[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/earth-moon_8162.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:The Earth and the Moon to scale.[[note]]How far apart are they? You could put ''every other planet in the Solar System'' in the space between them (though you'd need to tilt Jupiter and Saturn to fit their ring systems in). Yeah.[[/note]]]]

->"''Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space, listen...''"
-->-- '''Creator/DouglasAdams''', ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''

Space is huge, and the distances involved are far beyond normal human experience. On Earth, if your car breaks down on a country road in North America, you can reasonably expect a rest stop or a gas station within 50 km (ca. 30 miles). Space, however, is not like that country road. If you set your space RV in a randomly-selected trajectory and continue going straight until you get within 50 ''million'' kilometers of a star, the chances are (quite literally) astronomically high that you will reach the edge of the galaxy, keep going, and never enter another galaxy... ever. For another example, every planet orbiting the Sun (including the likes of Jupiter and Saturn) could easily fit between the Earth and its own moon. That's how few planets there are in our big solar system.

This problem exists even for space travel restricted to within a solar system. Objects travel in orbits and don't occupy the same place all the time - planets orbit their sun, and other objects orbit something else that orbits that sun. A planet does not occupy its entire orbit at once, either. For example, the position of the Earth in its orbit during June and the position during December is a difference of 300 million kilometers. A space traveler who doesn't check his Earth calendar might be in for an unpleasant surprise. Add to this the fact that the sun itself is in orbit around the center of the galaxy, and the galaxy is also in motion, and things become rather complicated very quickly.

The solar system and the universe are far bigger than anyone expected them to be. People who are interested in space are pretty much flabbergasted when they try to take it in. The Moon is about 384,400 km (238,900 mi) away from the Earth, and it took the Apollo missions 3 days and 6 hours to complete the trip to it from Earth. Ignoring the air/gravity/etc issues, if there were a highway to get to the Moon, it would take you ''five straight months of non-stop driving'' in your space RV at normal lead-foot highway speeds to get there. And the Moon is ridiculously close by astronomical standards. At the same speed, it would take 150 ''years'' to get to the Sun (150 million km) and ''4460'' years to Neptune (4.3 billion km when it's closest to Earth). As for things outside the Solar System? Well, try Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. At 1.3 parsec (40.3 trillion km), it would take no less than '''41.8 million years''' at the same speed to get there. Have fun figuring out how long it would take to go to things like the Andromeda Galaxy (770 kiloparsecs from Earth).[[note]]A rough estimate is 24.7 trillion years. That's 1795 times older than the age of the universe.[[/note]]

'''The above in a nutshell:''' In RealLife, ''nothing'' in space is ever close, convenient, or in the same place it was a minute ago.

[[AcceptableBreaksFromReality This does not deter sci-fi writers, though!]] A chance to land and explore a SingleBiomePlanet, orbit around a mysterious [[TownWithADarkSecret planet with a dark secret]], or answer a distress call from a LostColony on a moon offers [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools far more story options]] than having a spaceship silently [[GhostShip cruising for eternity]], running out of power and with a [[EverybodysDeadDave group of mummifying bodies on board]].

A subtrope of ArtisticLicenseSpace. A common side effect of SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. A sort of ArtisticLicenseGeography, though the term "Geography" isn't usually applied to space because it's so big and different. Generally a necessity for CasualInterplanetaryTravel.

If characters not only find a planet but land next to what they're looking for see ItsASmallWorldAfterAll. Keep in mind that having FasterThanLightTravel would make things conveniently closer, but carries a laundry list of issues of its own. When asteroids are frustratingly close to each other, it's an AsteroidThicket. Compare RoadTripAcrossTheStreet. The MundaneDogmatic movement in science fiction calls for telling stories that use plausible science, thus no FTL travel and mostly set in the Solar System.

[[noreallife]]
----
!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''Anime/{{Daimos}}'': After Planet Baam was left in ruins due to a collision between the sun of Planet Baam and a miniature nebullae, the Baams evacuated as soon as possible and scrambled to find new housing. King Leon proposed the idea of Planet Earth being their new home, due to Baam and Earth being alike in nature, and travelled a long distance to negotiate with the UN about settling Baam refugees there. Even though Baam is ''ninety light years away from Earth'', Leon somehow knew of it's existence and that it had a similarities to Baam.
* ''Anime/{{Daltanious}}'': When the Helios Empire was destroyed, Earl was able to conveniently locate Earth as a refuge and take Prince Harlin with him there. Thanks to Heliosians being HumanAliens, [[spoiler:Prince Harlin would grow up on the planet oblivious to his alien heritage until adulthood.]]
* The very last shot of ''Anime/EurekaSeven'' shows [[spoiler:Earth with a dust ring and the "heart-Renton-Eureka"-carved Moon at a distance roughly the diameter of the planet. In other words, at collision distance]].
* In ''[[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion The End of Evangelion]]'', the moon is close enough to get splashed with blood upon [[spoiler: Lilith's]] death. As big as she is, and as powerful as the jet of HighPressureBlood is, that's still conspicuously close.
* ''Manga/GirlsBravo'' has Seiren, which has Earth taking up a sizeable portion of its skies on a clear day.
* ''Anime/GoLion'': When our heroes escape their initial captivity on the Galra capital world, and their space ship gets shot and damaged by their pursuers, they "fall" onto the planet Altea within what must be 10 minutes of launching. Luckily for them there's a castle and 5 lion robots there.
