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Not so.  Getting out of the planes of planetary orbits is very easy,
especially considering that many spacecraft launched form earth have to
have a lot of course corrections to get into orbits coplanar with the
equator. Virtually all launches from Earth are initially into orbits
with some inclination.  Even the ones close to the equator in French
Guyana (?).

Small errors in thrust vectors can multiply to significant planetary
misses if not corrected.  I would not want to be out there without a
serious backup (celestial on-board).



John Kabel
London, Ontario

> I'm wondering whether navigating within our solar system really is as
> three-dimensional as we we assume it must be. When we are traveling from
> one planet to another we stay on the plane of planetary orbit. So what
> has to be plotted is the trajectory from one moving body to another,
> difficult enough but essentially an exercise in only two dimensions.

   

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