Rockets Need Special Places to Launch, Here’s Where

Many of the U.S.'s most iconic rocket launches have taken place in a region on Florida's coast. But what makes this area such a great place for lift off?
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Cape Canaveral sits off the east coast of Florida, roughly 3,200 kilometers from the Equator. This location is the perfect staging ground for rocket launches, as it provides a speed boost and energy savings for our launches. You see, as the Earth rotates it naturally generates kinetic energy, rotating slowest at the poles and fastest near the equator. This means that during launch, a rocket gets a generous speed boost assisted by the natural rotation of the planet.

But one of the most consistent hurdles we face when sending rockets to space is actually reaching a high enough speed to enter orbit…over 40,000 kilometers per hour, specifically. We call this speed the escape velocity. Basically, it takes A LOT of energy to propel a rocket with enough force to overcome Earth’s gravitational pull. But what’s really interesting is that the energy required to achieve escape velocity changes based on where you are on Earth.

So imagine you and a friend are on a Merry-go-round—one of you is near its center and the other is at its edge. You both are traveling around the same point at the same acceleration, but the person at the merry-go-round’s edge is traveling at a higher speed to make up for having to travel the additional distance around its perimeter. The center point in this example are Earth’s poles, the perimeter is the equator, and the distance between these two points is the latitude. So depending on how close a launch is to the equator, the greater the speed boost it’ll get from Earth's natural rotation.

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Read More:
Will an Island in Indonesia Become a New Frontier in the Space Race?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/business/indonesia-spaceport-elon-musk.html
The Indonesian government claims to have acquired 250 acres of the clan’s ancestral land decades ago and has planned since 2017 to build a small-scale spaceport there to launch rockets. Clan leaders say the project would force them from their homes.

Voters reject spaceport plan long pursued by Georgia county
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085293095/georgia-spaceport-goes-to-a-vote-as-proponents-try-to-invalidate-the-election
A Georgia county's plan to build a rocket launch pad for sending satellites into space got rejected by voters on Tuesday in a referendum forced by opponents who feared the project poses safety and environmental risks that outweigh any economic benefits.

Spaceport construction set to begin on UK's northernmost island
https://www.space.com/saxavord-scotland-spaceport-construction-begins
Construction of the SaxaVord spaceport on the Shetland Islands in the north of Scotland is set to begin soon with the aim of hosting the first British vertical orbital launch later this year.

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