Why don't space exploration vehicles fly up or down relative to the plane of our solar system?
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Says who? There was a Nasa mission a few years ago to study the poles of the sun.
Most of the interesting things in the solar system are in the plane, though.
Err, because there is nothing there for millions of light years!
Can you wait that long for the data to come back?
The problem is there's so much empty space in the universe that there isn't really anything interesting right outside our solar system, besides at the fringes in the plane because that's where leftover matter would end up.
Scientists want information about the other planets in the solar system. the only way to do this is to fly along the solar plane where are the planets are.
Besides going up relative to the plane would not make you leave the system faster, there would just be a long period of Nothing while we wait for the vessel to get to the edge.
My friend once asked me the same question. My answer was there is'nt much out there for miles and miles.
So far we haven't launched a single space probe with the purpose of exploring beyond our solar system. Almost all of them have been tasked with studying the other planets and the sun, thus launches along the plane of the solar system makes sense.
Four space craft (..Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2..) have left our solar system, but their initial missions were to explore the planets.
You are thinking in two-dimensional terms here, when you look at a space craft (for example Voyager 1), you see space from its perspective, and it only seems like it is going horizontally.
You need to think more in terms of three-dimensions, that even if a space craft did go vertically through the solar system, there wouldn't be enough fuel for it to even get half-way through its mission.
Space craft can use the gravitational tides of the planets to sling-shot them further into space that will save on fuel.
Not all of the planets are in perfect alignment with the Earth (one straight line) think it like a Connect-The-Dots puzzle, each planet has a unique orbit around the sun, some planets have orbits that look more like eggs, some cylindical, others cicular.
The Oort Cloud (the boundary that marks the edge of our system with out space) is not in one specific spot, it encomapsses the entire system, like the fibres coat the skin of tennis ball with the air trapped inside.
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