I read some post about how to go to space you have to go to LAX, then go to Arizona to board a spaceship. Is there a reason why? Arizona seems a poor place to launch anything into orbit because you must have a long path of uninhabited land on the east side in case something goes wrong (spaceship crash, spent stage landing, etc.). Right now IRL launches to orbit they launch from Cape Canaveral because there's nothing but open ocean to the east (you launch east going to orbit because the Earth already moves around 600m/s therefore giving you a slight boost to orbit, doing this allows you to double payload capacity). For polar orbit launches you launch from Vandenberg Airforce Base because there is not any civilization to the north of the site.
That is unless the Crystal Palace is on a steep incline so you only need clear land to the north (but there are lots of civilizations north of Arizona).
I mean who knows, the ship V came out of during the Sun ending is quite large, especially for just one guy (normally spaceship is quite small because you need a GIANT rocket to get it up to speed). So maybe by 2077 they figured out how to get around the rocket equation and send stuff into space without a strict weight policy.
FYI you need to move sideways at around 8000m/s in order to achieve orbit. That's about 28,000 miles per hour. Getting to the right height isn't enough as you'll fall right back to Earth. Think of orbit as falling, but because you move sideways so fast the ground fall away from you at the same rate as you are falling, so you never reach the ground. Then there's the matter of timing your launch so you can intercept the station you are trying to reach, because phasing is quite costly in terms of fuel (you need to first boost to a really high orbit, then at the right time to a hohman transfer orbit to reach the station).
This is also why crafts burn up when reentering, because you aren't burning just because you are reaching Earth, but you are burning because you're moving at 8000m/s and so the extreme air compression causes it to heat up. But to slow down to enough of a speed to not burn up in atmosphere would require just as big of a rocket as the one that got you to orbit in the first place, with another rocket 10x bigger than the rocket you have in orbit to get it there. So air is used as a means to slow the craft down to a safe speed. A heat shield is much lighter than another rocket.
That is unless the Crystal Palace is on a steep incline so you only need clear land to the north (but there are lots of civilizations north of Arizona).
I mean who knows, the ship V came out of during the Sun ending is quite large, especially for just one guy (normally spaceship is quite small because you need a GIANT rocket to get it up to speed). So maybe by 2077 they figured out how to get around the rocket equation and send stuff into space without a strict weight policy.
FYI you need to move sideways at around 8000m/s in order to achieve orbit. That's about 28,000 miles per hour. Getting to the right height isn't enough as you'll fall right back to Earth. Think of orbit as falling, but because you move sideways so fast the ground fall away from you at the same rate as you are falling, so you never reach the ground. Then there's the matter of timing your launch so you can intercept the station you are trying to reach, because phasing is quite costly in terms of fuel (you need to first boost to a really high orbit, then at the right time to a hohman transfer orbit to reach the station).
This is also why crafts burn up when reentering, because you aren't burning just because you are reaching Earth, but you are burning because you're moving at 8000m/s and so the extreme air compression causes it to heat up. But to slow down to enough of a speed to not burn up in atmosphere would require just as big of a rocket as the one that got you to orbit in the first place, with another rocket 10x bigger than the rocket you have in orbit to get it there. So air is used as a means to slow the craft down to a safe speed. A heat shield is much lighter than another rocket.
