I haven't studied sherpa rocket science but wouldn't it be easier to launch the rocket powered sherpas off a mountain on the other mountain where the space rockets are?
it's dangerous, I think sherpas are so tired of rich mf showing off by climbing some hill, so at first possibility they will hijack the rocket and run to Mars
Not much climbing involved in that one. Olympus Mons has such a wide base and gentle slope that if you were standing at the peak the base would be out of sight over the horizon
To be fair, it’s not the cost of the fuel itself that is an issue for rocket launches, just that so much of it is required, and it adds so much weight to the rocket. Fuel is less than 1% of the cost of a rocket launch, yet typically over 90% of the mass of the entire launch. If you could somehow spend fuel on the ground moving things to an optimal launch point to have to put less fuel in the rocket, it would absolutely be worth it.
The real issue is that launching from a mountain would not save you much fuel anyways. To get to orbit requires you to go very fast sideways. The initial “upward” part of a launch is just to get past the thickest part of the atmosphere, then it quickly pivots sideways for the majority of its journey.
You save more fuel by launching from a lower altitude closer to the equator, where you can take more advantage of earth’s spin to gain additional sideways velocity. So we do spend a lot of fuel to do this, for example SpaceX manufactures their rockets in Hawthorne, California, where there is a lot of aerospace manufacturing expertise, and spends a lot of fuel to ship them to Cape Canaveral, Florida, which is closer to the equator.
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.
Equatorial launches are cheaper, but not because it is easier to enter the orbit, but because it is easier to get to the desired orbit(inclination and parking orbit, this is from my memory of playing RP 1 in KSP, may not be correct)
Eh, you an orbit at any inclination you want and park in any orbit you want, but the reason the equator is useful is because you do get that added speed boost and most interesting things beyond earth are also on that plane (like the moon and geostationary orbital distances).
But there are tons of reasons to launch in more high inclination orbits too and a good chunk of satellites are launched in those orbits because they are better for earth observation (since you go around up and and down and the earth rotates under you, so every pass you get a different slice of land under you on the day side of the earth).
SpaceX is putting a launch site in South Louisiana for the same reason. There is also an advantage of movement of parts by water, from either the Mississippi, through the Panama Canal, or down the East Coast.
Pretty sure yall know our reputation for flatness and sea levels. Solid rock and high ground is pretty much non existent, in most of the state. Our only "mountain" is something like 300ft.
If you could somehow spend fuel on the ground moving things to an optimal launch point to have to put less fuel in the rocket, it would absolutely be worth it.
Yeah, ultimately to get more effective rockets without just making "more rocket" requires a huge amount of ground infrastructure.
This is also the reason the European Space Agency primarily launches in... South America. Fresh Guiana to be exact, which is super close to the equator whereas Europe is not.
Seems like the easiest way to solve both the sideways velocity and the less fuel problem would be to use a giant maglev / gauss cannon track to get the rocket up to speed before activating the thrusters.
Hell, we could use a mountain to brace the track. What kind of speeds could we get up to with a maximum track height of Mount Whitney, or Guadalupe Peak?
In the pile of ideas about this, OP, daspowerhouse here has the basic explanation for you. "To get to orbit requires you to go very fast sideways" - Yes. Depending on orbit shape and altitude, in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) more than 90% of the energy is in velocity (kinetic) where less than 10% is due to altitude (geopotential). Most fuel is used to get orbital speed rather than to get altitude.
Air breathing space launch vehicles don’t really exist for launching any meaningful payload. Even at sea level, if you limit yourself to the fuel you can burn with an air-breathing engine, your thrust wouldn’t be enough to launch anything other than a microsat.
The Falcon 9, for example is roughly 2/3 liquid oxygen by volume. Having more oxygen means you can burn more fuel, and more fuel means more thrust. The same way super chargers and Nitrous deliver more oxygen to a car engine, allowing to to burn more fuel and have better performance.
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.
The radius of Earth is completely irrelevant. The problem is the dense portion of the atmosphere near sea level, which prevents a rocket from rolling over and dumping its energy into horizontal motion. The atmosphere at the top of Everest is about 35% as dense as the atmosphere at sea level. Everest is also closer to the equator than Cape Canaveral.
