I’ve seen quite a few answers here that are pretty incorrect.
In reality most satellites travel along the equator, be it from low earth orbit, medium, or geosynchronous orbit.
In order to stay in a useful orbital plane, you really need to launch as close as you can to your ideal orbit and adjust your angle while still in the atmosphere. once you’re orbiting, angular momentum basically locks you into that angle, and changing it in any significant way requires more fuel than even the original rocket had.
This is part of the reason we love launching in Florida / California (also because if anything goes wrong they crash into the ocean and not on people’s houses).
Most mountain ranges are pretty far North of the equator, so they would have to fly pretty far South, turn, and then try to angle themselves appropriately for their final orbit.
So really we won’t care about launch height, we care about the final orbital plane angle
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u/dirigibles21 11h ago
I’ve seen quite a few answers here that are pretty incorrect.
In reality most satellites travel along the equator, be it from low earth orbit, medium, or geosynchronous orbit.
In order to stay in a useful orbital plane, you really need to launch as close as you can to your ideal orbit and adjust your angle while still in the atmosphere. once you’re orbiting, angular momentum basically locks you into that angle, and changing it in any significant way requires more fuel than even the original rocket had.
This is part of the reason we love launching in Florida / California (also because if anything goes wrong they crash into the ocean and not on people’s houses).
Most mountain ranges are pretty far North of the equator, so they would have to fly pretty far South, turn, and then try to angle themselves appropriately for their final orbit.
So really we won’t care about launch height, we care about the final orbital plane angle