* In ''Anime/AKB0048'', The group makes a random jump while fleeing from the DES after being driven off Akibastar and come out right on top of a perfectly inhabitable world where they can rest and repair.
* The climax of ''Anime/LilyCAT'' takes place just above an inhabitable planet.
* In ''Anime/CowboyBebop'', this the reason for Moon debris falling to the Earth.
* Averted in ''Anime/VoltesV'', where Prince Gohl [[spoiler:a.k.a. Kentaro Gō]] landed on Earth completely by accident after escaping Boazania's cruel caste system. Jangal also later expresses bewilderment that he landed on a planet so far away. AllThereInTheManual material states that Boazania is located in Messier 4 in the Scorpio constellation; this means Boazania is at least 7,175 light years away from Earth.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Arts]]
* ''Art/SpaceFantasyCommemorativeStampBooklet'': There are nearly a dozen stellar objects, ranging from maybe rocky planets to gas giants to a central star, all within the [[IdiosyncraticCoverArt single pane of five stamps]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMarvel'' feature outer space as a place where planets are seen as big, brightly, and often overlapping colored spheres.
* ''ComicBook/StarWars'' is a ''big'' offender. The closest example possible may be the jungle planet Onderon and its moon Dxun - the reason the two share most of the same fauna is because they apparently pass so close to each other that, once a year, their atmospheres ''merge'' and the beasts of Dxun can simply ''fly'' over to Onderon.
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': The moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the sun and ''Pluto'' are all treated as being less than a day's easy travel away for Wondy and the Amazons, despite them not having faster than light travel. This is later mitigated somewhat by the invention of a teleporter.
** It was first averted in ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'' where ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' and a Russian cosmonaut were sent careening into space at faster than light speed on a sabotaged uncontrollable ship and spend months running out of breathable air and food without ever encountering another planet, only surviving due to the messages they were broadcasting for aid drawing in SalvagePirates. Then the same arc plays it straight with several planets shown as huge overlapping spheres within the Sangtee Empire.
* Many examples can be found in ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' stories:
** In ''ComicBook/SupermanBrainiac'', Superman leaves Earth in search of ComicBook/{{Brainiac}}. It doesn't take long before his ship stumbles into a planet attacked by the Coluan nightmare.
** In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' issue #337, ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'s ship gets caught in a warp stream which both sends her vessel far away and knocks its guidance system out. Fortunately, her rocket reenters physical space randomly but conveniently near from a planet where she can find help to repair her ship upon landing.
** Brought up in ''ComicBook/WarWorld'': Superman prepares to look for his cousin, who has become lost in space after helping destroy Mongul's star-sized super-weapon. Superman reminds himself he must calculate her trajectory carefully before tracking her down or he'll never find her, no matter how long he searches.
--->'''Superman:''' But first, I'd better be certain just where she went! If I start out even a fraction of a degree off-course, I could search for centuries without finding a trace of her!
** Justified in ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'' when Post-Crisis Superman, his Golden Age counterpart and Superboy-Prime land on a planet right after flying through Krypton's sun. Said planet is Franchise/GreenLantern Mogo, who can move itself across space to catch them.
** All over the place in ''ComicBook/RedDaughterOfKrypton'', since Red Lanterns and Diasporans seem to take minutes to travel from planet to planet.
** Krypton itself was apparently so close to Earth during [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks the Golden Age]] that baby Kal-El could make the trip in a matter of months, possibly faster, in a rocket about the size of a coffin, with no mention whatsoever of FasterThanLightTravel. The concurrent [[Radio/TheAdventuresOfSuperman radio show]] took this to its logical conclusion by specifying that Krypton was actually in ''our own Solar System,'' orbiting the Sun [[CounterEarth exactly opposite the Earth.]] Later revisions have placed Krypton further away, often in other galaxies, with Kal-El's rocket explicitly having FTL ability.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* Justified in ''Fanfic/SonicAndSashTidesOfChaos'', as Eggman, by force, moved Avalice to the near vicinity of Mobius; to the point that, in chapter 3, according to Tails, their atmospheres overlap. Carol even questions why they aren't affected by gravity, to which Tails responds by stating that the planets still stand far enough away from each other.
* Subverted in ''Fanfic/KaraOfRokyn''. [[Franchise/GreenLantern Hal Jordan]]'s ring allows its bearer to travel faster-than-light, but even so Hal needs to go through wormholes to get anywhere in time.
* In ''Fanfic/HellsisterTrilogy'', Supergirl lures [[EnemyWithout Satan Girl]] into the antimatter universe, and the two of them come dangerously near from an antimatter star as flying and fighting across a solar system.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films — Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe1'': Gru's Moon mission takes only a couple of hours from takeoff to landing, despite involving an actual orbit of the Moon, a round trip that normally takes a week at best.
* ''WesternAnimation/KaenaTheProphecy'' features two planets, the smaller of which is about the size of the Earth, which are distant about 6000 miles tops. Useless to say those planets should by all means collide.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersTheMovie'', all planets in the universe seem to be only a few minutes away from each other ''at sublight speeds''.
* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}: The Legend Reborn'' offers a couple examples:
** Launched into space from Aqua Magna, the [[MaskOfPower Mask of Life]] shoots outside the galaxy, past many planets before landing on Bara Magna. Time isn't specified during this montage, but later stories revealed the mask's travel was fairly short, perhaps a few days or at most months. Thus, [[CanonDiscontinuity the movie scene was removed from canon]] -- in the canon story, Aqua Magna is Bara Magna's moon rather than an unrelated planet in another galaxy, so the short travel is a bit more plausible.
