The Belfast Telegraph reports on the Spaceflight Bill, proposed legislation that is to be put before Parliament this week.
The government issued a statement on the proposed legislation. According to the statement, Britain could build space-ports on its own territory "by 2020."
Whether the launch facilities would be on the home islands, in the British Overseas Territories (which include islands in the Caribbean such as Montserrat), or both was unclear to the submitter.
[What, if any, advantages are there for launching from Britain vs a location in the Caribbean? -Ed.]
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Space Launches from British Territory to be Proposed
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(Score: 1) by C R Johnson on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:53AM
The advantage would be to simpler and lower cost of logistics.
The downside is that it takes a lot more energy to get to orbit then if you launch close to the equator.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:45AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by massa on Tuesday February 21 2017, @11:56AM
s/then/than/
(Score: 5, Informative) by subs on Tuesday February 21 2017, @12:13PM
In order to get into orbit, you don't need to get a set distance from the Earth's center. You need to simply clear the atmosphere (which is approximately equally thick everywhere) and most importantly, you need a heck of a lot of lateral speed - that's the real cost driver. You need to achieve about 8000 m/s of sideways velocity to remain in orbit around Earth. The Earth rotates at approximately 500 m/s at the equator. Any reduction in the total required speed, even by a little bit, translates into huge savings in terms of propellant mass at launch, because the equation that drives the propellant requirements is exponential. The less propellant you need, the more payload you can take and the cheaper the launch (per unit mass) will be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:34PM
Excellent explanation. And if someone's still not clear on this, get Kerbal Space Program :)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:10PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:14PM
Launching from the earth is essentially launching from a moving platform (according to the frame of reference from orbit). The earth at the equator is moving at ~500meters per second west to east, most launches are in this same direction to harness that velocity. The closer to the poles that you get the lower that west to east speed is because you get closer to the Earth's center of rotation. As a visual just imaging a spinning record, the closer to the edge that you get the longer the distance traveled per revolution, hence it travels at a faster speed even though it's the same rpm. (This is also the way gears work).
Now this is all for equatorial launches (travelling around the world west to east or geostationary) usually used for communication satellites. If they're going to be launching spy satellites (which would be my guess because there's no other reason to want complete control of the launch facility, commercial launches are just too cheap to justify the expenses...) chances are they'll launch into a polar orbit (north to south over the poles of the earth) because they get to spy on more places on the earth that way.
There's some great YouTube videos out there that explain this stuff. Scott Manley has quite a few, he's good at breaking things down into understandable chunks although a bit smug at times.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:01PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:31PM
As massa tried to point out, what C R Johnson meant in #469634 was probably:
The downside is that it takes a lot more energy to get to orbit [than] if you launch close to the equator.
(Score: 2) by subs on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:19PM
I think there might be a misunderstanding here. The more speed you have at the outset, the better. So yes, closer to the equator is better in terms of fuel burn. This is all assuming your target is geostationary orbit (which is at the equator). If you want to go into a polar orbit, proximity to the equator is actually a detriment. It all depends on where you want to go. This is also why e.g. the Russians use Baikonur (which is as south as the USSR could basically get) for launches aimed at equatorial / low-inclinations orbits and Plesetsk (which is almost as far north as practical) for launches aimed at polar / high-inclination orbits.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by subs on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:58AM
Depends on where you want to go:
1) Carribean: good for equatorial orbits (communications satellites, commercial stuff), limited infrastructure, "far from home". This last element is why most commercial launches in the US are conducted from Florida rather than Kwajalein atoll, even though Kwajalein is closer to the equator.
2) Northern Scotland: good for polar orbits (earth observation satellites, weather, military stuff), good infrastructure, "close to home" and close to various other military infrastructure in the north of Scotland. Launches from Scotland to the equator are difficult, since launching vehicles could overfly Denmark, Sweden, Poland or the Baltic states, none of which would be too happy about your dropping spent rocket stages on their densely populated areas - this basically puts severe limits on launch vehicle design, as staging would need to be designed to very tight windows, which can make launch vehicle design much more complicated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:44AM
Northern Scotland: Bad (from the English perspective) if Scotland decides to leave UK. Because then it won't be domestic any longer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:57PM
Similar deal for UK's remote colonial possessions.
Consider the USSR (often erroneously referred to as "Russia" back in the day) and how they put their Baikonur Cosmodrome in the non-Russian republic of what is now Kazakhstan (nuclear-tipped missiles too).
