If you could drive a car straight up into the sky at highway speed, you would reach the edge of outer space in under an hour — the only thing protecting every living creature on Earth from the lethal

Get in a car. Point it at the sky. Drive at the speed limit. You would reach the official boundary of outer space — the line at which Earth’s atmosphere thins to the point where conventional aircraft can no longer generate enough lift to fly, and at which orbital dynamics take over from aerodynamic ones […]