Humans have been flying to space since 1961 - that’s over 60 years now. These days, we even have tourist spaceflights. In sci-fi movies, people travel between planets, stars, and even galaxies.
But what is space from the perspective of aviation and astronautics? Technically, it starts somewhere between 100 and 122 kilometers above Earth’s surface. The range exists because different organizations define the boundary of space slightly differently.
Is 120 kilometers really that high? The average diameter of our planet is 12,742 kilometers - quite a lot. Below, I drew a simple picture to show what a spaceflight looks like to scale:
But what is space from the perspective of aviation and astronautics? Technically, it starts somewhere between 100 and 122 kilometers above Earth’s surface. The range exists because different organizations define the boundary of space slightly differently.
Is 120 kilometers really that high? The average diameter of our planet is 12,742 kilometers - quite a lot. Below, I drew a simple picture to show what a spaceflight looks like to scale:
See that tiny red dot? That’s our trip to "outer space". Not exactly impressive, right? For comparison, the International Space Station orbits at an altitude of about 418.2 km - on this scale, its point would only be a couple of pixels higher.
Human technology is still in its infancy. Legally, we can say we fly to space - but in reality, it looks more like what you see above. As for interplanetary travel, so far, only our robots have made the journey.
Human technology is still in its infancy. Legally, we can say we fly to space - but in reality, it looks more like what you see above. As for interplanetary travel, so far, only our robots have made the journey.