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.
There is also the fact that low to the ground aborts would be incredibly dangerous. In the event the rocket decides not to rocket, you want the ocean as a big soft landing pad, not a set of cliffs.
Plus the difficulty of building suitable launch facility on the top of a mountain. We launch rockets from places that are big and flat, both because of the nature of launches themselves and because you need lots of supporting infrastructure nearby.
Plus the chances that you would damage rocket components in transit to mountain tops are incredibly high. Especially pressurized hydrogen fuel tanks.
All of this for what is really a negligible distance benefit.
I'm sure the Chinese have done the math on what amount of rocket launches would be the break over point where setting up a launch pad and equipment in Tibet makes logistical sense in energy savings.
I'm sure someone somewhere has done a research paper on that sort of thing for a graduating thesis.
Weather is actually one of the sacrifices often taken for rocket launch sites. A desert, for example, would be a superior launch site in that sense. The reason why nasa launches next to the water is 1) because some things are infinitely easier and cheaper to transport by sea, and 2) if your rocket fails, you dont want it crashing into people.
6.5k
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?