Construction Port

An Arnold-Kingsbury Space Port in a construction orbit, fed by a launch loop. Two streams of vehicles meet at the construction port at the 75950 km (radius) apogee of the geosynchronous (but not circular and geostationary!) 86164 second (one stellar day, which is a solar day minus 3 minutes and 56 seconds) construction orbit.

cport7d0.png

Direct transfer vehicles launch from the loop at 10,200 m/s (surface relative) to an apogee of 75950 km. However, they start with a perigee of 6458 km, not 8378 km like the construction orbit, so they arrive with a velocity deficit of 114 m/s. They are accelerated to construction port velocity in a "short" (500 meter) Arnold-Kingsbury spaceport at 1.33 gees.

Slow cargo vehicles launch from the loop at 10,520 m/s to an apogee of 294730 km, approximately 7.5 stellar days before the launch of direct transfer vehicles. At apogee, an additional thrust of 503 m/s increases orbit velocity and raises perigee.


The slow cargo vehicle is launched from the 8°S launch loop 7.5 days earlier than the direct transfer vehicle, placing its apogee on the opposite side of the Earth. 'Not directly opposite, actually; because the loop is in the southern hemisphere, all apogees are in the northern hemisphere, so there is a 16° inclination difference between these two orbits.

When the cargo orbit crosses the equatorial plane, a 506 m/s northward thrust changes the inclination to match the construction orbit and the direct trajectory

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