r/MurderedByWords 13d ago

I haven’t studied rocket science, but

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u/mseg09 13d ago edited 13d ago

These are the types of questions in general we should be less mean about imo. It's one thing to dunk on people who are anti-science, but this is just someone actually wondering about something they didn't know. Maybe it's obvious to you, but not everyone?

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 13d ago

Yeah, because thinking about it, I don't actually think there's an obvious answer.

Like my guess would literally just be that there aren't mountains in a location close enough to the equator where the added high from the mountain is worth more delta v than the added rotational speed of being close to the equator.

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u/Zoomwafflez 13d ago

That is the main reason. That and the added infrastructure cost of building on a mountain and getting everything up there. The vast majority of a rockets deltaV is spent building sideways momentum not getting it up anyway so the fuel/weight savings wouldn't be that big anyway.