posted 05-16-2013 12:18 PM            

Afterwards he spent close to an hour meeting with those who attended the lecture. I asked him if he had seen the Discovery since it had been on display at the Udvar-Hazy Museum, he replied that he had not yet seen it, however he planned to do so during his visit to the Washington, DC area. I also asked what the advantages and disadvantages were of launching the Soyuz spacecraft on a direct ascent trajectory instead of the normal two day flight to the ISS. Col. Ford gave an explanation that with direct ascent the launch could only take place when the ISS was located at a certain place over the Earth at launch time wheres the two day flight could launch anytime the plane of the ISS's orbit passed over the launch site (once a day). Also, the ground tracking of the Soyuz in flight was more precise with the two day flight than with the direct ascent.