Re: Stupid Question: Why does it take 3 days for Shuttle to Station

"Walter L. Preuninger II" <walter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:M5ydndjquPMJkHrfRVn-hQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

> I am not a rocket scientist, but my wife just got back from NASA's HAS
> (High School Aerospace Scholars) Program at JSC.
>
> In laymans terms, why cant the shuttle just 'be' at the station in a
> few hours, instead of chasing it for days? I would think that it is
> just a matter of launching at a certain time on a specific trajectory
> with a calculated velocity.

The short answer is that a flight day 3 rendezvous is required in order to
have a launch window every day and to maximize the length of that launch
window. If you constrain yourself to launching on opportunities where the
shuttle could make it to ISS on flight day 1 with available propellant,
you'd only be able to launch roughly every third day, and your launch
window would often be shorter than the ten minutes that the pure planar
window would allow.

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JRF

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