If it was logistically possible to launch from Mt Everest, it would definitely be worthwhile. Between reduced drag, earlier gravity roll, and improved specific impulse, I think it would save about 300 m/s to LEO, plus whatever advantage the ISP provides. The rocket equation being certifiably nuts in its exponentiality, that's about a 12% reduction in fuel required at launch.
This is completely wrong. The earth's spin in incredibly important. The European Space Agency literally launches from French Guiana in South America because of the rotational slingshot effect.
The spin is extremely important; I never said it wasn't. However, the percentage increase in distance from the center of the planet (and therefore the radius) isn't part of the reason that launching from high altitude is beneficial. The increased velocity from that is negligible. Hence, it is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
You're wrong. Launching from the Equator vs launching from Canaveral is only 80m/s difference in dV. (Earth is spinning at about 400m/s at canvaeral vs 480 at the Equator) If you launch due east. That's very small, even considering the rocket equation. A rocket needs 9 - 9.5km/s to get to LEO, depending on gravity, cosin and aerodynamic losses.
The reason they launch from there is that you can target a very wide range of orbital inclinations AND you can launch east over the water so spent stages fall someplace safe. You can't get that launching from anywhere in Europe.
The difference is absolutely not negligible. Measuring the difference in relation to the radius of the Earth is completely irrelevant, it doesn't really factor into it at all.
Rockets use most of their fuel at the very start of the trip, pushing through the thick atmosphere. Launching rockets from the top of a tall mountain would absolutely be a good idea from the perspective of theoretical rocket performance.
The only real issue is the logistics, as you pointed out.
There have been plenty of schemes to launch rockets from airplanes to skip the difficult first kilometres. That of course comes with its own set of problems, but, it would be worthwhile.
Logistics are the issue? So the European Space Agency ships all of their rockets across the ocean to French Guiana to launch them close to the equator at sea level just for fun?
You're just completely wrong. Roughly 90% of a rocket's fuel goes towards achieve the necessary horizontal speed to get to orbital velocity. Of the 10% that goes towards elevation gain, almost 90% of that goes towards combatting gravity drag rather than combatting atmospheric drag. Only 1-2% of a rocket's fuel goes towards atmospheric drag.
While it's true that the spacecraft is designed to be temperature resistant, the insides of the spacecraft ain't.From computers to magnets they need to be insulated beforehand being sent and built on a mountain.
certainly. This is a big problem, transporting fuel can lead you to lessen the efficiency of the fuel (you need too much energy to transport it compared to what it gives).
One of the reasons why the green hydrogen technology is not working as desired.
You still need to construct a catching pad on top of the mountains which requires a lot of fuel besides mountains aren't the most stable places to build a structure like that.
I am curious, since if that altitude would have less oxygen, would that cause problems on the fuel burning as well? I am not too smart on jet fuel and how it burns, but my 5th grade rocket education understands that it takes oxygen to burn flame, so would that hinder ignition and burning or does the fuel in rockets burn in a different way?
I was thinking pipes. It would cost a lot of money to build and maintain, but the pumps are cheap compared to hauling up by trucks. I assumed that the rocket use rocket fuel and the trucks use truck fuel. So you can save on rocket fuel. I assume rocket fuel cost more than truck fuel.
But the main problem is that the rocket need to accelerate from 0m/s to 20000m/s. It is the acceleration that burn lots of fuel. On top of a mountain helps with being farther from the gravity wells. But the gravity dont change that much being so close to the earth. The max you can save is the atmosphere is thinner having less drag. Liquid fuel also boil slower due to lower temperature. But you are talking about Liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Probably doent make a big difference.
Also launching in cold weather is risky, just look at the challenger disaster. Also, being near the equator makes it alot easier to get things in gestationary orbit, and orbit in general, since you can use the earths spin as a buff.
and the height of a mountain isn't exactly much of a buff to getting things in space, turns out space is big
At least the same amount of energy (not necessarily energy from fuel, though logistically likely from fuel) as launching the rocket from sea level. You have to build up the same amount of gravitational potential energy in all scenarios
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u/rysy0o0 4d ago
It would cost a lot of money to haul all the rocket parts and fuel on top of a mountain