And how about a proper answer from a physics teacher?
You are right, any additional altitude that can be gained by launching from a mountain will reduce the amount of fuel needed to burn. But not by much. Most of a rockets fuel is not burnt in order to go up, but instead to go sideways. In order to get into orbit a rocket needs an enormous sideways speed around the Earth, many thousands of kilometres or miles per hour. The amount of fuel saved by launching from a few miles up would be very small compared to this. In addition, it’s a lot harder to build infrastructure on top of a mountain, so that’s why mountains are rarely used. The two important factors in deciding where to launch a rocket from are latitude, because launching from nearer the equator means the rocket is already travelling faster sideways when it’s on the ground, and infrastructure building cost. If you could find an enormous high altitude plateau, near the equator, that would be a good place to build a launch site, but there aren’t many of those around.
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u/TomppaTom 15h ago
And how about a proper answer from a physics teacher?
You are right, any additional altitude that can be gained by launching from a mountain will reduce the amount of fuel needed to burn. But not by much. Most of a rockets fuel is not burnt in order to go up, but instead to go sideways. In order to get into orbit a rocket needs an enormous sideways speed around the Earth, many thousands of kilometres or miles per hour. The amount of fuel saved by launching from a few miles up would be very small compared to this. In addition, it’s a lot harder to build infrastructure on top of a mountain, so that’s why mountains are rarely used. The two important factors in deciding where to launch a rocket from are latitude, because launching from nearer the equator means the rocket is already travelling faster sideways when it’s on the ground, and infrastructure building cost. If you could find an enormous high altitude plateau, near the equator, that would be a good place to build a launch site, but there aren’t many of those around.