Why is NASA in Florida?

Question

Why does nasa do all it launches from flordia? I always hear about them being delayed cause of the weather. Why not have it in the desert or somthing where there are fewer storms?

Answer 1

some of these answers are pretty good, those things are important, but the one thing they forgot to mention is proximity to the equator. Remember that the shuttle is going into space. In flight, everything is relative. If you want to launch something into space you want it to have the highest possible speed correct? What is going faster, a rocket on the ground in Florida or a rocket on the ground in New York?

The rotational speed of the planet is relevant when a launch into space is happening.

Answer 2

Is Nasa In Florida

Answer 3

Because, in a catastrophic failure situation, the doomed rockets can fall into the ocean instead of on top of a city or town.

Also, convenient place for spent boosters to fall into ocean for retrival instead of falling on top of a city or town.

Why not in Houston, Texas?? Because that part of the Gulf coast is inundated with oil refineries that could ignite and explode in case of ----- (drumroll) catastrophic rocket failure and boosters falling on top of the cities or towns along the coast.

The desert is too remote and booster retrival would certainly be useless if they crash land on a desert floor. And, oh, by the way, there are some cities and towns to worry about even out in the desert.

Finally, Florida is conveniently located on the mainland, nearest the equator where the spin of the Earth assists reaching orbital speed by that extra 1000 or so miles per hour.

Answer 4

NASA does not only have launch facilities in Florida, but in California as well. however, Flordia is the main (and only) launching site for Space Shuttles. it is also the primary launching site for rockets such as the Delta II

the three sites that they use for launches:
- Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
- Vandenberg Air Force Base
- Wallops Flight Facility/Goddard Space Flight Center

Answer 5

Actually NASA is in Flordia and Texas and California

Florida was picked for some strange reason (probably Politics) because of early 1950's missle launches.

Answer 6

The number one main reason the NASA launch facility is in Florida is because that's the closest place in the U.S. to the equator. At the equator the Earth rotates at about 1,035 mph. You've probably noticed that the shuttle launches to the east in the direction of Earth's rotation, therefore it picks up 1,035 free miles per hour.

Answer 7

NASA is in Florida and Texas because they have flat lands. It wouldn't be very easy to land a space shuttle on the side of a mountain. Also they have large bodies of water near them. The Kennedy space center is really cool. So ya its just cuz they have flat land and not too much in the way of trees in the way. Also there is no snow in Florida

Answer 8

well, for one thing, Florida is a peninsula, which means that if they launch something that blows up before it hits orbit, the pieces will most likely fall over uninhabited, open ocean. A launch from California, say, could rain debris over dozens of states in the event of a catastrophe.

Also, booster rockets have to fall back down before a rocket gets to orbit. You want one landing in your front yard?

Answer 9

Actually, NASA is comprised of several different facilities. Listed below:
Field installations

NASA's headquarters is located in Washington, D.C.

NASA's Shared Services center is located on the grounds of the John C. Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Construction of their facility began in August 2006 and the scheduled completion date is October 2007.

NASA has field and research installations listed below by application. Some facilities serve more than one application due to historical or administrative reasons.

Research centers

* Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
* Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
* Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
* John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, Cleveland, Ohio
* Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York City
* Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

Test facilities

* Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
* Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California
* Independent Verification and Validation Facility, Fairmont, West Virginia
* Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
* John C. Stennis Space Center, near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
* Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia

Construction and launch facilities
Kennedy Space Center.
Kennedy Space Center.

* George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
* John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida
* Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
* Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, Louisiana
* White Sands Test Facility, Las Cruces, New Mexico

Deep Space Network

* Deep Space Network (DSN) stations
o Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, Barstow, California
o Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, Madrid, Spain
o Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

Tourism and museum facilities

* United States Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama
* Space Center Houston, Lyndon B Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas

This was done so that all of NASA could be in just one place. Kinda of like how the internet was invented: So that threat forces could not entirely destroy it in one fell swoop.

Answer 10

Vehicles that use boosters and external fuel tanks (such as the space shuttle) need to discard them shortly after launch. If they fell back to Earth near cities, people would get hurt. So, they take off going east (and up) from Florida, dropping the boosters and fuel tanks into the sea.