5 ms·
Neither site is ideal, even restricting choices to the USA. For polar orbit, obviously northern Alaska is proper. This minimizes the amount of east-west moveme
by tropo 9y ago
Neither site is ideal, even restricting choices to the USA.
For polar orbit, obviously northern Alaska is proper. This minimizes the amount of east-west movement that must be cancelled out.
For more typical orbits, being near the equator is better. There are many choices, but Jarvis Island is probably the best. It has excellent weather and is nearly on the equator. Other good choices are Palmyra Atoll and Baker Island.
There is something to be said for altitude and dry air. Altitude is kind of obvious, yet not. Although the height is not significant relative to orbit, getting above a few miles of thick air is nice. Dry air is helpful with cryogenics; remember that ice destroyed a space shuttle. Due to the high heat inherent in solid-liquid transition of water, ice formation puts lots of heat into the cryogenics. These considerations point toward a site near Tuscon or on Hawaii's big island. The astronomers probably don't want to share either spot, but hey, they might get space telescopes in exchange.
- Avshalom 9y agoNot Tuscon but just west of White Sands Test Range (hence the Virgin Galactic spaceport) having the advantage of White Sands' unlimited restricted airspace to keep launches clean.
- sehugg 9y agoDefinitely to the west ... those winds are killer: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=77775 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id...
- Avshalom 9y agoYou launch eastwards anyway. With WSMTR to your east you get the advantage of clean air to a degree that even Canaveral can't guarantee.
- MPSimmons 9y agoThey actually do have to clear all launches with White Sands, though. I mean... not that they have many launches from there (yet?)
- lutorm 9y agoShipping rockets to tropical islands is brutal from a corrosion perspective, though. If I recall correctly, that was the root cause of SpaceX's failure of the first Falcon 1.
- KirinDave 9y agoInteresting you say that. The engineers I talked to always told me that they preferred lower (sea level) launches because of disaster recovery (lower winds and lower potential contamination area) and because stats suggested lower launches gave more stability at the start of the flight when the rocket is typically most unstable. I am _not_ rocket engineer though. This is simply what I remember experts telling me >10 years ago. :)