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Uh, hello? Just by looking at the screenshot - it looks to me that the moon is already in view. Is it not? Are you saying, from that picture, you imagine the moon is not in view from north america?

Suppose you don't think it is quite in view from the west coast of north america. You should look again, now and tell me if you were sitting on the moon, that you would be unable to see north america.

Here is a photo. Imagine the swirl location is roughly where the moon is.

https://pic8.co/sh/dS8PMW.jpg (open in new tab)


Read: as you can clearly see, both Australia and North America can be seen from the moon if it was hundreds of thousands of miles away from the planet.

But if you insist it is not quite in view of NA then we can still discuss that.

So, Nigger Degree Tyson is holding what looks like a 20 inch beach ball earth. Thats 500 mm long. The distance the go fast rocket travels is 75 miles. That's about 1/100th of the diameter of the planet. So 5 mm is basically an accurate envision for rocketing to "space." Perhaps he was talking about weather balloon height or something else.

Here's what you do:

Hold your left hand into a fist and place it in front of your eye about an inch away from your face.

Notice how much head movement it'd require to see the mole on the back of your fist, only moving your head (without moving your fist.) You would practically have to torque your head all the way around.
In other words you would have to "rocket" very high and even around the "planet" just to see the mole on the other side of it.

Now, suppose we wanted to see the tip of your right pointer finger. With your right arm, extend your finger out directly behind your closed fist but as far as your arm can reach keeping your left fist in the same place as before. So the fist completely obscures the view of your extended pointer finger. Close one eye.

Now, notice how much less head movement is required to see the tip of your pointer finger from behind your fist. In this scenario you would have to "rocket" a great deal of distance but not nearly as much as before with the mole. Maybe about 0.5" - 1" of head movement required here.

Finally, imagine a small mosquito lands on the wall across the room. While still holding your left hand into a fist an inch away from your eye. Position the imaginary mosquito so it is obscured behind your first, but favored toward the left side (as exhibited in screenshot, nearly peeking out from horizon.)

Seeing the mosquito requires a head movement of only a few millimeters to gain full view of it.

BTW if you are having difficulty deciphering how far your eye has moved to "see" the mosquito from behind your fist sized planet, it helps to pay attention to how far your nose travels as your head ever-so-slightly peeks around your fist.

From this experiment we observe the further an object is, the easier it is to bring it into a field of view from an obstruction. Every mm makes a very radical difference.