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Comment by IIAOPSW | Hacker News Reader

UK is at a bad latitude for launching into orbit. Maybe Gibraltar?

Historically we used to launch from Woomera, before we shut everything down as part of the deal giving us access to US nuclear missile tech, something our politicians were happy to do as they thought that missiles was all rockets were really for anyway.

Which I think ranks as one of the stupidest decisions the UK has ever made.

The UK is at a bad latitude for launching into equatorial orbits, but a good latitude for launching into polar orbits.

Polar orbits, and their relatives, such as sun-synchronous orbits, are useful for various kinds of missions. For example, earth observation missions, because they overfly every point on Earth, and missions where you need a continuous view of the sun, for solar power or observation.

> UK is at a bad latitude for launching into orbit.

Why? What would happen if one tried?

The closer you are to the equator, the less lateral boosting you need to do because Earths spin helps you out. Less boost = less fuel.

That's why the US launches from Florida and the Soviets used to launch from Kazakhstan

It depends what type of orbit you want to enter. If you launch from a high latitude, and thrust directly East, then you end up with an orbit that has a declination that brings you back to that same latitude. You can increase the orbital declination by thrusting in a different direction than pure East, but it isn't possible to decrease the declination without effectively turning a corner over the equator. Turning a corner in orbit takes a huge amount of delta-v, making the rocket much bigger and more expensive. Therefore, the UK is not a sensible place to launch from if you want an equatorial orbit, but it's fine for a polar orbit.

The launch trajectory would take the rocket over France. I don't know if the UK government would consider that a plus or a minus. </humor>

Not much better. I believe a bunch (all?) of ESA launches go from French Guiana, so my guess is that might be the easiest place to go for orbital launches for a British company.

Acension Island, maybe St Helena, if the goal is to keep the launch pad in "British territory"

St Helena's existing airport is problematic due to wind shear and tailwinds - the existing route flying in there takes fewer passengers than the planes they use can normally take to compensate for the difficult conditions, and the geography of the island makes a larger runway problematic.

Ascension would be more likely, given that it has a runway intended as an emergency runway for the Shuttle, and it has a bunch of communications facilities (GCHQ, NASA, ESA, BBC Atlantic relay) as well as US and UK military facilities.

It used to be easier before Brexit. Nowadays the might bad well launch from Kazakhstan

Yep, completely impossible to have any diplomatic relations with any nations at all post-brexit. No possible way they'd like to get the tourism and investment that comes from space launches.

Lets not be silly, as much as brexit was foolish, the UK will still work in the ESA closely and will still be on very good terms with the vast majority of nations on the planet.

ESA isn't an EU agency, it's independent.

You could say the same about Euratom, but we're leaving that, because membership requires accepting the authority of the European Court of Justice in some areas. I wouldn't be surprised if there were minor entanglements that made continuing to play a major part in ESA difficult.

Euratom is in a very special situation there in that the treaties related to Euratom makes it subject to ECJ jurisdiction, which is one of the "red lines" of the UK government.

ESA is not in the same situation and e.g. Norway is a member of ESA and Canada sits on the ESA council under a Cooperation Agreement.

No, never. The runway's too short, the turning circle into the bay too right, the proximity and politics with their spanish neighbour too tricky.

Yeah but if you built this engine into a flying boat ...

Now you're thinking with portholes!

Not so bad for polar orbit. They are planning orbital launches from northern Norway and Sweden too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_Sweden for more information.

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