Tony Dinkel said: > This may be way too elementary for most of you but from my understanding > of the STS ISS orbit insertion trajectory, which is minimal, they do not > burn out of plane. They make every effort to align the launch azimuth so > they end up in the same inclination as ISS. Out of plane manuvers are > very fuel inefficient for STS and they need to conserve OMS prop for on > orbit and deorbit. That's right. Such matters were the topic of an article in the March/April 2002 issue of the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine. See also http://tinyurl.com/c2n25 from 1996, which explains the main considerations. For the purposes of this discussion, Mir and ISS are basically the same thing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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