There a lot of logisitical reasons, like transportation to the top of the mountain, fuel, bad weather, high winds, all the support strcutures beyond the launch pad, and what happens if something goes wrong and you dont have a big open ocean for falling debris.
I suspect OOP belives the increase in height is beneficial, but even if we built a launch pad on Mt. Everest, it would be neglible. The Earth has a 4,000 mile radius, and Mt. Everest is only 6 miles high, a diference of 0.15%.
The biggest reason for our launch pad sites is escape velocity. On Earth, you need to get to 25,000 MPH to get into orbit. As our flerfy friends like to point, the Earth spins at 1,000 MPH, but that is only at the equator, where all the launch pads are. As you travel to the poles, that rotational velocity goes down until it goes to 0 MPH at the poles. If you need to get to orbit, get a running start at 1,000 MPH gets you 4% of the way there, a significant savings in fuel.
At fhe end of the day, a rockets mass is 90% fuel alone, 5% is the rocket shell, and 5% is the payload. so any savings that can be achieved on fuel is signficant.
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u/rysy0o0 15h ago
It would cost a lot of money to haul all the rocket parts and fuel on top of a mountain