When wanting to exit our solar system, do we have to always go outward from the sun in the direction of the other planets? Or can we simply travel “north”?
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You can leave in any direction you want, but the suns gravity makes this very hard.
You need to speed up a lot to leave the solar system.
You can do a bit of trick by taking advantage of the fact that the earth is already orbiting the sun and using that speed as a base similar to the way you launch from near the equator when leaving earth to take advantage of the earths rotation.
If you do that you fly of in the plane that earth (and all the other planets and stuff) orbit the sun.
You can also take advantage of heavy objects like planets or the sun itself to fling yourself outwards by first letting yourself get pulled in by their gravity. To slingshot like this you need to get near them.
You totally don’t have to do any of that. It just saves fuel.
Of course saving fuel is a huge part of rocket science anyway so you do have to do it.
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