7

Only five states and territories had launches that got into orbit: Florida, California, Virginia, Alaska and Marshall Islands

But when was the first time for each of those states that a launched rocket reached orbit?

Jon Heller said he would answer this question using his great SQL tools.

Florida is the most easy because it had the first launch of a USA satellite.

  • Florida - 1 February 1958 - Explorer 1

For California I could only find Athena I rocket launching Lewis satellite at 23 August 1997

Related question:

Cornelis
  • 7,535
  • 2
  • 26
  • 77
Joe Jobs
  • 2,620
  • 17
  • 52
  • 7
    All the states are firmly affixed to the surface of the Earth. – Organic Marble Dec 17 '20 at 17:39
  • 2
    If you mean "an astronaut from each USA state", that's something you should be able to easily research on your own. Wikipedia has time-ordered lists of all crewed spaceflights. – Russell Borogove Dec 17 '20 at 17:41
  • 3
    Space Exploration, where "research effort" is a slogan. – Organic Marble Dec 17 '20 at 18:12
  • Jon Heller said he would answer with a quick SQL – Joe Jobs Dec 17 '20 at 18:18
  • Your edit hasn't helped clarify the question. Are you asking about launch sites in different states, rocket manufacturers based in different states, or what? – Russell Borogove Dec 17 '20 at 19:52
  • Here's a list of launch sites. Maybe you could do a little research and give us the answer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rocket_launch_sites – gwally Dec 17 '20 at 20:45
  • 1
    Florida Had To. Texas was getting close, and we cannot allow a missile gap. Yeah, states were all competitive like that and not on the same team. OK that was being sarcastic, but now I realize it doesn't work when states today actually aren't on the same team. No, it wasn't like that, then. it was Team America against the Soviets, end of subject. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Dec 17 '20 at 23:48
  • @JoeJobs if this is a follow-up to a comment ("... said they would answer..."), then you should have included a link to that comment within your question to alert people that an answer was imminent. -1 for not including relevant information until after being questioned about it, and then only putting it in a comment and not the post itself. – uhoh Dec 19 '20 at 01:05
  • I had no idea I have to point to such personal conversations into the text of the question. I thought it's all about how clear the question is, and I think the question is quite clear now. I really can't understand what is missing. I also inclduded the link in the question now. Is there anything wrong with the question now? I am asking simply because I have no idea what is wrong with the question to stay closed. I have no idea what to do to make even more clear because it looks really clear to me. – Joe Jobs Dec 21 '20 at 19:45
  • I am also willing to put a 300 points bounty for this question if it will be opened – Joe Jobs Dec 21 '20 at 19:54
  • Afaik most of them never launched. USA rocket launches happen from southern states to spare some hundreds m/s delta v by the rotation of the Earth. But all of them paid into the federal budget from which the launches are financed, probably all of them have companies working in their space programs, and all of them profited from them. – peterh Dec 21 '20 at 23:27
  • True. California, Florida, Virginia, Alaska and Marshal Islands. But the question is when they launched first time? – Joe Jobs Dec 21 '20 at 23:43
  • I´ve changed the text of the question, I have no idea how to make it more clear now. There is a "reopen" button but I don't want to use it. Can anyone take a look? – Joe Jobs Dec 24 '20 at 03:01

1 Answers1

3

Ok, did some googling…

Florida: Explorer 1, 2/1/1958

California: Discover 1, 2/28/1959

Virginia: Explorer 9, 2/15/1961

Marshall Islands (Kwajalein): HETE-2, 10/9/2000

Alaska (Kodiac): Starshine 3, 9/30/2001

And for extra credit

California has a second launch site at Mojave and Virgin Orbit launched Elana 20 on 1/17/2021. Not a first for California, but a new launch site is always a big deal.

Anthony Stevens
  • 1,231
  • 6
  • 12