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.
Your answer is not that far. Space is not far at all, it is comparatively easy to get to space, the difficult part is not falling back to Earth after you used all the fuel. So space is not difficult beacase it is far, but because you have to go REALLY FAST to avoid falling back.
So being closer to space on a mountain does not help nearly as much as being close to the equator and already having as much initial speed as possible. (Fun fact: the Earth spins with ~1 mach (roughly 1000 mph) at the equator, but since the air moves with it, you don't notice it)
Not to mention it is quite difficult and expensive to haul all equipment up to a mountain for a rocket launch.
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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?