[meteorite-list] Hurricanes and rockets
Jodie Reynolds
spacerocks at spaceballoon.org
Sun Mar 10 07:16:13 EDT 2013
Hello Steve,
For the geographically challenged: Hurricane Sandy came ashore in
New Jersey. About ELEVEN HUNDRED miles from Cape Canaveral. Which,
give a few hundred miles, is the closest distance from Florida to the
Pacific.
Sandy began as a Tropical Wave in the Caribbean on October 9th.
Tropical Storm Sandy then hit Jamaica'mon on October 24th and was
upgraded to a hurricane at that point.
There were, within a very tight constraint, the same number of hurricanes in the period around
1855-1874 as their were from 1975-1994
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/atlhist_lowres.gif
And that was in a period before modern reporting versus advanced
climatology. There were more in the 1930's to 1950's
(pre-space-race) than there were post-lunar-landing.
Here's the major hurricanes since 1851:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/1851_2010_mjrhurr.jpg
If you think you see a pattern of "they're hitting around where
launches happen" (assuming they did in the 1800's, a pretty poor
assumption) - launches happen at the equator, or as close to it as a
country can get, because the rotation of the earth offers-up
additional free escape energy. The diameter of the earth is about
8000mi * PI ~= 25,000 miles. The surface of the earth at the
equator is moving around 1040mph, where even just 28.5 degrees
north, at Kennedy, it's only moving at 900mph. The fuel required to
overcome even that 140mph when we're talking about several million
pounds is tremendous. The free boost is a financial and technical
key!
Hurricanes are born near the equator because that's the area of
warmest waters and favorable winds. There's actually a very small
sweet-spot for their birth along each major coast.
Sunday, March 10, 2013, 3:24:05 AM, you wrote:
> Spacex launched October 7th 2012 over the Pacific from Florida
> using mostly solid fuel propellant. two weeks later on October 29th we have hurricane Sandy.
> http://www.space.com/17942-spacex-dragon-space-cargo-launch-pictures.html
> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2012/h2012_Sandy.html
> Cheers
> Steve Dunklee
> ______________________________________________
> Visit the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
--
Best regards,
Jodie mailto:spacerocks at spaceballoon.org
More information about the Meteorite-list
mailing list