SpaceX Launch Last Year Punched Huge, Temporary Hole In the Ionosphere (arstechnica.com)

The Falcon 9 rocket that launched last August reportedly ripped a temporary hole in the ionosphere due to its vertical launch, which Ars Technica notes as being rather unusual: Contrary to popular belief, most of the time when a rocket launches, it does not go straight up into outer space. Rather, shortly after launch, most rockets will begin to pitch over into the downrange direction, limiting gravity drag and stress on the vehicle. Often, by 80 or 100km, a rocket is traveling nearly parallel to the Earth's surface before releasing its payload into orbit. However, in August of last year, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from California did not make such a pitch over maneuver. Rather, the Formosat-5 mission launched vertically and stayed that way for most of its ascent into space. The rocket could do this because the Taiwanese payload was light for the Falcon 9 rocket, weighing only 475kg and bound for an orbit 720km above the Earth's surface. As a result of this launch profile, the rocket maintained a nearly vertical trajectory all the way through much of the Earth's ionosphere, which ranges from about 60km above the planet to 1,000km up. In doing so, the Falcon 9 booster and its second stage created unique, circular shockwaves. The rocket launch also punched a temporary, 900-km-wide hole into the plasma of the ionosphere.

Comments

Re:Perpendicular vs parallel

[_Sharp'r_]

It 's the shock wave being generated by the passage of the rocket at high speed through the atmosphere. If the rocket curves/turns, the shock wave generated in the previous direction has an opportunity to dissipate instead of continuing to build up.

So same amount of force exerted on the atmosphere, but not as concentrated in one direction and shorter duration.

Interestingly, they apparently also managed to minorly disrupt GPS signals in the area as well, similar to a magnetic sun storm, but much more localized.

Re:I LOVE rockets but...

[Rei]

Space elevators require unobtanium to have reasonable masses (they also have serious problems with damping oscillations, and their throughput is tiny in comparison to their mass, and they're inefficient, and slow, and about fifty other things). If you want something along that vein which doesn't require unobtanium, try a launch loop.

Re:Perpendicular vs parallel

[Chas]

Think of crawling out from under a pile of progressively larger blankets.

Sure, you can rip your way straight up and out. But that damages the blankets. You also push a certain amount of blanket up and out with you.
Instead you follow the blankets, slowly making your way upward and outward.
However, as you pass, gravity and ambient pressure causes the blanket that's being displaced to collapse back in on the path of travel.

So your shockwave pops open an area of atmosphere in front of you, you move into it, and the space you just left rapidly returns to normal atmospheric pressure.