When they actually were Russia again, that country had assets spread out in what were now other sovereign nations.
Is the UK going to mount a war every time a place declares that it is now not a British colonial possession?
How much did the Falklands/Malvinas escapade suck out of the exchequer?
...not to mention the bodies that came home in a box.
The thing about empires is that, in time, they all fall apart.
...and, as AC #469639 has noted, when you include Scotland, you're now talking about Great Britain, not UK.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @01:34PM
To leave your partner, you don't need to have been part of that partner.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @12:59PM
An interesting third option is the Russians launch stuff (like their ISS) into 51.6 degree orbits so for maximal efficiency you should launch around lower 50s which conveniently is more or less Scotland/England. You can reach any inclination from any spot on the earth if you're willing to burn extra propellant, which is how you launch a shuttle in FL and it ends up in a 51.6 degree inclination orbit, but its probably easier to just launch from a 51.6 degree latitude, like the Russians do, more or less.
The situation is actually weirder in that the Russians don't launch at 51 degrees but considerably further south however they have to launch into 51 degrees and waste some propellant in order to avoid overflying China. The Chinese and Russians have been butthurt about each other on and off for centuries and essentially launching an ICBM over China is just going to piss them off. This means that a launcher in jolly ole england or wtf actually has a competitive advantage over the Russians that the Russians initially forced us to accept for the ISS.
Also people get really confused and low earth orbits don't see the whole hemisphere like a high geosync orbit only a range of many hundreds of miles, so WRT to space telescopes and earth observation science BS launching into a 0 degree orbit is actually not very scientifically useful unless you're solely interested in earth science of the topics, so a "ridiculous" 51 degree orbit is actually scientifically valuable aside from being a political pawn and a waste of good propellant from a purely engineering standpoint. Maybe an outright polar orbit would have been better, but when ISS was planned, polar orbits look scarily like an ICBM launch, so they happened but were nervewracking.
Once everyone trusts spacex to deposit their first stage in a safe location, like back at the base, or at least hit some lake or empty ocean if it can't make it back, then the overfly countries might not be so worried about overflights. I've never considered that spacex's "secret sauce" might be mixing launches from the uk WITH the famous ability to return booster to launch site resulting in a possibly huge competitive advantage for ISS resupply missions. That's kinda cool.
Another topic no one has discussed is the USA is famous for being all butthurt and PITA about exporting top tier military technology and one way to avoid all that BS is just to launch internally. So if some UK company wants to launch a top secret spy satellite for the UK military, well, one way to avoid stupid export laws is to launch locally.
(Score: 2) by subs on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:35PM
like their ISS
Yes, of course, but you gotta remember, that non-equatorial AND non-polar orbits have relatively little use in the commercial space, except for a few very specialty applications. "Mir" was placed there simply because it was convenient for them and Mir was hardly a commercial venture.
You can reach any inclination from any spot on the earth if you're willing to burn extra propellant
Yeah, and that last part is the problem. IF you have the propellant, then sure. But it also severely limits your launch capability and can increase vehicle cost and complexity.
in that the Russians don't launch at 51 degrees but considerably further south however they have to launch into 51 degrees and waste some propellant in order to avoid overflying China
Yeah, it was one of the design constraints for the ISS orbital parameters, in that 51.6 was pretty much the southernmost LEO that the Russians could hit. The Americans would have preferred the ISS to be a lot lower. The problem for Scotland is that there's pretty much nothing you can do to avoid Norway & Sweden this way, so the lowest you could hit would be around 70, which is just silly at this point. That's getting so impractical that you'd have to carry a whole extra stage just to do the inclination correction at an extremely high apogee bi-elliptic transfer. That means designing an extra upper stage designed for deep space maneuvers. I mean we're talking easily an extra 2-3 km/s of delta-v and that's pretty extreme.
one way to avoid stupid export laws is to launch locally
Yeah, which is why I suspect the primary use of this launch site would be military.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @08:42PM
The problem for Scotland is that there's pretty much nothing you can do to avoid Norway & Sweden this way
LOL Sweden, they don't do self defense of their borders, just launch over them anyway. Somewhat more politely, they have a lot of rural land and no nukes to shoot back at the UK in some kind of "MAD mistake" so just go for it.
