Why do rockets travel horizontally in space to other planets instead of travelling vertically? Is there nothing above and below the planets?

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Why do rockets travel horizontally in space to other planets instead of travelling vertically? Is there nothing above and below the planets?

In: Physics

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I don’t understand your question at all. In the vastness of space, there is no “horizontal” and no “vertical,” except in direct relation to some other object/entity. Those a spaceship traveling to another planet would never be traveling horizontally or vertically.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They go to the side so that they get into orbit. If it went directly up, it would just fall back down. The satelites we send up aren’t going ‘to the side’ and away from the earth, they are constantly going around it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I curious too. The solar system is measured latterly. What about above the sun or below it? Is the universe flat??

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

What happens is, because lets say you want to go to Jupiter, because its a far distance away. You cant bring all the fuel you need to get to Jupiter in a straight line. That would need a massive rocket.

So instead what you do is, you wait until Mars comes along our path.

Because Mars is so much bigger than the rocket. You can use Mars to catapult you towards Jupiter like a slingshot.

The problem is. Over the course of billions of years. Our solar system was a mess. Planets going in all kinds of directions and moving all over the place.

We are the remaining survivors of that planet war that made it out alive of all the collisions that took place during that time, and the vertical disk spinning in the same direction was the winner.