** Bara Magna's two moons as depicted in the film are still so close, visible as vast celestial objects in the sky with their craters in sharp focus, they should crash into the planet at any moment.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
* ''Film/SixtyFive'' - The ship is damaged out in space and conveniently immediately finds a planet to crash on.
* ''Film/{{Alien 3}}'', it's not known what course the Sulaco would have plotted to return to Earth, but it is very convenient that it should be passing Fury 161 when the titular monstrosity set off the fire alarm and jettisoned the survivors. Though plotting your course specifically so you exit hyperspace near a suitable emergency landing site whenever possible does seem prudent, so probably justified.
* The titular ship from ''Film/AlienCovenant'' gets damaged by stellar radiation while refuelling and finds a nearby planet that's more habitable than the one they were originally going to colonize.
* In ''Film/AnotherEarth'', a twin of Earth appears near Earth.
* In ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'', Titan's moon is so close to the planet that Thanos is able to rip off chunks of it that reach the surface in mere seconds. ''Maybe'' the moon is actually quite far away and the chunks were traveling at near-light speed...but in that case, the whole planet would have been atomized by the impact.
* In ''Film/GalaxyQuest'', the NSEA ''Protector'' is badly damaged, but no worries - there's a conveniently close planet! Considering it's a ''Franchise/StarTrek'' parody, definitely intentional.
-->'''Fred Kwan:''' Hey, Commander. Listen, we found some beryllium on a nearby planet, and we might be able to get there if we...'reconfigure the solar matrix in parallel for endothermic propulsion.' What'd'ya think?
* ''Film/{{Gravity}}'' is wonderful on a lot of things, but it has to bow to this trope for its heroine. The Space Shuttle is working on the Hubble Space Telescope not too far from the International Space Station (close enough to get there using only a jet backpack), which is "only 100 miles" from the Chinese Space Station.
** In reality, not only does the Hubble sit on an entirely different orbit than the ISS, but at a much, much higher altitude. To the point where even the space shuttle cannot visit both on the same mission. The last Hubble servicing mission, STS-125, involved having a second space shuttle fueled and on the pad in case a rescue was needed, because getting to the ISS from the Hubble was a complete impossibility.
* ''Film/TheMartian'' averts this trope; the distance between Mars and Earth only adds to the drama, and [[spoiler:the ''Hermes'' has to get a slingshot from Earth in order to rescue Watney.]]
* ''Film/PitchBlack'' starts with the Hunter-Gratzner being damaged by micrometeoroids and crashing on a nearby DeathWorld with breathable air.
* In ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes2001'', Mark Walberg travels from an unnamed ringed planet to Earth in what seems like a few minutes (there's [[NobodyPoops no toilet]] on that tiny spacecraft, so it can't have been very long). Even if the ringed planet was Saturn, that's still pretty danged close.
* In ''Film/Sharknado3OhHellNo'' (Weren't expecting to find ''that'' film here, were ya?) a character is left in orbit with a satellite and is last seen on the Moon, in a ShoutOut to ''Space Cowboys''.
* In ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'', the Winnebago comes out of Hyperspeed and promptly runs out of gas. Cue nearby desert planet to land on.
* In ''Film/SpaceCamp'' the space shuttle is unexpectedly launched outside of its launch window into an unplanned orbit - but they still manage to make it to the unoccupied space station for supplies. In RealLife, an orbital rendezvous has to be carefully planned before launch; unless you're very lucky (as in, winning-the-lottery lucky), altering an existing, arbitrary orbit to rendezvous with another orbiting object will require far more fuel than the Space Shuttle carries on board.
* At the end of ''Film/SpaceCowboys'', [[spoiler: the satellite's boosters fire on a trajectory that conveniently gets to the moon - and quickly enough that Hawk's air doesn't run out on the way - and then reverse-fire to soft-land Hawk on the Moon...]]
* ''Franchise/StarTrek''
** In ''Film/StarTrek2009'', the planet Delta Vega is an apparently Class M planet (terrestrial, breathable atmosphere, earthlike gravity) that's far enough away from Vulcan that Kirk is exiled there ''after'' the ''Enterprise'' has already sped away from the [[spoiler:ex-]]planet and Kirk and Spock have had a long fight about what to do next; it's far enough away from Vulcan not to be pulled into the black hole created by [[spoiler:the destruction of Vulcan]]; and yet it's close enough to Vulcan for Ambassador Spock to be able to see it unaided in the daytime sky, as big as the Moon from Earth, [[spoiler:as it implodes]]. ''Star Trek'' does at least have the excuse of the fact that the ''Enterprise'' has FTL travel, which would make a brief stop to drop off Kirk much more likely.
** In ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'', the confrontation between the ''Enterprise'' and a BigBad vessel is out near the moon ~250,000 miles out. In pretty much no time at all they are caught in Earth's gravity and end up in Earth's atmosphere. Now it is possible if the ''Enterprise'' was drifting fast it could get to Earth that quickly, [[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale but at that speed it would go through the (only ~200-mile-thick) atmosphere of Earth and smack into the surface in no time at all, barely having a chance to slow down in the atmosphere and think about their situation.]]
