How to travel into space

The most important thing to know is you must accerlerate your vehicle to a speed of 7 miles per second (11.2km/sec) to break through the Earths gravity, this speed is your escape velocity.

The basic principles gaining rocket speeds is that a high-thrust vehicle will go no faster than the gases being exhausted from its base (the exhaust velocity) when its weight before take off is exactly 2.72 times its weight after all its fuel has been burned & depleted.

In simple terms if you & your life support capsule weigh 500 pounds (227kg) & your fuel cyclinder weighs 4,500 (2014kg)  to achieve velocity you need to carry a minimum of 8,500 pounds (3855kg) of fuel that will burn & exhaust at the needed speed of 7 miles per second.

In practice however not many vehicles can actually produce the needed exhaust velocity. Rocket engineers have overcome this problem by building rockets in stages. The first stage accelerates you to a speed considerably less than the escape velocity. Then one or two booster stages push the already accelerated rocket over the threshold.

But then comes the problems... after the easy bit of escaping the gravity of the Earth you must now escape that of the sun, which is not so easy. You can do this by heading for Jupiter & using the planets gravity & horizontal motion in orbit to accerlate your craft, therefore saving fuel. be warned though at the wrong trajectory, Jupiter can also decelerate your rocket, & if this is to happen you will definatly fall straight into the sun.