[AR] Re: Falcon 9 flight today
- From: Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2013 20:53:00 -0600
No, the F9 went to an elliptical polar orbit. It is a performance hit
compared to the baseline of easterly LEO with its velocity of the
rotation of earth (which is what you assume with the marketing term
"payload to LEO"), but nowhere near the delta-v needed for GTO.
Even if the orbit they went to required the same delta-V as GTO, the
GTO payload is 4850kg, so they still would have had over four tons of
extra payload capability.
Ben
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 8:38 PM, Chris Jones <clj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 10/7/2013 10:04 PM, Ben Brockert wrote:
>
>> This flight was unusual in how much propellant they had to vent. The
>> payload was about 600kg total but the rocket is rated for 13150kg to
>> LEO. Even with the performance hits of first stage relight and going
>> to polar orbit, the upper stage still had literal tons of propellant
>> on it.
>
>
> Point taken, though don't you mean geosync (or GTO) instead of polar orbit?
>
>
>
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