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three two one zero ignition rocket launches today are a pretty routine venture whether it's sending astronauts to the iss or launching expensive satellites and for the past 70 years some of our most inspiring missions from nasa's apollo program to spacex's demo 2 have launched from cape canaveral florida but what's so special about this location cape canaveral sits off the east coast of florida roughly 3 200 kilometers from the equator this location is the perfect staging ground for rocket launches as it provides a speed boost and energy savings for our launches you see as the earth rotates it naturally generates kinetic energy rotating slowest at the poles and fastest near the equator this means that during launch a rocket
gets a generous speed boost assisted by the natural rotation of the planet but one of the most consistent hurdles we face when sending rockets to space is actually reaching a high enough speed to enter orbit over 40 000 kilometers per hour specifically we call this speed the escape velocity basically it takes a lot of energy to propel a rocket with enough force to overcome earth's gravitational pull but what's really interesting is that the energy required to achieve escape velocity changes based on where you are on earth so depending on how close the launch is to the equator the greater the speed boost it'll get from the earth's natural rotation because it's located about 28.5 degrees north of
the equator achieving escape velocity from the cape takes roughly 0.3 percent less energy compared to launch facilities at higher latitude locations and i get that doesn't sound like much at all but these small wins really do have big impacts on the mission planning process the speed boost allows for the use of less on-board fuel which converts the cost savings that can help us carry bigger mission payloads so much so that saturn v nasa's heaviest rocket launched from the cape another factor that makes the cape ideal is its favorable azimuth limitations simply put this is the direction the rocket travels along the horizontal plane after launch lying between roughly 35 and 120 degrees the cape's azimuth limits provide a
clear path towards the atlantic ocean that doesn't loom overpopulated areas this makes the launch safer in the case of rocket failure or falling debris but the east coast isn't the only place the u.s launches rockets from there are active launch facilities located along the west coast such as vandenberg in california and the pacific spaceport complex in alaska the disadvantage here is that as the earth spins from west to east any rocket launched in the westward direction would have to have extra fuel onboard to overcome the natural spin of the earth emissions that launch from the west coast are ideal for earth observing satellites that need to monitor the same location at the same time each day
that's because these satellites need to gather consistent data on things like the weather animal migration or even environmental disasters one such satellite is the global ocean observing satellite jpss that i helped fly with noah but i believe it's important to be conscious when making decisions for new locations no matter where they are and how they impact our home planet and personally i have high hopes that an effective solution will be found as we continue to explore our universe so we can only cover a few space ports in the episode but we wanted to know would you be interested in us covering other country spaceports let us know in the comments below make sure to subscribe and thanks for watching
