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How Far Is "Space"

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bednobs | 21:39 Mon 28th Dec 2020 | ChatterBank
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and how long does it take to get there in a rocket?
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A question from your daughter? :-)
21:41 Mon 28th Dec 2020
A question from your daughter?

:-)
a 62 miles (100 kilometers)
b Depends how fast you are going
The atmosphere gets thinner and thinner as you rise. Eventually it is so thin that you could call it 'space'. But you would still be within the Earth's gravitational influence and there would still be a whiff or two of atmosphere. Of course, the atmosphere would thin out to virtually nothing , but the gravitational pull would remain; that's what keeps the moon going round the Earth instead of flying off at a tangent, and that's what keeps the Earth 'stuck' to the sun; and that's what keeps our solar system together and out galaxy together.
I can't tell you how long it takes to get to space, because space doesn't have a specific distance or boundary.
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/where-space

The Space Shuttle took about 8½ minutes to get into orbit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts121/launch/qa-leinbach.html

To reach the furthest visible stars, travelling at the same sorts of speeds that the manned moon missions did, would take over nine billion billion years.
Have you ever been?
It's an interesting question, officially it's 100km but really that's still in the atmosphere in my opinion. Personally I've always thought of space as the minimum height that a freefall orbit could be established, approx 160km, the ISS is at 408.

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