Sealand and Experimental Rocketry

[Ken Brown]

Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Ken Brown wrote:
> 
> > WHAT???????????????????????
> >
> > It is at about 52 degrees north, IIRC. If you had high-school physics
> > you'd see the problem with that.
> 
> Closer to 60 if you actuallly check a map.

Nope, I was right. (It is around 20 miles from where my mother lives).
They have a postal address at Felixstowe, which is a port in Suffolk
near the town Ipswich. See the quotes from their website below
 
> Soluble problem with respect to Lat. There are more issues than simple
> launch physics involved here.

You can say that again. 

A rocket going into orbit would be pointing east for all the usual
reasons & would be heading straight for Russia. A deeply uncool place to
make launches from.  See Ryan Lackey's comments I quote below - if
that's what he thinks about a mortar, what about an ICBM? (which is just
a rocket whose orbit intersects the Earth's surface nearby to someone
you don't like).

Anyway, we aren't talking a production platform here. Sealand is an
anti-aircraft gun turret.  It isn't really very big. Sticks a long way
out of the water, but then you have to in the North Sea  (not like those
little weeny platforms you get in the Gulf of Mexico :-)  Imagine two
factory chimneys connected by a deck at the top. 

If you want to launch from the sea you need a big platform. And you need
to put it somewhere else.

Ken



--------------------------------------------------------
An extract from
http://www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk/sealand/factfile.html follows:
--------------------------------------------------------

- Sealand is located in the southern part of the North Sea some six
miles off the coast of Britain and from sixty-five to one hundred miles
from the coasts of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany; Latitude 51.53
N, Longitude 01.28 E (see map). 

- Within a radius of five hundred miles of Sealand live more than two
hundred million people who enjoy some of the highest living standards in
the world. This area also encompasses the financial and industrial heart
of Europe. 

- Easy and economical access to Sealand from Europe and Scandanavia is
available, since the established ferry routes that ply to and from the
United Kingdom pass some three miles from the island, carrying freight
and thousands of passengers daily.

- Further information may be obtained from: Sealand State Corporation &
Information Bureau, SEALAND                            P.O. Box 3
FELIXSTOWE Suffolk IP11 9SZ United Kingdom


--------------------------------------------------------
And from an interview with Ryan Lackey at
http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/07/02/160253.shtml 
--------------------------------------------------------

Placing a warship with mortar in the waters near the UK's major
container port would be ... highly unpopular.

Placing mortars ashore for long enough to close on target would also
inspire a very unfavorable response from the UK military. Any mortar
which could hit Sealand from shore could also threaten hundreds of
thousands of British citizens. British gun laws, being what they are,
and the British experience with mortar attacks on Heathrow being what it
is, I would not want to try it.