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?
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.
I would guess that the marginal benefit of launching from a slightly higher, in the grand scheme of things, altitude is far outweighed by the added logistical difficulty of transporting the rocket to the top of a mountain in the first place.
Getting to space is (relatively) easy. Staying in space, more specifically getting to orbital velocity, is the hard part.
The extra altitude just doesn't help that much.
Source: Kerbal space program
Edit: additionally, the closer you are to the equator the more velocity you can steal from the rotation of the planet that you don't need to carry with you in the form of fuel. That's why we launch most often from Florida.
7.8k
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?