. The date will jump forward to show the time elapsed."

"The ship pauses at each planet until the closest approach of the next planet in the journey" ? "The ship waits at each planet until the next planet comes closest." ?