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You make valid objections to my objections of the simplified model of the g'parent poster. We were indeed only talking about putting something into orbit, not p
by dalke 11y ago
You make valid objections to my objections of the simplified model of the g'parent poster. We were indeed only talking about putting something into orbit, not putting something into useful orbit.
That said, I pointed out that Israel has geographical and geopolitical difficulties, which force them to launch to the west rather than east. Would it be harder for Israel to place something in GEO from Palmachim, which must first travel west over the Mediterranean before going east, or for Sweden to place something in GEO from Esrange, which requires a plane change?
(I'm trying to be somewhat realistic. I think Esrange is the most poleward launch facility, though they only do suborbital. Otherwise, consider a possible Norwegian launch facility on Svalbard.)
- mikeash 11y agoThinking about it more, once you get to the point where a bi-elliptic transfer is the most efficient way to do a plane change, the launch site doesn't make a lot of difference. That's basically Baikonur and up, counting Israel as effectively having a ~150-degree latitude. Anyway, the penalties can be pretty big, but they're often tolerable. For GEO you want minimal latitude, for others latitude may not matter at all. But other considerations (like Israel having land to the east) can easily override the penalties. For the particular example discussed here, if you could ignore the problems with squishing people and buildings downrange, Colorado would make a decent launch site. KSC's latitude is better, but it wouldn't be a huge deal. You'd even get at least a little bit of it back because you'd be launching from higher altitude.