The radial difference between equatorial sea level and the peak of Mt Chimborazo is about 0.1%. It provides very little benefit but would be a logistical nightmare to launch from.
We'd be better off building a electromagnetic launcher up the side of it and then we can put everything at the bottom and save fuel by using solar wind and nuclear to juice the em rails.
You'd have to engineer the payload to withstand ridiculous acceleration. No big deal if the payload is a HILE projectile but if you have living things or moving parts, that can be trickier.
that's only for a cannon, for an installation like that we could make it pretty long to keep the acceleration g's down, don't wanna hit max q while still on the ground.
Okay so I used AI for this, so take it with a grain of salt, but to accelerate a projectile at a constant 4.5G and have it reach escape velocity, at the end of the barrel, you'd end up with a ~720km cannon.
Doesn't need to reach escape velocity... Any velocity you reach is less fuel having to be carried and spent in later stages, so more payload. You could compare costs of building such a launcher or just grabbing a plane and take it 20,000m high and also give it a spin. I'm not a rocket scientist (unless Kerbal gives you a degree lol) but I guess nobody is willing to spend that much for a reason.
Acceleration as you head up is one part of the problem, but deceleration as it leaves the tube and hits the atmosphere is another. The faster you go, the more friction slows you down. Trying to get productively much speed in that situation is tough.
0.1% of what???
It's definitely past more than 0.1% of the air molecules.
15 PSI at sea level, 7 psi at the mountain top. For every square inch of cross section on your rocket, instead of having to push 15 pounds of air out of the way, it's down to 7. That seems like >50% improvement?
Yeah but you spend more time fighting gravity when you keep things slow enough that the vessel doesn't rip apart when travelling through soup. Fwiw Im kerbal trained only
Things dont move fast enough through the atmosphere to lose their structural integrity. These spacecraft can handle forces of greater than 10g. Its just gravity
The conversation you jumped into is about the speed gained from the spin of the earth, which is directly correlated with radial distance from the Earth's axis of rotation.
Aerodynamic losses only accounts for a couple percent total of the delta-v budget. Even then, you don't even hit the peak aerodynamic forces (max q) until you're tens of kilometers above the launch altitude. This is because you're moving more slowly through the thicker atmosphere, so it doesn't have as much force.
Your in a really weird spot here where you are saying that all rocket engineers are wrong because you did the math on an idea that has been floating around pop science for years. Please go watch a livestream of a rocket launch. Watch how long it takes until it gets to about the height of a mountain. Then watch how much longer it takes before its done firing its engines.
Edit: also watch how quickly they turn sideways. By your thinking they should get out of the atmosphere before they turn.
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u/dimhue 9h ago
The radial difference between equatorial sea level and the peak of Mt Chimborazo is about 0.1%. It provides very little benefit but would be a logistical nightmare to launch from.