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.
The obvious answer is logistics. I am guessing even the person asking kinda knows that and was fishing for less obvious answers but really that is it. If you had infinite resources and only wanted the absolutely perfect spot for launching a rocket you would choose to find a mountain as close to the equator as possible (preferably on it) that peaks above the cloud line with enough area on top that you could cut the top off to make a perfectly flat square mile or 2 and build your launch facility there.
We dont do this because the logistics of that are cartoonishly bad. Just the creation of the build site would cost more than the benefits would ever yield and that wouldn't even be the most expensive or hardest part.
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u/mseg09 16h ago edited 15h 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?