{"id":28978,"date":"2023-11-17T20:30:53","date_gmt":"2023-11-17T19:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=28978"},"modified":"2023-11-17T20:30:53","modified_gmt":"2023-11-17T19:30:53","slug":"if-you-were-going-to-launch-a-rocket-into-space-which-direction-would-you-do-it-east-or-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=28978","title":{"rendered":"If you were going to launch a rocket into space, which direction would you do it? East or west?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Most countries launch space rockets eastwards because the Earth spins west to east and launching eastwards gives rockets a boost from the Earth&#8217;s rotational speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Israel, with its Shavit space launch vehicle, launches due west against the planet&#8217;s spin. This ensures that the rockets fly over the Mediterranean Sea and not over Israel and then neighbouring Arab countries, some of which remain hostile to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is done for the protection of populations and because Israel does not want its Arab neighbours mistaking a space launch for a missile attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is one of many facts which I discovered while reading &#8220;The Future Of Geography&#8221; by Tim Marshall. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most countries launch space rockets eastwards because the Earth spins west to east and launching eastwards gives rockets a boost from the Earth&#8217;s rotational speed. But Israel, with its Shavit space launch vehicle, launches due west against the planet&#8217;s spin. This ensures that the rockets fly over the Mediterranean Sea and not over Israel and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28979,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28978\/revisions\/28979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}