Why do they launch from florida

View Dates. Featured Events. Lopez-Alegria, Pamela A. Melroy, and Scott Kelly will be inducted into the U. Astronaut Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the visitor complex. What if the object is already moving? In this case the initial kinetic energy is not zero. How much kinetic energy would it have? Well, it depends on where it is on the Earth. You know the Earth spins, right? It's rotational rate is 1rpd revolution per day.

Actually, that isn't true. It actually takes the Earth a little bit less time to rotate Sidereal vs. And suppose you are at a location on the Earth like this:. This means that the object at that location would have a speed of:. This changes the amount of work needed to get the thing into orbit since the object will not be starting with zero kinetic energy.

The new work-energy equation will be:. How about some graphs. Here is a plot of the energy needed to put something in low-Earth orbit altitude of about km as a function of latitude. Oh, actually I will plot the energy per kg of mass to put in orbit. Just a couple of values.

The energy per kg at the equator is 3. What about Cape Canaveral at a latitude of ULA is set to launch the moon lander which will also carry other science experiments and payloads for customers besides NASA. SpaceX Falcon 9 with Intuitive Machine moon lander. SpaceX is set to launch the moon lander which will also carry other science experiments and payloads for other customers. Zane joined News 6 as an assignment editor in June A river flood warning in effect for Lake and Volusia Counties.

But in order to reach that goal, such programs needed the ability to track the rocket throughout the range, Starr said. Should something go wrong, rocket engineers also wanted to be sure that rockets would land benignly, preferably in an ocean.

It was selected for two reasons: the fact that it is relatively near to the equator compared with other U. An East Coast location was desirable because any rockets leaving Earth's surface and traveling eastward get a boost from the Earth's west-to-east spin.

A West Coast location would either send rockets over populated areas or have to contend with launching against the direction of the spin.

And, the rate of spin is at its highest on the equator and slowest at the poles, so the Cape's southern location also gave it a boost, Starr said.