Whyyyy peter?

[u/chirantaniga]

[u/Icy_Concern_9804]

tl;dr: for a rocket it is waaaay more important to go fast than to go high. and earth rotates very slowly, so going higher doesn't make you much faster.

[u/Maephia → u/Icy_Concern_9804]

So would it be theoretically easier to launch rockets at the equator since that's where the spin is the fastest?

[u/MKBRD → u/Maephia]

Don't they already do that?

Or near to the equator, at least.

[u/Enaciann → u/MKBRD]

They do!! At least SpaceX and the ESA does :) (both are near Cap Carnaveral !)

[u/brusk48 → u/Enaciann]

Baikonur is also pretty far south in terms of the USSR

[u/m50d → u/brusk48]

And Tanegashima is pretty far south in Japan.

[u/hwc → u/brusk48]

and there is a good reason Russia didn't move their launch facility back to Russia after the breakup of the USSR

[u/KebabGud → u/Enaciann]

ESA launches from French Guiana which has the launce site that sits closest to the equator.

SpaceX launch from Cape canaveral, Vandenberg and Brownsville, with the last one beeing the southernmost launchsite in the US

[u/RoIIUpLights → u/KebabGud]

Brownsville

You mean Starbase, TX? 🙄

[u/RT-LAMP → u/RoIIUpLights]

I mean it's literally not in Brownsville. The area was originally named Boca Chica. Saying they launch from Brownsville is like saying Launches from Kennedy are launching from Titusville.

[u/RoIIUpLights → u/RT-LAMP]

I know that's why I said it -- The eyeroll is the fact that Elon bought it and named it Starbase, not the fact that it exists

[u/RT-LAMP → u/RoIIUpLights]

No what I meant was to clarify that Brownsville still exists.

What got renamed to Starbase and incorporated as a city was Boca Chica which had been a smaller unincorporated community to the east of Brownsville.

[u/Noughmad → u/MKBRD]

Every country that launches to space does so from a site that is as close to the equator as their territory allows. But there are two reasons for it:

1. The slight boost you get from the earth spinning faster at the equator
2. The fact that every orbit goes over the equator, so you can launch into any orbit you want. Most useful orbits are the ones close to the equator (have a low inclination), because of the first reason. Far from the equator, you can only launch into an orbit that has an inclination equal to or higher than your lattitude. You technically can change orbits in-flight, but that is very expensive in terms of fuel.

This is mainly a problem for Russia. The ISS was already bult in a higher orbit to accommodate launching from Baikonur, but that is in Kazakhstan. Everything else is too far north to reach the ISS's orbit without major course corrections.