On Mar 25, 6:28*pm, (Darren Dunham) wrote:
wrote:
Neither of them

They fly near due east and enter a LEO orbit of around 28.5 (for less
than a quarter of an orbit). *When the vehicle crosses the equator,
the upperstage fires to put the spacecraft in a GTO. *Upon apogee, the
spacecraft fires its propulsion system to zero out the inclination and
raise the perigee to GSO altitude.

Or they do a bi-elliptic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer

The article only talks about the changes to in-plane circular orbits,
but because a plane change can be done with the second burn at a higher
apogee, there are further savings if one is involved.

WGS-2 will launch this way with a transfer orbit reaching 67000km.

--
Darren

WGS-2 method is called supersynchronous transfer and isn't really bi-
elliptic since there are many intermediate orbits