File:Earth with Moon ScaledTo Basketball-Rockets full-court.png

English: If the Moon is scaled down to the size of an NBA basketball, 9.45 inches in diameter (24 cm) and the Earth is placed on an NBA court under one hoop, then the Earth would be 2 feet 10.65 inches (88 cm) in diameter, which is just a few centimeters larger than an extra large Pilates exercise ball of 85 cm diameter (compare to the hoop inner diameter of 18 inches, or 45.7 cm). The Moon would be found near the hoop on the other side of the court. Because of the Moon's elliptical orbit, it can be as close as 1 foot 5.9 inches (45.5 cm) inside of the hoop center at its perigee out to as far as 3 feet (93 cm) past the baseline at its apogee. The Earth-Moon average distance of 238,900 miles (384,400 km) scales down to 87 feet 1.5 inches (26.55 m) which is nearly 7 feet short of the court's full 94 feet length. Shrinking the Moon down to the size of a basketball results in a scale factor of roughly 14.5 million to 1.

Two circles drawn around the Earth represent the orbit of a GPS satellite (in blue) and a geostationary orbit (in black). If the court is taken to be the ecliptic plane in which the Earth orbits around the Sun, the Earth's rotational axis is tilted at roughly 23.4°. The geostationary orbit represented by the black circle would match this tilt so that it is in the same plane as the equator. The blue GPS orbits are at an inclination of approximately 55° relative to the equator and extend nearly out to the baseline.

The green figure-8 is a rough representation of the trajectory flown by Apollo lunar missions from 1968-1972. From a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) "parking" lap, the Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burn is fired sending the spacecraft out on a Trans-Lunar Coast. Near the vicinity of the opposite free-throw line when the spacecraft gets within 15 feet (4.566 m) from the Moon, it is said to have entered the lunar "Sphere of Influence" (SOI). This "sphere" (although not precisely a sphere) marks the boundary where the pull of the Moon's gravity becomes stronger than that of the Earth. It was soon after crossing into this zone that Apollo 13 experienced its O2 tank rupture emergency in 1970.

It is important to note that lunar trajectories do not happen in the plane of the court because the Moon does not orbit in the ecliptic plane, but is instead inclined by 5.145°. This results in a maximum height out of the plane by 8 feet 2.88 inches (2.511 m). This can be reached by 7 foot 2 inch tall Kareem Abdul-Jabbar while holding the Moon-sized basketball 1 foot over his head. (He was drafted into the NBA, first overall pick, three months before the Apollo 11 mission.)

The large arrow at the bottom right indicates that the Sun, at this scale, would be found nearly 6 and 1/2 miles away (10.33 km). It's diameter (96.2 m) would be about the length of a football field. (Note: This phasing is not accurate for an Apollo mission, as the Sun behind the Moon would be a New Moon, and the astronauts would be landing in the dark of lunar night.) The small arrow at the top left shows that the planet Mars, at this scale, gets no closer to the Earth than 2.34 miles (3.77 km). The farthest that human beings have ever traveled is represented by the full length of this court and took a three day trip to arrive at the Moon. Plans to send astronauts to Mars requires a transfer orbit that reaches Mars when it is at the other side of the Sun, so this would be significantly farther than twice the distance to the Sun plus the minimum distance to Mars, which is well over 15 miles (> 24 km) away at this scale. Few people who talk about sending people to Mars fully grasp this fact that the distance alone is 3 orders of magnitude father than the farthest that humans have traveled so far. This Mars trajectory is called a Hohmann transfer, and is a minimization of thrust required to get there (which minimizes fuel, rocket size and therefore cost). A simplistic way to understand why it is preferable to take this min-energy path instead of the shortest line between the Earth and Mars is by analogy to climbing out of a canyon. It takes far less effort to walk up gently rising switchbacks than it would take to attempt to climb straight up and out of the canyon. (Both the canyon climb and the interplanetary trajectory are examples of raising one's energy state in the presence of a gravity well field.)

A total of six Wikicommons images were combined to create this image, which was made using MS-Paint and GIMP image editing software.