[philman_36]

No...no...there's no firmament.
Star Trek-like invisible shield found thousands of miles above EarthThe team originally thought the highly charged electrons, which are looping around Earth at more than 100,000 miles per second, would slowly drift downward into the upper atmosphere and gradually be wiped out by interactions with air molecules. But the impenetrable barrier seen by the twin Van Allen belt spacecraft stops the electrons before they get that far, said Baker.

Scientists Discover Star Trek Style Invisible "Shield" Thousands Of Miles Above Earth

“It’s almost like these electrons are running into a glass wall in space,” lead author Professor Daniel Baker said in a news-release. “Somewhat like the shields created by force fields on Star Trek that were used to repel alien weapons, we are seeing an invisible shield blocking these electrons. It’s an extremely puzzling phenomenon.”
An impenetrable barrier to ultrarelativistic electrons in the Van Allen radiation beltsRather, we suggest that exceptionally slow natural inward radial diffusion combined with weak, but persistent, wave–particle pitch angle scattering deep inside the Earth’s plasmasphere can combine to create an almost impenetrable barrier through which the most energetic Van Allen belt electrons cannot migrate.

Oh, wait...

[philman_36]

Incoming objects moving more than 100,000 miles per second are stopped and yet we're supposed to have broken through this barrier on an outbound journey?

If nothing else makes you go...Hmmmmm...that should.

NASA Can't Go Beyond Low Earth Orbit | Flat Earth Firmament