One thing I love about living in Florida is living near enough to the space coast to hear the shuttle go over and if I am lucky, to see it once in a while. Sometimes I wonder though is Florida really the best place to launch spacecraft. We have a lot of thunder storms and bad weather in the summer. I often wonder if there would be a better place to launch space craft? Does anyone know why it was picked in the first place?

I think it's the best place.
And if you live there, well, that's pretty cool stuff....maybe you heard the classic double boom of Discovery this morning at 11:12 when she popped through the sound barrier on her way to landing?

I think the Florida coast in that area was picked because it was available land, a large tract, and on the east coast, with ocean to the east.
This is an ideal situation because all orbital missions launch toward the east to northeast, so as to take advantage of the Earth's rotation. Further, early launch phase flight has the possibility of a problem; an abort or some sort of catastrophic failure. With launch azimuth being over the ocean, this minimizes, or eliminates the possiblity of a vehicle having a problem over land, and thus endangering popoulated areas.

Ya I heard the booms this morning, kind of took me by surprise I forgot there was a landing this morning. Thanks for the information, I guess you are right Florida is the best place. I am going to be moving to North Central Florida some time in August or September then I'll be a little closer to the space coast. If I could I would move to Coco Beach and be right there.

Cool.

It's a hell of a sound, isn't it?




You're welcome. When you think about it, and I didn't mention this...for some reason ( ), we still have to shed stuff on the way up too!
If we had a temeprate, sunny place that allowed lots of weather-unencumbered launches, like in southern Califoirnia or somthing, that'd be a heck of thing, what with an external tank coming off of a Shuttle someplace over the center of the United states and re-entering the atmoshpere while still over populated land areas. Someone would be getting a hunk of external tank in their roof for sure! And of course, the solid rocket motors would be landing on the ground, somewhere to the northeast of the launch site...that could be a big problem!

We have to dump this stuff in the ocean to be safe, so the East Coast seems to be the optimal place...