Eventually having a spacex first stage fly overhead will be about as worrisome as having a Boeing 777 fly overhead. Technically it could fall out of the sky and land on your head, but they never do that, and when it gets to that point the Swedes really have nothing to complain about.
I wonder if there is more to the secret sauce, with extremely high precision GPS I wonder if you could plot a course and guarantee to the Swedes that no matter what happens if the flight goes dumb ballistic at any millisecond, its guaranteed to only hit farmland or uninhabited areas. I believe that might be possible with very large controller storage and relying on maneuvering jets and playing games with coming in side first (high drag) or pointy end first (low drag). I believe it might be possible to guarantee flightplan and abort control system such that you'd need more than 3 separate system failures before anything landed anywhere but ocean or uninhabited land. At that point I think they would be chill unless you're lofting nuclear reactors or whatever.
(Score: 2) by subs on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:54AM
Sweden, they don't do self defense of their borders, just launch over them anyway
Both the UK and Sweden are members of several tightly knit organizations, which do take this kind of stuff pretty seriously.
Eventually having a spacex first stage fly overhead will be about as worrisome as having a Boeing 777 fly overhead
Commercial aircraft don't have a more than 1% of doing this: https://youtu.be/WTVkhp0MxMc?t=2m26s [youtu.be]
I wonder if there is more to the secret sauce, with extremely high precision GPS I wonder if you could plot a course and guarantee to the Swedes that no matter what happens if the flight goes dumb ballistic at any millisecond, its guaranteed to only hit farmland or uninhabited areas
No, there isn't. There's no straight ~1000km-long path eastward that guarantees you can't hit inhabited areas.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:59PM
There's no straight ~1000km-long path eastward that guarantees you can't hit inhabited areas.
Well yeah, that's exactly what I mean by an actively navigated extremely high resolution, so a 1 m/s correction at launch means you miss Stockholm rather than going directly overhead, combined with a zillion other corrections... lets say a 5% fuel cost is acceptable, or more likely possible... Sort of a think outside the box solution.
(Score: 2) by subs on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:54PM
Sort of a think outside the box solution
See linked video of SpaceX RUD mid-flight. After this, all your solutions go out the window and the debris simply follows a ballistic trajectory with chaotic atmospheric perturbations and a fairly wide dispersion pattern.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:10PM
Launches from Scotland to the equator are difficult, since launching vehicles could overfly Denmark, Sweden, Poland or the Baltic states...
So launch from England instead.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:17PM
They could launch from British Guyana.
Advantages:
- ex-British colony
- speak English (probably) (kind of ish)
- around 9° North of the equator
- probably a deep sea harbour nearby to transport the rocket
- approx 600 km from the massive ESA spaceport in Kourou [wikipedia.org] in French Guyana, which is even closer to the equator and was built in 1964 and already has all the permits and equipment and experience and good rocket launching facilities in fact never mind... Brexit I know I know..
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:15AM
Real weird all the different names... UK, GB, etc.
I *think* that the islands in the Caribbean are British, so launching from there would be launching from Britain? Those islands are not, however, England. Something like that...
Feel free to set me straight, I never really understood exactly what Britain is. (Ireland is a British Isle?)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:21AM
United Kingdom - Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Great Britain - England + Scotland and whatever located on the same island (The British Isles)
British Territories - Former colonies and territories outside of UK, but still administered directly by the UK.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:24AM
Clarification: British Territories physically outside of UK.
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Tuesday February 21 2017, @01:49PM
Thanks! Getting there...
What about plain old Britain, is that just short for GB? And, back to the question, are the territories Britain? I was under the impression that the English folks in Gibraltar consider themselves to be in Britain.
>Great Britain - England + Scotland and whatever located on the same island (The British Isles)
Not being tricky, just curious: So then Northern Ireland is not Britain? Ireland and Northern Ireland are both on the same island that is a British Isle, but are different countries. What about the hundreds of Islands that make up the British Isles? 'What is Britain' can end up being a much stranger question than it appears at first. And that's not even getting into the cultural aspects.
It seems that Ireland is considered a British Isle, which is very confusing to me (I know, not hard to do). Tiree, yeah, but Ireland? Also, I don't think the Welsh would appreciate being called 'whatever' but there you go... And the Cornish maintain this fantasy that they are their own country, separate from England, UK, GB and all of it. I wonder if it offends a Cornishman to be called British? They definitely don't like being lumped in with them.
