Why Can't We Just Go Straight Up Out of the Solar System?

Aug 15, 2026 Documentaries & Long Formats To Study Or Fall Asleep To
There is one direction almost nothing we have ever launched has gone: straight
up, perpendicular to the plane the planets orbit in. Not because there is
nothing there. Because it costs more energy than flying past Pluto.

This one we look at why the solar system is flat in the first place, what is
actually above and below that disc, and why the only route up runs through the
Sun rather than away from it.

This is the sequel to our video on What's directly above and below the Sun?
👉 • What's Directly Above And Below The Sun?

Ulysses launched in 1990 and is still the only probe ever built specifically to
leave the ecliptic plane. To do it, it had to fly out to Jupiter first and use
the planet's gravity to throw itself sideways out of the disc. It carried no
camera. In February 2025 Solar Orbiter tilted out of the plane and finally sent
back images of the Sun's poles, a view no spacecraft had ever recorded.

And there is still one photograph nobody has taken.


0:00 The Direction Harder Than Pluto
0:44 The Solar System Is a Flat Trap
1:15 The Spinning Record Problem
2:09 You Inherit Earth’s Hidden Speed
2:57 Why Going Up Becomes a Prison
3:41 The Farthest Place Was Easier
4:22 The Solar System’s “Up” Is a Lie
5:04 We Are Crooked in the Galaxy
5:46 The Whole System Is Flying Sideways
6:38 Space Has a Headwind
7:32 What Is Hiding Above the Disk?
7:59 The Dust That Blinds Our Telescopes
9:06 We Don’t Know the Shape of Our Own Bubble
10:06 The Photo We Still Don’t Have
11:12 To Go Up, You Must Dive Toward the Sun
12:32 The Mission of the Future That Never Came
13:06 The Only Probe That Escaped the Plane
13:52 Ulysses Got There Blind
14:54 The Spacecraft With the Eyes Was Canceled
15:32 Solar Orbiter Finally Looked Down
16:13 The First View of the Sun’s South Pole
16:54 It Still Never Turned Around
17:21 The One Photograph Still Missing

#insanecuriosity #abovethesun #belowthesun
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