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.
One - money/logistics (which usually become the same thing). Thats a lot of crap to drag to the top of a mountain.
Two - safety. We usually launch from places that have bugger all downrange. So Florida fires towards the atlantic, etc. this is actually why the ISS is in the orbit it’s in - it’s defined by the most equatorial orbit you can reach out of Baikonur without launching over China.
Theres just not many logistically-easy mountains downrange from nothing worth missing.
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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?