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** The ''Millennium Falcon'' is supposed to be the fastest ship in the galaxy... at only 1.5x the speed of light. And yet, somehow, slower ships routinely travel from one side of the galaxy to the other in a matter of hours. The "galaxy" in ''Star Wars'' is apparently no bigger than our own Solar system.[[note]]The line is "She'll make point five past lightspeed". We don't know what the scale is — it may be exponential and therefore a far greater speed than "1.5x the speed of light".[[/note]]
** In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', the ''Millennium Falcon'''s hyperdrive is out of commission, meaning they're limited to sublight speeds. No problem, though! Bespin happens to be nearby, apparently a light ''day'' away.[[note]]That would make it roughly 2.590×10^10 km or 1.609×10^10 mi away — they would essentially have to be in the Bespin System's outskirts already to get to Bespin that quickly.[[/note]]
** In ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'', Dexter Jettster notes that the planet Kamino is 12 parsecs from the Rishi Maze. 12 parsecs is under 40 light-years, utterly tiny in galactic terms (the Milky Way is 170,000 light-years in diameter). It gets worse later when Obi Wan specifies the locations of Kamino and the Rishi Maze on a map; scaling from this map renders the entire ''Star Wars'' galaxy as about 300 light-years in diameter.
** ''Film/TheForceAwakens'':
*** Pops up with the [[spoiler:superweapon. It is stated that the weapon fires into hyperspace — so it's okay that the weapon can fire so far away. It's also okay that Kylo Ren can watch the beam from his Star Destroyer — he was probably sent to observe anyway. It is a Conveniently Close Planet in the ContrivedCoincidence that the planet where Maz's bar is in full view of the destruction and the planet is even facing the correct way at the right time so it's visible high in the sky.]]
*** The ''Millennium Falcon'' is captured within a few small minutes of popping out of hyperdrive. Then that freighter itself is docked simultaneously by two other ships.
** ''Series/TheMandalorian'': the second episode of the second season has the titular character going from one inhabited planet to another at explicitly sublight speeds in at most days. This would mean that the planets were in the same star system... yet, for some reason, it was also explicitly stated that the planets were in different sectors (a "sector" in ''Star Wars'' [[SpaceSector usually encompasses multiple star systems]]).
** These scenes, among others, have given rise to a fan theory that ''Star Wars'' actually takes place in an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_galaxy#Ultra-compact_dwarfs ultra compact dwarf galaxy]].
* A Conveniently Close ''Chunk Of'' Planet in ''Film/SupermanTheMovie''. Doesn't take Lex Luthor long at all to score a chunk of Kryptonite, despite Krypton having been a planet around another star, which was in another ''galaxy'' according to Jor-El's narration during Kal's journey to Earth! KryptoniteIsEverywhere...
* In ''Film/{{Elysium}}'', the titular space station is always in the sky above Los Angeles when needed and clearly visible. Geosynchronous orbit is 35,786 kilometers above the Earth's surface, almost three times Earth's diameter, also only technically possible at the equator but the distance between that and L.A. is trivial compared to geosync orbit.
* Twice in ''Film/LostInSpace'':
** The Jupiter 2 is set off on its voyage, and then is knocked off course 16 hours after leaving Earth. They open up the windows and Oh, Crap! - we're heading into the Sun! Realistically, the Sun shouldn't be near their route just 16 hours into the trip.
** A window in time opens up to the Proteus, which is near a conveniently earth-like planet.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'': The seven planets in {{Heaven}} are so close Dante doesn't realize he's left the Sun and been flown to Mars until he sees the planet's blood red beneath a MindHive crucifix.
* ''Literature/TheMartian'': Completely and beautifully Averted (TruthInTelevision) in the case of Mars. Half of the drama of the novel centers around the fact that there aren't many resources that can get to Mark Watney before he runs out of food and supplies. [[spoiler:Even ''Hermes'', the spacecraft that just left Mars, can't just make a U-turn — it has to go all the way to Earth and back.]]
* ''Literature/{{Orthogonal}}'': Played cautiously straight and lampshaded in ''The Eternal Flame'', the second book in the trilogy. Considering that the entire book takes place on (and around) a GenerationShip in AnotherDimension whose dimension of time is [[ItMakesSenseInContext analogous to the main cast's perception of space]], the scientific importance of capturing a nearby Conveniently Close Asteroid is compounded by the knowledge that they will probably never come close enough to another one to get any use out of it. However, it's also partially subverted by the fact that it ''does'' take the crew of the ''Gnat'' several days to reach it.
* Unsurprisingly for an astrophysicist-turned-author, Alastair Reynold's ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries'' universe is an excellent counter-example and lampshade of the trope in several ways, to the point of being played as an anti-trope:
** Within systems, Interplanetary battles take place over the course of months or years as even laser beams and near-light speed projectiles take hours to travel between planets, and battles between spacecraft play out similar to submarine battles, in which a large part of the task is simply attempting to ''find'' ones opponent. It is common for actively warring factions to both have relatively peaceful thriving colonies in a single star system, while active fighting takes place completely out of sight in a million kilometer wide no-mans land between. Even within a well populated system some derelict ships simply drift in empty space for decades or centuries before being noticed.
** Interstellar travel takes place at just below the speed of light, so travel times between even neighboring star systems can be years or decades. This is mitigated for those inside the ship by the relativistic effects of near-light-speed travel, reducing the time they experience to months or years. Still, many passengers and less-essential crew elect to spend at least part of the journey in a state of suspended animation.
** The small crews required by the massive lighthugger class ships, collectively known as Ultras, generally consist of a [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits motley crew]] of [[{{Transhuman}} genetic chimaeras and cyborgs]] filling [[WhoWantsToLiveForever their vast amounts of free time]] with various long-term hobbies and projects, such as watching all films ever produced by humanity in chronological order, and then watching them again played backwards.
