I actually am glad you brought this up. I know the line of thinking and it’s never made sense to me. The explanation is that physically you can use the rotational force of earths rotation - how does this negate the force of gravitty?
Pythagoras theorem says you should spend about 9511 m/s to do that, so launching from equator to polar orbit would have about 100 kg less payload than launching from pole - the difference is way lower than the error margin of this reasoning (and, most probably, you’re ok with orbit which is not polar, but close to polar).
The gain really isn’t massive one way or the other - logistics is the concern folks at Johnson Space center told me when I inquired about this. Basically a retrograde orbit is actually favorable for a lot of stationary orbit matters as it allows a swiping across the earths surface as well as the earth rotates and a north to south orbit takes place.
Once again it’s not impossible and those with undiluted resource capacity - why not?
Easiest to loan launch? Do you know anything about orbital mechanics? The poles are literally the most penalized launch points on the planet
I actually am glad you brought this up. I know the line of thinking and it’s never made sense to me. The explanation is that physically you can use the rotational force of earths rotation - how does this negate the force of gravitty?
The gain really isn’t massive one way or the other - logistics is the concern folks at Johnson Space center told me when I inquired about this. Basically a retrograde orbit is actually favorable for a lot of stationary orbit matters as it allows a swiping across the earths surface as well as the earth rotates and a north to south orbit takes place.
Once again it’s not impossible and those with undiluted resource capacity - why not?