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What’s the difference between going to space and getting into orbit?
Humans have decided that the boundary between Earth and “outer space” happens at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles). This artificial boundary is called the Kármán line — it’s basically the height that the air is too thin for traditional fixed wing aircraft to fly. So, you need something like a rocket. If a human crosses this line, they instantly become an astronaut.
That’s exactly the plan for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity. It’s a rocket launched from a high altitude aircraft that takes humans into space. Richard Branson (billionare and founder of the Virgin Group) will be one of the mission specialists on a flight. So, there we have it. Billionares in space. Of course there is also Jeff Bezos (of Amazon) with a planned flight into space aboard the Blue Origin. If you include Elon Musk and SpaceX, there are three private companies that can put humans into space.
But there is something very different about SpaceX and its Dragon spacecraft — it puts humans into Low Earth Orbit. Blue Origin and VVS Unity, are suborbital. They just go into space. So, how much more difficult is it to get into orbit vs. space? Let’s look at this as a fun physics problem.