** Particularly long-distance journeys can become quite interesting when crew conflicts arise; mutinies and rogue crew members walling themselves off in a district of the ship for a few decades are not unheard of.
** On worlds with advanced lifespan-increasing technology, a fair number of your friends and family can be expected to still be alive upon your return, but one will still be gone for a span of years or decades-leaving plenty of time for a planetary civil war to supplant the government and seize your house for use as a museum to the revolution, your idiot nephew to bankrupt your thriving business empire, and/or a plague to appear and run its course. And this is after you arrived at your destination to discover that person you were trying to find moved to a new planet 10 years after you left.
* Creator/EEDocSmith got around this problem by making his ships very, VERY fast (ninety parsecs, or about 300 light years, per hour). He lampshades this trope on one occasion when the hero's ship (stolen from the enemy) has a dodgy FTL drive. His engineer urges him to find the nearest base capable of effecting repairs, since "...you don't want to be fifty years away from the nearest repair shop instead of fifty miles." The conveniently close planet turns out to be infamous for the lethality of its environment, which routinely kills entities from both sides.
* In ''Collective Hindsight'', a tale of the Literature/StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers, a runaway ship is on a collision course with a planet, despite how unlikely that would be in reality. The ship even passes through several star systems ''en route'', apparently threading the needle several times.
* In ''Literature/StarTrekVulcansSoul'', the first Watraii escape Romulus and Remus by diving down a wormhole. They emerge within range of a habitable planet, despite their ship's limited supplies.
* Surprisingly for ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'', averted in ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy''. When Luke's broken hyperdrive gives up during an escape, he's stranded in interstellar space. Of course, it ''still'' strands him conveniently near enough for Talon Karrde and Mara Jade to find him shortly thereafter, although this was explicitly supernatural (she could feel him with the Force and piloted straight to him).
* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': ''Literature/CiaphasCain'': Cain's ship is dragged out of the Warp too early and starts exploding. Since they're still on the fringes of the system, it takes him several very long weeks cramped up in the small survivor pod to get to the planet, where he then faces the comparatively easier issue of finding his way out of an ork-infested desert to civilization.
* ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds1898'' uses Mars as a thematic example. Wells' novel derives from (and deconstructs) earlier "invasion stories," in which Germany, France, etc. invaded Britain and were soundly defeated by the story's end. The idea of Mars invading Earth is a holdover from that (Earth = England; Mars = Europe).
* ''Literature/CreationManAndTheMessiah'': Abiriel's original home planet, seen from his position hovering above the newly created Earth. Since he states it "glows in red", we have to assume the planet is Mars, with all the astronomical speculations involved.
* ''Literature/FormicWars'': Why did the Formics destroy Weigh Station Four? It was on their trajectory to Earth. And they didnt even try to do it. It was simply a side effect of their periodic venting of gamma plasma.
* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's novel ''Literature/TheStarsLikeDust'' this is a plot point: In the backstory of the book, twenty years earlier the starship one character was a passenger on was damaged and went off course, and he found himself in the presence of a planet, and an inhabited one no less, which turned out to be "the Rebellion World" (the headquarters of a resistance movement against an interstellar empire). The protagonist lampshades how lucky this was. [[spoiler:After another character observes that the odds of randomly showing up within a billion miles of any star are 250 quadrillion to one against, the protagonist realizes that it ''couldn't'' have happened this way--unless the ship simply continued on its course and ended up in the system it was originally aimed at, meaning "the Rebellion World" is actually in the home system of the Love Interest, and is being HiddenInPlainSight.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'':
** Mostly averted, particularly in season 1, episode 2, "[[Recap/BattlestarGalactica2003S01E02Water Water]]".
--->'''Tigh:''' ''[to Roslin]'' The galaxy's a pretty barren and desolate place when you get right down to it.
** In season one episode "Act of Contrition", Starbuck is incredibly lucky to have been right next to a planet when she had to punch out... though that's convenient for the plot more than her. She would be been better off in her viper in space.
** Although they did encounter a lot of planets[[note]](Kobol and New Caprica, to name two)[[/note]] in the series, the "jump" method of travel obscured the distances; many of the hops were described as requiring several jumps.
** At one point, a trio of Basestars discovered [[spoiler:the blast of a nuclear warhead]] from a lightyear away - and warp over instantly to check it out.
** The planets Caprica and Gemenon are part of a double-planet system, orbiting ''extremely'' close to each other (about the distance from Earth to the Moon). This makes their mutual views of each other rather spectacular.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': On a whole, the show is able to avoid this trope thanks to having a ship which teleports and time-travels.
** In the serial [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan "The Daleks' Master Plan"]], the planet Desperus just happens to be sufficiently close to our heroes' flight from Kembel to Earth that they can be forced to land there.
** This trope is averted in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E7AmysChoice "Amy's Choice"]]. The TARDIS breaks down, and Rory asks why they can't just send a call for help; "Of course, because the universe is really just a small place, and somebody's sure to be near by," is the Doctor's snarky reply.
** Referenced at the end of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E2ThePiratePlanet "The Pirate Planet"]] when the Doctor suggests that Zanak's new location, where Calufrax used to be, would be "a good place in the universe to settle down. You've got reasonable sun, good neighbors and some quite convenient stars for when you get round to ordinary space travel. I think you're going to be all right here."
* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' takes place in multiple close-together planetary systems that, [[AllThereIntheManual according to the official materials]] orbit a massive red giant, with the star system totaling 5 stars, 8 gas giants, 67 terrestrial planets, and 148 moons spread across a diameter of about 500 astronomical units (a little under one percent of a light year). While the odds of so many stars and inhabitable bodies being this close together are extremely thin, the series still makes a big deal out of how far apart things are. In the episode "Out of Gas", the eponymous ship breaks down in the back of beyond, and the crew is well aware that they are out of range of anything habitable by shuttle, due to the lack of FasterThanLightTravel in the setting.
* ''Series/RedDwarf'': The titular mining ship explicitly doesn't have a faster-than-light engine, and yet it seems to have no trouble getting from one planetary system to another between episodes.
** Fanon explanations:
** After three million years of travel the ship is in a part of the galaxy where stars are much closer together.
** We know from the second episode of the first series that Red Dwarf has reached very high relativistic speed after accelerating for three million years. The crew could be exploiting relativistic effects to make travel between solar systems seem much shorter.
*** In that case how they successfully decelerate Starbug to land on any of those planets and then accelerate to get back to Red Dwarf is another issue...
** Red Dwarf has stasis booths and Starbug has deep sleep units, which are similar but don't stop time completely. The crew could simply be exploiting these to make multi-year trips take subjective minutes or hours.
* In ''Series/{{Space 1999}}'', the Moon is thrown out of the solar system on an uncontrolled trajectory. Nonetheless, it passes close to a different alien planet each week.
* ''Franchise/{{Stargate|Verse}}'':
** ''Series/StargateSG1'':
*** The human-built starship ''Prometheus'' breaks down on her maiden voyage. Fortunately for the crew, there is a planet within a few second hop of their overloaded hyperdrive. It's worth noting, however, that the voyage by sublight engine would have taken longer than the ship had resources left for.
*** In season 4, Teal'c and O'Neill are dragged away from earth, set to drift to Apophis's homeworld the slow way. Lucky thing Jupiter just happened to be on the way, making it both conveniently close and in TwoDSpace. However slightly mitigated in this case as the glider's navigational computer plausibly could have plotted a course out of the solar system that included at least one slingshot in order to reduce the fuel cost (like NASA and others do when launching probes to the outer planets and beyond).
*** In the season four finale, "[[Recap/StargateSG1S4E22Exodus Exodus]]", the [[spoiler:destruction of a sun]] speeds up their spacecraft, sending it four million light years, where it stops ''inside another galaxy''. The odds of taking a random trajectory out of your solar system and ending up in another solar system are already stated above as huge -- the odds of getting to another ''galaxy'' at a set distance on a random trajectory are just astronomical.
** In the season 4 opener of ''Series/StargateAtlantis'', their spacecraft drops out of hyperspace early, right in a solar system and on a course for an AsteroidThicket.
** ''Series/StargateUniverse'': Played with in the episode "[[Recap/StargateUniverseS1E5Light Light]]"; the ship runs out of fuel in the middle of deep space and all hope is thought to be lost, because how unlikely it is for them just to wander across a solar system with a habitable planet. But the (seemingly) intelligent ship they're on used the last of its resources to plot a desperate course to a system with three "habitable" (the most survivable one rarely gets above freezing) planets. One character even gives a monologue on [[LampshadeHanging just what the chances are]]. Then it's subverted at the end when a slingshot around another planet has altered their course, avoiding the planets and causing them to head straight towards the sun. [[spoiler: Unbeknownst to them at the time, the ship ''[[ExactlyWhatIAimedAt intended]]'' this to happen, as it refuels via diving into stars and scooping up stellar material]].
* All five ''Franchise/StarTrek'' series are guilty of this, though it's forgivable because, as stated here and at SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, a centuries-long journey between any two given inhabited places [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools doesn't make a very]] [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality interesting show]]. Anyway, many are the times something happens to a shuttlecraft. Not only is there almost always a planet nearby, it's almost always habitable enough for its occupants to survive for the time being.
** This is subverted in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' when Reed and Trip are stranded in a shuttle that's running out of energy (needed to regenerate oxygen) and lacks a working warp (FTL) engine. Trip suggests that they may encounter another spacecraft or a planet, to which Reed responds that at impulse, they won't be encountering any planets until months after their energy runs out, and that an encounter with another spacecraft is very unlikely given the sheer size of interstellar space and the fact that they don't have working sensors or communications equipment.
** In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', given the speeds at which starships are canonically stated to cruise, every planet in the galaxy is conveniently close. Kirk routinely flies the ''Enterprise'' away from the PlanetOfTheWeek at warp 1 (i.e. ''at,'' not faster than, the speed of light). Its maximum safe cruising speed is warp 6, which is either 216x the speed of light or 392x the speed of light depending on whom you talk to -- but even assuming the faster of these two speeds, it should still take four days ''just'' to get from the Solar system to Alpha Centauri (our closest neighbor in interstellar space). Getting from Earth to the edge of the (8000 light-year-wide) Federation should take a decade. Instead, Star Fleet routinely sends them on assignments to the Neutral Zone and back home to Earth again in a matter of weeks or even just a few days.
** Also, the number of times they will just randomly encounter another ship, some space dwelling creature, or space/time phenomena truly staggers the mind. When you take into account the number that actually have threatened the galaxy, one wonders what happens when ships not staffed by Starfleet's best and brightest encounter such things.
