just had a thought...... if everything were manufactured in some kind of orbital station or moonbase .. would delivery to anywhere in the world be basically "free" bc it's freefall, just aimed carefully
(assuming a strong + cheap enough "box")
or am i oversimplifying this
@kit So uh if you want an actual answer:
You can't quite "drop" things from space; you need to slow down enough for them to de-orbit. So that needs basically a small rocket motor.
The harder part is the orbital plane. If you're ordering at the equator, you only ever pass over the equator and it takes a *lot* of energy to get something farther north or south. You can solve this by being in a polar or highly-inclined orbit but then you only have delivery windows once per day to any given spot.
@starkatt oh yeah that's why they used cape canaveral and, the place in ukraine that i forget the name of
i forgot about that part for sure
(i did know about needing a small push but i included that in the cost of aiming in my head, not that it was super clear - also a very small amount of RCS fuel is probably a good idea for doing an assisted landing as well as the push, maybe with a small system to pressurise ambient air for the RCS in atmosphere)