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Space Elevator

(neal.fun)
1773 points kaonwarb | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jvanderbot ◴[] No.45643427[source]
Very cool. One thing I wish was better shown: space is close, it's just hard to go up. Our liveable breathable atmosphere is razor thin compared to the size of earth.

In most cases, 100km is less than the distance between sizeable metropolitan areas. It's a day long bike ride. Air runs out less than a bus ride across town. A 15k jog/hike would put you in the stratosphere. Those jet aircraft that seem so high are closer than that. Closer than your friends house or the local stadium probably.

Look at a map or globe with that in mind and everything feels so thin!

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amflare ◴[] No.45646338[source]
For a standard globe that you might see in a classroom, the Earth's atmosphere is about as thick as the paper glued to the outside that displays the map.
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1. gertlex ◴[] No.45647881[source]
I wonder how standard this globe size is. My mental one is the one we had at home that was about 15" in diameter I'd guess.

Another comment talks about atmosphere being a 1 mm layer on a grapefruit... so definition of atmosphere extents might be different in these two anecdotes.

(edit: I submitted this comment two minutes after another comment did the math on the globe/paper layer version...)