Timeline for Would a point-to-point suborbital spaceflight have a "negative" perigee?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Apr 5, 2014 at 21:23 | comment | added | HopDavid | @MarkAdler, on thinking about it you're right. You'd want the ship to re-enter well before the perigee which is 360 degrees from launch. And a deceleration to lower perigee would have you re-entering the atmosphere 180 degrees from deceleration. I guess it's better to start this trip with a 7º flight path angle. | |
| Apr 5, 2014 at 18:47 | comment | added | Mark Adler | By the way, I +1'ed your answer for the Lambert solution and diagram. I did a numerical find minimum to get the answer. I like the geometry better. | |
| Apr 5, 2014 at 18:41 | comment | added | Mark Adler | It's also less safe. If you get into orbit, and your propulsion system fails, then you stay in orbit for a long time, you run out of oxygen, and everyone dies. | |
| Apr 5, 2014 at 18:35 | comment | added | Mark Adler | Why waste the additional fuel required to get into orbit, and then more fuel in the opposite direction to de-orbit? That makes little sense. In fact, I'm trying to figure out how the orbital thing would work at all. You would already be past Sydney by the time you needed to do your orbit circularization. So you would need to deorbit before even getting into orbit. If you wasted more fuel and did a brute force circularization shortly after taking off from London, then your most efficient deorbit burn would be half an orbit before the destination, which is on the other side of London! | |
| Apr 4, 2014 at 18:45 | vote | accept | AlanSE | ||
| Apr 4, 2014 at 18:19 | history | edited | HopDavid | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 4, 2014 at 18:06 | history | answered | HopDavid | CC BY-SA 3.0 |