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It's funny, we routinely travel thousands of miles across the earth on jets, yet going ten miles up is like going off the edge of the world.

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Jet's can get 10 miles up with minimal difficulty. The problem with getting into space is you need to get 10 miles then go another 200 miles up and accelerate to mach 22.

PS: The record for a jet is 23.4 miles up, here is a good visual scale for LEO. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Orbitalal... Note: The ISS still has to burn a fair amount of fuel to stay in orbit, but it's reasonable.

>The problem with getting into space is you need to get 10 miles then go another 200 miles up and accelerate to mach 22.

Can you expand on this? (Especially about the Mach 22)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=orbital+velocity+of+ISS...

Well, it literally is like going off the edge of the world ;)

Besides, going across the earth is just like walking around the block, just with a bigger radius.

s/radius/arc length/

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