Why It's Impossible To Escape The Solar System

Point at the ceiling. There is nothing in the way — no wall, no barrier, just clean empty space above the flat disc every planet and every spacecraft has ever ridden in. So why has exactly one machine, in sixty-five years of spaceflight, ever been built to travel that way? A slow walk through the shape of the solar system, the speed you inherited without ever choosing it, and the single mission that had to ask Jupiter for a favour to climb ten degrees short of straight up. Get cozy and let this long, patient climb out of the plane of the solar system keep you company tonight. Subscribe to The Sleepy Solstice if you would rather know what the simple questions are actually hiding. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 01:19 The Direction You Have Never Questioned 10:37 The Shape Nobody Draws Correctly 20:03 The Memory of a Spinning Cloud 29:26 The Speed You Did Not Choose 39:40 The Arithmetic of Leaving 49:41 The One Mission That Tried 59:56 Why It Had to Go Out Before It Could Go Up 1:09:46 Buying Degrees on Instalment 1:19:33 The Five That Are Supposed to Be Leaving 1:29:54 Every Other up There Is 1:38:50 The Ones That Never Had to Pay 1:48:38 Nothing Has Left SOURCES NASA Science — Voyager: Frequently Asked Questions — https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voya... NASA Science — "7 Things to Know About Voyager" — https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voya... NASA Science — "10 Things: Going Interstellar" — https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system... NASA — "New Horizons Reaches a Rare Space Milestone" — https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nas... Johns Hopkins APL — "New Horizons Reaches a Rare Space Milestone" — https://www.jhuapl.edu/news/news-rele... Johns Hopkins APL — New Horizons: Fifty Facts — https://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/... NASA Technical Reports — "Solar System Escape Architecture for Revolutionary Science" — https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/2... ESA — Ulysses: Gravity Assist — https://sci.esa.int/web/ulysses/-/336... ESA — Ulysses: Orbit and Navigation — https://sci.esa.int/web/ulysses/-/310... ESA Cosmos — Ulysses: Jupiter Flyby — https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/ulysse... NASA Science — Ulysses mission — https://science.nasa.gov/mission/ulys... Astronomy & Astrophysics — "The solar system's invariable plane" — https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/ful... arXiv — "Calibration of the angular momenta of the minor planets in the solar system" (1909.11293) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.11293 arXiv — "Local Kinematics and the Local Standard of Rest" (0912.3693) — https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3693 arXiv — "Short-term Variations in the Galactic Environment of the Sun" (astro-ph/0601359) — https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601359 Science — "In Situ Observations of Interstellar Plasma with Voyager 1" — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s... NASA Science — Basics of Space Flight, Chapter 4: Trajectories — https://science.nasa.gov/learn/basics... — Disclaimer: This channel makes educational entertainment. All factual statements come from published research and recognized scientific organizations. Segments covering speculation, alternative theories, or the narrator's own interpretation are flagged as such within the video. The Sleepy Solstice does not report the news. Watch at your own discretion. #Voyager #EscapeVelocity