Did tonight's PBS NOVA Sputnik show have a glaring tech error?

In the animated views of Sputnik in orbit, they show it orbiting, for
all I can tell, from East to West. I always thought all rockets bound
for orbit were launched Eastward so as to get an extra kick from
Earth's rotation, good for extra payload or altitude over shooting in
the Westward direction. I suppose the R7 could have been launched
Westward as a subtle hint that it was so powerful an ICBM that it
could be launched in any direction the soviets wanted, but this was
not discussed in the show AFAIK.

Am I right or uninformed about which way Sputnik was launched?

For a bonus question, how many if any sats are/have been launched
Westward, and why?

D. Orbitt wrote:
In the animated views of Sputnik in orbit, they show it orbiting, for
all I can tell, from East to West. I always thought all rockets bound
for orbit were launched Eastward so as to get an extra kick from
Earth's rotation, good for extra payload or altitude over shooting in
the Westward direction. I suppose the R7 could have been launched
Westward as a subtle hint that it was so powerful an ICBM that it
could be launched in any direction the soviets wanted, but this was
not discussed in the show AFAIK.

Am I right or uninformed about which way Sputnik was launched?

For a bonus question, how many if any sats are/have been launched
Westward, and why?

Probably the show's producers weren't even born when sputnik flew, and
thus they were denied a reasonable post sputnik era secondary education.

On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:22:25 -0800, "D. Orbitt"
wrote:

For a bonus question, how many if any sats are/have been launched
Westward, and why?

From what I understand, anything launched from Israel goes westward to
avoid flying over the territory of their neighbors (who tend to get
upset if missiles start heading their way from their enemy).

D. Orbitt wrote:
In the animated views of Sputnik in orbit, they show it orbiting, for
all I can tell, from East to West. I always thought all rockets bound
for orbit were launched Eastward so as to get an extra kick from
Earth's rotation, good for extra payload or altitude over shooting in
the Westward direction. I suppose the R7 could have been launched
Westward as a subtle hint that it was so powerful an ICBM that it
could be launched in any direction the soviets wanted, but this was
not discussed in the show AFAIK.

Am I right or uninformed about which way Sputnik was launched?

Sputnik was launched west-to-east.

For a bonus question, how many if any sats are/have been launched
Westward, and why?

For loose definitions of "westward" (i 90 deg), all sun-synchronous
near-polar orbit spacecraft count, of which there have been many. They
are launched into that orbit so that they pass over the same ground
track at the same local time, which makes lighting very consistent. This
is useful for weather and photorecon.

For stricter definitions of "westward", Israeli launches its satellites
westward over the Mediterranean for range safety purposes.

Thanks for the quick verification, I have emailed NOVA to tell them
they suck at science:-)

Furthermore, looking at the layout of the Sputnik1, I am wondering if
those trailing radio antennae behind the globular main body actually
kept it oriented in an "Easterly" direction once in orbit or not. Low
Earth orbit is essentially a vacuum, but not a 100 percent pure one.
At a low orbital altitude, did the antennae create enough drag to
stabilize the satellite to face "forward", or did they alter the
center of gravity in such a way to orient the sat perpendicular to the
Earth's surface?

"D. Orbitt" wrote in message
ups.com...
Thanks for the quick verification, I have emailed NOVA to tell them
they suck at science:-)

Furthermore, looking at the layout of the Sputnik1, I am wondering if
those trailing radio antennae behind the globular main body actually
kept it oriented in an "Easterly" direction once in orbit or not. Low
Earth orbit is essentially a vacuum, but not a 100 percent pure one.
At a low orbital altitude, did the antennae create enough drag to
stabilize the satellite to face "forward", or did they alter the
center of gravity in such a way to orient the sat perpendicular to the
Earth's surface?


Good question, not entirely sure.

However, to partly answer your question, it is certainly possible (and in
fact somewhat common) to use mass distributions to do a gravity gradient
orientation of a satellite. The LDEF flown early in the Shuttle program
was one such example.

(always surprised they didn't fly at least one more LDEF mission.)






--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting Remote and Onsite available!
Email: sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com/sqlserver.html

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:

(always surprised they didn't fly at least one more LDEF mission.)

My impression is that they wanted to, but never got the funding. Last
I heard they still had the airframe in storage somewhere.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On Nov 6, 10:34 pm, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
"D. Orbitt" wrote in message


At a low orbital altitude, did the antennae create enough drag to
stabilize the satellite to face "forward", or did they alter the
center of gravity in such a way to orient the sat perpendicular to the
Earth's surface?

Good question, not entirely sure.

I don't know about Sputnik 1 either, but the Soviets did fly a couple
of aerodynamically oriented satellites in the 1960s. Cosmos-149 and
-320 are the only ones I know about: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Feb-2003/0150.html

How is the supporting documentation at the website?

Meh, so-so. I wrote to Roald at the Eisenhower institute to try to
get his view on this orbit thing, but also got an email back from NOVA
saying they were going to correct the error. They were very nice about
it, but didn't say much past that.

In article , Strider\
wrote:
However, to partly answer your question, it is certainly possible (and in
fact somewhat common) to use mass distributions to do a gravity gradient
orientation of a satellite. The LDEF flown early in the Shuttle program
was one such example.

(always surprised they didn't fly at least one more LDEF mission.)

They now attach materials samples to the outside of the space station,
so that is a way to get LDEF type testing with more flexibility without
devoting two shuttle missions (one up, one back) to each test.

--
David M. Palmer (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)