🚀 go-pugleaf

The following is quoted from a rather timely article
in the February, 1988 >Space World< issue, entitled
"The Pros and Cons of Launch Sites," by Lawrence Suid.
The context is a discussion of the choice of Cape Canveral
as the launch site for the Apollo moon program:
"...the decision to locate the Apollo launch facilities
at the Cape came only after deliberation and debate...
Christmas Island in the central Pacific was a contender
because of its location near the equator...launching...
from an equatorial location could take advantage of the Earth's
rotational velocity...Most important, launching from an
equatorial base avoided the costly dogleg technique, a
prerequisite for placing rockets into an equatorial orbit
from a site such as Cape Canaveral...There were also
disadvantages in locating Apollo facilities outside the
United States. Construction costs would be about 100%
higher. NASA would have logistics problems and face the
uncertainties of setting up an American base on foreign
soil."

It seems to me that most near-equatorial countries
are either politically unstable, or lack much industrial
infrastructure, or both. Lack of infrastructure will
increase the costs of both the initial construction
of facilities (launch, assembly and checkout, employees'
housing, etc.), and of operations (shipping satellites,
boosters, rocket fuel, etc., from several thousand miles
away). This additional cost need not force the decision
against an equatorial launch site, of course; the French
are doing just fine in South America. However, they
undoubtedly had some infrastructure in place before Ariane
came along.


     Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute
     {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!kcarroll
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     Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute
     {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!kcarroll