And that's a benefit related to the one conferred by being close to the equator. That's right. The best place to launch is the spaceport that the European Space Agency has in French Guiana [five degrees north of the equator]. So why not launch from a U. I think NASA viewed those as too far removed. You mentioned Russia's launch site in Kazakhstan. How are they able to lift off from such a high latitude?
Well, they've got a big rocket. You have to have a larger booster that can muscle you into orbit. They didn't necessarily care perhaps in the same way about people that might be overflown, but that was a concern at some level.
And they wanted to keep it very, very secret. That launch site was virtually unknown until the U. If you want a more equatorial orbit, you want to be farther south. And the [Soviets] would have liked that, I think, but they just didn't have a place to launch from. So the space station is put in an orbit where Russia can reach it easily.
And in fact, I would contend that that was the fatal decision that made the space station not really useful to us to go to the moon. Why is the International Space Station a bad way station on the way to the moon? Because its orbit is highly inclined [tilted with respect to the equator]. Should something go wrong, rocket engineers also wanted to be sure that rockets would land benignly, preferably in an ocean.
It was selected for two reasons: the fact that it is relatively near to the equator compared with other U. An East Coast location was desirable because any rockets leaving Earth's surface and traveling eastward get a boost from the Earth's west-to-east spin. A West Coast location would either send rockets over populated areas or have to contend with launching against the direction of the spin.
And, the rate of spin is at its highest on the equator and slowest at the poles, so the Cape's southern location also gave it a boost, Starr said. Cape Canaveral is about 28 degrees latitude above the equator. Meanwhile, the rocket's reusable lower stage, having detached from the rest of the spacecraft, flew itself back to Earth and successfully touched down on a landing platform floating on a drone vessel in the Atlantic.
As the Dragon separated from the upper rocket stage moments later, a launch engineer on the ground radioed to the crew: "Welcome to orbit. Hope you enjoyed the ride. Dragon will take you from here. Safe travels. The three American astronauts and their European Space Agency crewmate were due to arrive at the space station, orbiting some miles km above the Earth, on Thursday evening following a flight of about 22 hours.
A countdown and those words signal the next round of heavy equipment defying gravity with two minutes of hold-your-breath, fingers crossed transitions where electric and mechanical engineering prove a successful launch. Rocket and Space Shuttle launches have been a common occurrence for over 60 years. Bumper rockets were first tested in New Mexico, but after six test launches, it was decided that a new location was needed. And so the hunt began to find a more suitable place to develop the ever-growing missile launch program.
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station CCAFS , a military base utilized by both the Navy and Airforce for defense and strategic operations has played a key role in the development of the space program and missile testing in the United States. When this area was being looked at as a potential site, the fact that there was already an infrastructure in place, roads specifically, made Cape Canaveral an easy choice to move the launch program to.
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