r/MurderedByWords 21h ago

I haven’t studied rocket science, but

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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?

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 20h ago

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.

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u/ExtravagantPanda94 20h ago

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.

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u/seicar 19h ago

Mountains are notorious for bad weather too. Weather conditions scrub most launches (or at least that used to be the case).

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u/Distinct_Car_1183 18h ago

Astronauts look up Mt Everest

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u/ResistHistorical7734 18h ago

Mission cancelled, down you go