5 ms·
> about a dozen trips per day per Starship Gagarin flew for around 108 minutes, so orbital velocity allows longest trip between two points on Earth in about 54
by avmich 7y ago
> about a dozen trips per day per Starship
Gagarin flew for around 108 minutes, so orbital velocity allows longest trip between two points on Earth in about 54 minutes. Shorter trips could be less, but liftoff-landing take roughly a fixed amount of time.
Twelve trips per day is 2 hours per trip. Taking 40 minutes of flight, there are 1 hour 20 minutes to get onboard, to get off board, to handle luggage (if needed?), to refuel and check systems. Wonder how does it look from airlines operation prospective.
- madaxe_again 7y agoThat stands pretty much parallel with aviation turnarounds - it’s purely logistics. If they don’t need to do any maintenance other than standardised checklists between flights, which is their ambition, there’s no fundamental reason they couldn’t do this.
- deadbunny 7y agoA (very) cursory search turned up this[1], which suggests they can turn around what appears to be a relatively short haul aircraft in ~50 mins arrival to departure. My uneducated guess would be that refueling of a starship alone is likely to take a long time if you're pumping in 1,200 tons of fuel. 1. https://your.heathrow.com/happens-aircraft-turn-around-british-airways/ https://your.heathrow.com/happens-aircraft-turn-around-briti...
- Consultant32452 7y agoDo all orbital flights take off in the same direction due to the rotation of the Earth?
- gpm 7y ago"Most" would be more accurate. Flights that want to orbit over the poles take off aiming perpendicular to the rotation instead. A few satellites have been launched backwards intentionally.
- isostatic 7y agoI think sun synchronous orbits are retrograde P2P sub orbital hops are either direction, 30-40 minutes, maybe 25 for shorter trips like London to New York.
- gpm 7y agoAgreed that P2P sub orbital hops are any direction. Low sun synchronous orbits are approximately the same as polar oribts, more perpendicular than retrograde. I'm not sure if we use high sun synchronous orbits for anything?
- isostatic 7y agoSun sync is approx 98.7 degrees at 800km - so slightly retrograde (prograde being 0-90) Majority of LEO sats are sun sync
- Tuna-Fish 7y agoAll satellites that want to efficiently get into somewhat equatorial orbit do. However, satellites heading to polar orbits of course launch north or south, and famously Israel launches things into retrograde orbits, due west, because of lack of suitable launching locations that head east. In the case of suborbital hops, it doesn't matter, because your target isn't orbital speed, and what you lose in free speed you gain back in your target coming towards you as you hop.