** At the end of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'''s "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E01ATimeToStand A Time to Stand]]", the crew are marooned without warp drive, 17 years from a Federation base. Nevertheless, in the next episode, "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E02RocksAndShoals Rock and Shoals]]", they manage at short notice to hide in a conveniently close [[SpaceClouds nebula]] where they find an uncharted planet.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pinball]]
* The backglass for ''Pinball/{{Orbitor 1}}'' has three large astronomical bodies impossibly close to each other.
* In ''Pinball/{{Firepower}}'', the alien warworld is so close to the Earth that humans can retaliate with their rocket-powered spaceships.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
* Done all the time in the marionette series ''Series/FireballXL5'' where in spite of the title spacecraft's inability to exceed the speed of light, it still managed to travel to a different planet (often in different star systems) nearly every episode.
* Also done in the earlier marionette series, ''Series/{{Space Patrol|UK}}'', although it's never completely clear whether or not their spaceship can travel at faster than light speeds.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games]]
* Averted in ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'': Interplanetary travel takes a long time as dropships can only accelerate a maximum of roughly three times Earth's gravity, and can only maintain that rate for a few days at most due to the health effects it has on the people inside the ship. Typically, traveling to the jump points in a solar system requires weeks of travel.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theme Parks]]
* At Ride/UniversalStudios:
** In ''Ride/ETAdventure'', it apparently only takes three or-so seconds of lightspeed to reach the Green Planet. Of course, the fact that it takes that ''long'' means you're not really at lightspeed; to a hypothetical particle traveling at the speed of light, it takes exactly zero time to go any distance, no matter how long.
** ''Ride/SpaceFantasyTheRide'' sends guests flying to planets like Saturn and Mercury and then back to Earth all within three minutes.
* Subverted in [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Epcot]]'s ''Mission: SPACE''. It is a five minute simulator ride that takes you to Mars, but this is justified when the ride puts you into a pretend "hyper-sleep".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ZigZagged in ''VideoGame/EVEOnline'', traveling from one planet, asteroid belt, or [[PortalNetwork Stargate]] to another generally takes only a couple minutes. At [[FasterThanLightTravel warp speed]].
* ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheLastHope'' involves the ship getting sucked into a [[UnrealisticBlackHole "black hole"]] and conventiently being spat out directly over [[spoiler: an alternate universe Earth]].
* Played a little crooked in ''VideoGame/SpacePiratesAndZombies'', where you travel from star-to-star and planet-to-planet in ''seconds.'' Granted, you use warp gates for both, but in planetary environments, you must first send out the warp gate to your destination before using it, which ''should'' take a while, but it doesn't. And it ''did'' take a while in the official story, so it's ''breaking its own rules.'' Then again, [[MST3KMantra it is just a game.]]
* Planets in ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'' are close enough to each other that it takes mere minutes to travel between them in a one man ship. Trade lanes do little more than speed up a ship like an interplanetary highway, and the ships still move slow enough that they can be easily interrupted by pirates while traveling through a debris field. Completely bizarrely, planets are often listed as only a few dozen kilometers away and the ships and cross a kilometer in a few seconds even at a slow speed. Unless the game operates on a completely different system of units, the physics of the Freelancer universe are completely whacked out.
* ''VideoGame/{{Freespace}}'' justifies it due to how FTL travel works in that series: FTL requires a gravity well, so you ''cannot'' jump into deep space. There has to be a star nearby (within roughly 100 AU's or so). Even interstellar jumps must begin and end in a star system. Intrasystem jumps take mere minutes at most, so no matter what, you're guaranteed to be minutes away from a planet[[note]]whether that planet has what you need or is habitable is another question entirely[[/note]]... assuming your FTL drive is working. If it isn't, you're kind of hosed.
* ''VideoGame/WingCommanderPrivateer'' features planets within a star system that never move, and are infrequently more than 100,000 meters from one another, and all are capable of supporting humans comfortably.
* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] [[RuleOfFunny for laughs]] in ''VideoGame/LegoCityUndercover''. Chase has an incredibly short trip to [[spoiler:the Moon]], which Professor Kowalsky explains as [[spoiler:the Moon]] actually being really small and very close to Earth. Apparently this is a secret that only scientists know.
* ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'' and its open-source remake ''VideoGame/{{Oolite}}'' sort of justify the trope by having your ship emerge from hyperspace at some sort of navigational beacon, and also by giving you a sort of hyperspace afterburner that propels your ship forward at much higher speeds than conventional drives should permit. The latter game does have a mod that makes the relative distances more realistic, but [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality it's pretty dull.]]
* ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig Zags]] with this idea:
** The Platform/PlayStation2 games depict all the worlds to be close enough to fly to in a spaceship at highway speeds. Either [[AlienSky all 20 planets should be visible from each other]], or Ratchet should die of old age before the end of the first game. Not helped is that the original game describes the local worlds as being part of a solar system, yet the Galaxy Map and every ''other'' depiction suggests it's actually a galaxy.
** This is deliberately invoked AND [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in [[VideoGame/RatchetAndClank the original game's]] plot: Chairman Drek wants [[spoiler:his new planet]] to be [[spoiler:exactly where Veldin is.]]
** The trope is [[AvertedTrope averted]] starting with the Platform/PlayStation3 titles, where Aphelion has to enter {{Hyperspace}} to get anywhere. The exception is ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClankFullFrontalAssault Full Frontal Assault]]'', where the worlds involved are indeed part of a solar system, but are still close enough to all be visibly the same size when departing for them.
** ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankIntoTheNexus'' ignores this entirely, as the game cuts to a LoadingScreen rather than depict how exactly Aphelion gets from planet to planet.
** The [[VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2016 game based on]] [[WesternAnimation/RatchetAndClank the movie]] is an interesting example: like ''Into the Nexus'', it uses loading screens instead of showing Ratchet's ship traveling in space. However the movie it's based on has no mention whatsoever of faster-than-light travel, playing the trope straight [[RunningGag like the game the movie's based on]].
* In ''Videogame/StarFox1'', the planet Titania is visible as a large sphere from the low orbit of the planet Corneria (Sector X).
* In ''{{Videogame/Anachronox}}'', the party gets launched in some random direction when an EarthShatteringKaboom knocks the Sender Spike around while it's trying to launch them to Anachronox. 17 days of drifting at sublight speeds with no engines later, they run into the planet of Democratus. At least it's basically acknowledged since it took over 2 weeks, but on cosmic terms that's still conveniently close.
* Averted in ''Videogame/KerbalSpaceProgram''. Even if [[SpaceCompression distances are smaller]] than what the equivalent ones would be in reality, it's still a significant task to get to the Mun (analogous to the Moon). Just getting the right trajectory takes precise calculations (helped greatly by the in-game manoeuvre nodes you can use to plot courses), and without the time warp function (speeding time up to 100,000 times faster than real time) the game wouldn't be playable.
* Luna=Luna from ''VideoGame/{{Meteos}}'' is a set of two moons, both of which are similar to Earth's moon, that are locked together in each other's orbits. The planet's profile image gives the sense that there isn't much distance separating the twin moons. The rocket-like natives even jump between both moons casually.
* ''VideoGame/NoMansSky'''s star systems have planets that are, with very few exceptions, incredibly close to one another. The resulting SceneryPorn and {{Alien Sk|y}}ies that result when someone is ''on'' those planets makes it {{acceptable|BreaksFromReality}}.
* After bailing from Earth in the prologue of ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}'', you will always, without exception, drift to a stop above a peaceful, inhabitable and unpopulated planet. Also, once your ship is repaired, you can travel to another planet or another ''system'' in under a minute. The FTL drives are just that good.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/SolarJetman'', since most of the time, the mothership is out of fuel when you reach the planet and you travel through wormholes to get there.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:WebComics]]
* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob'' there is no [=FTL=] travel -- but the local aliens can manage relativistic-speed travel without trouble, so adventures in and around our solar system are reasonable. It turns out that there is at least one inhabited planet in the Kuiper Belt (Butane, planet of [[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragons),]] deliberately hidden from us by [[AppliedPhlebotinum Phlebotinum.]] Elsewhere in the solar system, there is an undiscovered dwarf planet called Fleen, home to a colony of weird eyeball-headed quadrupeds. And not far outside our solar system is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_%28hypothetical_star%29 Nemesis Star,]] around which orbits the throneworld of the Nemesite Empire (Earth is legally part of this empire; the Nemesites just haven't bothered to tell us, considering us wildlife).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Avoided in the French [=MP3=] saga "Adoprixtoxis". After leaving the planet about to be destroyed on an escape pod, the characters ask the spacecraft computer to search for close worlds to land. The computer retrieve only 1 hit: the planet they just left
* The ''Website/SCPFoundation'' finds [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1958 SCP-1958]], a nasty aversion to this. A group of space-traveling beatniks (ItMakesSenseInContext) attempt to leave Earth for Alpha Centauri in a somehow space-worthy minibus, apparently believing that traveling at 80 mph the whole way would get you there in four weeks. One of them realize something's wrong when it takes them two months just to pass the moon. By the time they figure this out, it is too late for them to return to Earth.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:WesternAnimation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'': George and Elroy's cub scouts go to the moon via spaceship which is just like a bus trip.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfSuperman'' episode "Rain of Iron". A villain fires iron balls out of a cannon in a specific direction. They fly through space, hit an asteroid and bounce back to Earth at a specific location. Asteroids (a) aren't close enough to Earth for this to work and (b) travel in orbits around the Sun, so firing the balls in a specific direction would only work once.
* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': The plot of "Look Who's Purging Now" is kicked off by a large alien bug hitting the windshield of Rick's spacecraft, and Rick heading for a nearby planet to get more windshield wiper fluid.
* The ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' in general is a pretty big [[{{Pun}} (heh)]] offender, but ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' deserves a special mention: ''every'' time something goes wrong with a starship, it is able to land on a Conveniently Close Planet with breathable atmosphere in just a few minutes. "[[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS4E6NomadDroids Nomad Droids]]" is especially notable by having this happen twice in short succession -- Pattitite Pattuna just happens to be in the immediate vicinity of Adi Gallia's vessel when R2 and 3PO leave it, and when they take off from there Balnab is convenient conveniently close enough to reach with a small ship at sublight speeds.
* In the very first episode of the original ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' series the Autobots leave Cybertron in a spacecraft with the Decepticons in pursuit. The Autobots are boarded and as the battle rages the spaceship plunges inexplicably down to Earth without going through any hyperdrive or seemly traveling far at all.
* In ''WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse2013'' episode [[Recap/MickeyMouseS2E10SpaceWalkies "Space Walkies"]] Pluto ends up taking Mickey planet-hopping through the Solar System. And Mickey also gets visited by the (former) planet Pluto.
[[/folder]]

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