Re: Optimal location of world capital

Derek Lyons wrote:
> It doesn't make any sense to choose an eastward launch over a westward
> one - the performance hit on a modern booster is simply a nonissue.

But it's not. You really do get a measurable and significant benefit 
from launching west, and the fact that modern boosters are spiffier than 
older boosters doesn't reduce that benefit - for any given booster 
regardless of its specs you can launch a larger payload to orbit going 
east than you can going west. Boosters aren't so cheap that a larger 
payload doesn't matter, nobody's going to reject "free" payload without 
some good reason. Since this capital/space****t can be located anywhere 
on Earth I don't see any good reason.

We seem to be going over and over the same argument here, perhaps 
there's simply some differing underlying philosophy you have that I'm 
not getting. Do you have some specific reason for preferring westward 
launch that boosts their value to match that of eastward launch?