
Why NASA's Next Mars Lander Will Launch from California Instead of Florida - curtis
https://gizmodo.com/why-nasas-next-mars-lander-will-launch-from-california-1825695493
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KirinDave
As someone who worked directly on VAFB's spacerange modernization: they also
have slightly better equipment for launches than Kennedy.

VAFB's vertical wind profiler[1] is slightly more reliable, VAFB's disaster
planning is easier too.

If you're not launching something supermassive that should be as close to
where it was assembled, Kennedy is not your best call. That's why a lot of
small and on-the-dl loads tend to go there. Also: weather is consistently more
favorable in California that far south.

The less great part about moving more launches there is that the options for
public viewing are way worse.

[1]: Science trivia: it's awful old school to use weather balloons to measure
wind shear layers. Now they have radars so good they literally point them
straight up and let the wind shear bounce radars back down. It's _amazing_
that this works. It's so good that it can see birds!. Some operators claimed
to be able to discriminate breeds, although I have no idea how they'd validate
that.

~~~
tropo
Neither site is ideal, even restricting choices to the USA.

For polar orbit, obviously northern Alaska is proper. This minimizes the
amount of east-west movement that must be cancelled out.

For more typical orbits, being near the equator is better. There are many
choices, but Jarvis Island is probably the best. It has excellent weather and
is nearly on the equator. Other good choices are Palmyra Atoll and Baker
Island.

There is something to be said for altitude and dry air. Altitude is kind of
obvious, yet not. Although the height is not significant relative to orbit,
getting above a few miles of thick air is nice. Dry air is helpful with
cryogenics; remember that ice destroyed a space shuttle. Due to the high heat
inherent in solid-liquid transition of water, ice formation puts lots of heat
into the cryogenics. These considerations point toward a site near Tuscon or
on Hawaii's big island. The astronomers probably don't want to share either
spot, but hey, they might get space telescopes in exchange.

~~~
Avshalom
Not Tuscon but just west of White Sands Test Range (hence the Virgin Galactic
spaceport) having the advantage of White Sands' unlimited restricted airspace
to keep launches clean.

~~~
sehugg
Definitely to the west ... those winds are killer:
[https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id...](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=77775)

~~~
Avshalom
You launch eastwards anyway. With WSMTR to your east you get the advantage of
clean air to a degree that even Canaveral can't guarantee.

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snerbles
It's open ocean straight south of Vandenberg AFB all the way to Antarctica.
This geographic quirk makes it a safer location to put satellites into polar
orbit - Earth-observing sats launched out of Cape Canaveral have to take a
"dog-leg" course correction to avoid overflying populated areas to the south,
which uses up fuel and reduces available payload.

It's also the site for regular ICBM test launches, which are aimed southwest
at the Kwajalein Atoll. Missile launches aren't quite as dramatic as those
bound for orbit - a Minuteman III tends to be over the horizon in under a
minute.

~~~
jhayward
> Missile launches aren't quite as dramatic

The video from the last test of Trident D5, launched from offshore, was
unreal.

Someone happened to catch it with a good lens from a fairly dark hilltop, and
then spacecraft experts annotated the video to point out what was going on.

You could see the bus rotating and ejecting warheads (or decoys) all the way
through its inventory. Amazing.

I'm told by family that it's even more amazing to see the RVs re-entering
overhead if you are lucky enough to be downrange during a test.

~~~
iloveluce
Have a link to that video?

~~~
jhayward
I wasn't able to locate it in a few minutes of searching, sorry. Youtube's
search pollution problem for popular topics is really bad.

Edit: Here's an article[1] that seems to have the video embedded, with a link
to the annotation.

[1] [https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/video-analysis-of-
trident-...](https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/video-analysis-of-trident-
missile-test-over-california-1741723854)

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jccooper
ULA has one Delta II still unsold, which will now probably never fly. I should
think they would be happy to unload it. Must be a little more to the story. My
guess would be some mass growth in the mission that made them bump it up to an
Atlas V.

~~~
vertexFarm
Museum model perhaps?

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HorizonXP
TL;DR: They're launching from Vandenberg for cost-savings; they're using a
larger-than-usual rocket, so they have power to spare, so they can reduce the
load on Florida.

I haven't been keeping up with Mars missions lately, so this was the first
time I'd heard of the InSight mission. I was pleasantly surprised to see that
they are using the Mars Phoenix Lander as the base for this mission. I played
an extremely small role in that mission as a co-op student back in 2005. One
of my most memorable experiences, and I'm especially pleased to see it having
a continual impact all of these years later.

~~~
toomuchtodo
What a time to be alive that we’re shifting launch locations because we’re
launching so frequently. May the cadence continue!

~~~
ams6110
What's the carbon footprint of a rocket launch? The liquid H2/O2 fuel should
be neutral but what about solid or other propellant?

~~~
briandear
Why do we care? That’s like being concerned about wood being used to build
ships in the 15th century. The carbon footprint of all of the private jets
that flew to the Paris Climate talks dwarfs anything put out by a rocket, yet
were people interested in emissions suggesting WebEx instead?

~~~
dredmorbius
Wood consumption for shipbuilding, inclusive of charcoal for iron and brass
manufacture, was actually a consideerable concern at the time.

~~~
baud147258
It was a concern because of the availability of ressources, not because of
ecological concerns.

~~~
dredmorbius
Oddly, those two are not unrelated.

Also: it was, as you note, a concern. That being my point.

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furgooswft13
Unrelated I guess but I'm kinda tired of Yet Another Mars Lander. I realize we
have a lot of experience and success in the endeavor, and Mars is a
particularly amenable planet for them (minimal atmosphere, relatively close
etc.). But it's just boring at this point. Granted less boring than nothing at
all, but there are much more interesting destinations in the solar system;
Jupiter's moons and Venus to start.

I'm aware of the huge technical leap from landing on a dead planet to an
active one with a punishing atmosphere, much less dealing with Jupiter's
gravity well, but the potential discoveries (and imagery) attained from a
successful landing on these more challenging bodies would be worth 1000 more
Mars landers.

The Soviet's managed at least one Venus landing back in the 70's, imagine what
we could do today.

I do remember reading somewhere that Venus's atmosphere was so thick that a
lander could soft land on the planet with just parachutes, or minimal retros,
so maybe it's not all bad.

~~~
mturmon
If going to Mars leaves you flat (so jaded!), there is always Europa Clipper
([https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-
clipper/](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/)) with current
launch expected around 2024 (IIRC). It was only 2 years ago that Juno
([https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html))
arrived at Jupiter.

~~~
furgooswft13
Jaded...absolutely. I'm still waiting for my hoverboard. NASA likes to brand a
lot of their missions as "looking for evidence or possibility of
extraterrestrial life", and I certainly understand that, despite the science
being much more grounded and concrete. Still...if there is any hope of finding
that in our solar system, Europa, and other moons of Jupiter, have far greater
possibilities, relatively, than a well studied barren rock.

IMO, leave Mars to Musk and the like and start focusing NASA's resources and
extensive science probe/lander experience on more mysterious targets.

Or give NASA a lot more money for (not-manned) exploration, and do both. That
works too.

~~~
mturmon
It's hard to say where life (or past life) is most likely to be found, I
think. It's only after the most recent rover (Curiosity) arrived at Mars that
we discovered clear evidence of long-lived lakes and streams on ancient Mars,
and chemical species compatible with life
([http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6169/1242777.full](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6169/1242777.full)).