(Score: 4, Funny) by theluggage on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:32PM
Wikipedia explains it all [wikipedia.org] including a helpful cut-out-and-keep* diagram [wikipedia.org] that says it all.
*but don't print it out on expensive paper, because all bets are off post-Brexit...
I wonder if it offends a Cornishman to be called British?
...probably, but it comes pretty far down the list c.f. spreading the jam and cream on your scone in the wrong order, calling anything made east of the Tamar a "Cornish Pasty" or suggesting that their ancestors had a relaxed attitude to customs & excise and might occasionally, accidentally, have left misleading lights on rocky coasts to ensure a supply of "salvage"...
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Wednesday February 22 2017, @08:41AM
Thanks, that's awesome. That chart is hilarious...
Simple, eh?
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:59PM
There are also several alternative names for Great Britain (Prydain--modern Welsh), including Brittannia (grande Bretagne--Français) and Albion (derives Alba--Gallic), including spelling variants for all of these! All of these are in widespread use all over the island!
(Score: 3, Informative) by rleigh on Tuesday February 21 2017, @11:25PM
Regarding Cornwall and countries in the UK. Consider that what we call "England", "Scotland" and "Wales" were created by the agglomeration of many tens of smaller independent kingdoms over the course of centuries. They are the modern day counties for the most part. Some were annexed later than the others, and this includes Cornwall and Northumberland for England. This is of course a very long time back now!
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday February 21 2017, @11:56PM
what we call "England", "Scotland" and "Wales" were created by the agglomeration of many tens of smaller independent kingdoms over the course of centuries. They are the modern day counties for the most part.
No, most counties were not kingdoms. Most were created as administrative areas. AFAIR there were seven kingdoms just before England was effectively united into a single kingdom by Athelstan (Alfred the Great's grandson). There were certainly many tribal chiefs at earlier periods, but they were not necessarily "kings" and their areas certainly did not correspond with the later counties. Athelstan's kingdom did not include Cornwall, Wales or Scotland.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Tuesday February 21 2017, @01:37PM
A slightly more informative video is available on the BBC [bbc.co.uk].
Basically, they're looking at conventional airports in the UK that can host horizontal takeoff technologies - satellite launchers dropped from planes, Virgin Galactic-style fairground rides etc. I think the favourites are the smaller airports (in areas that need development) that have full-sized runways - often former military bases. Newquay in Cornwall was another one on the list.
[What, if any, advantages are there for launching from Britain vs a location in the Caribbean? -Ed.]
Problem is, there aren't many open air swimming pools (or hinge-based palm trees) [wikipedia.org] in rainy Britain, so where are you going to hide your launchpad?
...but seriously, the UK mainland is a bit too densely populated to fire off conventional rockets willy nilly without rattling a lot of windows, and people are touchy about despoiling the few isolated places, whether its greens protesting about endangered great crested newts or the nobs complaining about disturbing the grouse out of hunting season. Plus, I guess you generally want to launch to the East which means that Northern Europe becomes your emergency abort zone... (c.f. say, Florida, where the Atlantic catches your mistakes).
If you're dropping the rocket from a Jumbo Jet, though, I guess you can take off from the UK and fly to an acceptably ocean-bound point on the equator before lighting the blue touch paper and retiring.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:58PM
Yes, the population of Britain is most certainly dense, but less so than, say, Ireland.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:24PM
I said this above, but it probably won't show up, so I'll put it here too:
equatorial launches (travelling around the world west to east or geostationary) are usually used for communication satellites. If they're going to be launching spy satellites (which would be my guess because there's no other reason to want complete control of the launch facility, commercial launches are just too cheap to justify the expenses...) chances are they'll launch into a polar orbit (north to south over the poles of the earth) because they get to spy on more places on the earth that way.
Cant launch north because that makes Russia crazy (ICBMs would take that path) So they'll probably launch from the south to the south, although they'd have to use an island to the west or end up flying the rocket over Portugal and maybe Spain. An air based launcher would make this easy.
(Score: 2) by subs on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:03AM
Cant launch north because that makes Russia crazy (ICBMs would take that path)
Yes they could and no ICBMs wouldn't take that path to attack Russia. This is the UK, not America. To launch at Russia from the UK, you'd be launching almost exactly due east. Launching north-northwest from the UK would be launching towards Canada and Alaska. It's also no problem letting all interested parties know before you launch that it's a non-ICBM launch, so they can chill.