3 ms·
How tight is the launch window for rendezvousing with something in orbit? A second? A few milliseconds?
by monochromatic 10y ago
How tight is the launch window for rendezvousing with something in orbit? A second? A few milliseconds?
- maxerickson 10y agoThis seems informative: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3vcoxh/why_spacex_has_an_instantaneous_launch_window_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3vcoxh/why_spacex_h... Not super tight, but they don't have a lot of leeway either.
- sitharus 10y agoDepends on the orbit and the fuel available anything from seconds to hours. A fully loaded Dragon will have an "instantaneous" window, but with spare fuel for corrections during launch it can be an hour or more.
- JshWright 10y agoIt depends on the capabilities of the launcher. For Falcon 9 it's several minutes, but since that's shorter than the amount of time it takes to 'recycle' from an abort (even if the issue can be fixed in zero time), it's effectively an instantaneous window.