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I always forget how close space is. The ISS is only 400 km up, they actually only see 3% of the Earth's surface.
by kmm 7y ago
I always forget how close space is. The ISS is only 400 km up, they actually only see 3% of the Earth's surface.
- schoen 7y ago> Space is about 100 kilometers away. That's far away—I wouldn't want to climb a ladder to get there—but it isn't that far away. If you're in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
- Dylan16807 7y agoIt's important to note that "barely space, by consensus" and "able to orbit properly" are significantly different heights. 100km is where there's barely too little air to keep a plane up, and you have to be moving at orbital speeds. But you still need a lot of constant thrust to stay up there. Even at 200km, your average object will fall out of orbit in a day. At 300km you're reasonably stable, with about a month of orbit life if you don't boost. At 400km you find the ISS, where orbit life is somewhere around a year. There are a lot of milestones between 50km and 600km where you could pick any one and make a reasonable argument that it's the edge of space.