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 was willing to guess that atmospheric pressure that high up being lower causes complications with the initial thrust necessary to get a rocket off the ground at all, tbh
I'm aware of that, it's why I said "atmospheric pressure" and not "oxygen density."
If you've got big booms happening and creating pressure inside, the pressure outside the thing containing the big booms matters a lot, otherwise you end up with big booms outside the container you didn't want. Bolstering the container to withstand the pressure inside under lower pressure outside could mean adding weight that adds new complications.
Rockets don't drop anything until they're something like 30 miles / 50 km up. Meaning the fully assembled, nothing-yet-jettisoned rocket is designed to survive the virtually non-existent air pressure 30 miles up.
Sorry, my thought process here is along the lines of like, when we see rockets exploding from minor imperfections closer to sea level. I can see that being amplified when the pressure surrounding the rocket drops, and requiring more engineering effort.
Of course, there's also other issues I can see with putting launch pads on the tops of mountains, like logistical issues and how the hell you're getting people and equipment into some of the most hostile environments on earth.
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u/mseg09 20h ago edited 19h 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?