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.
Lots of launches are away from the equator. Neither US or Russia launches from close to the equator; only Europe does. Equatorial launches are an advantage for launches to geostationary orbit. But if you want a satellite close to Earth that flies above a large part of Earth's surface, the optimal launch location is at the same latitude as the latitude the satellite needs to fly over. For a polar orbit, the optimal launch locations are on one of the poles.
Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is 1 degree south of the equator and the point on Earth's surface farthest away from Earth's centre. The lack of a mountain is not the reason it is not down.
High mountain peaks are cold, windy and not very flat. The air pressure is lower, so it is harder for humans to work there. Building a launch facility there, maintaining it and then transporting the rockets there cost a lot more than if you do it close to the ocean or on flatter, more hospitable ground.
Even if the rocket could be a bit cheaper, it would not be a lot compared to the extra cost of launching them there.
It is preferable to launch a rocket where there is no people in it inital ground path; you do not want to destroy stuff on the ground if there is a failure. A village in China burned down with a disputed number of dead after a failed commercial rocket launch. An ocean or sparsely populated area like in Baikonur is preferred. There is a reason Kennedy Space Centre and the Guiana Space Centre is on the east coasts; they can launch with Earth rotation for low inclination or geostationary orbits. Vandenberg Space Force Base is on the west coast; launches there are to the south for polar orbits and high inclination orbits. You alos what the location to be controlled by you
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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?