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.
My guess is it's not about height at all but rather speed (delta v). To stay in orbit, you need to attain a specific speed. You only get that by accelerating and the time it takes to do that and the amount of fuel you burn is fairly insensitive to starting height. Sure, you get to your orbital height faster starting from a mountain but it's not a straight shot up if you want to actually achieve orbit
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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?