Basically the post title, wouldn’t it be faster to go through the atmosphere at an angle instead of pushing up through the atmosphere? Is it possible to launch a spaceship this way?
I never took high school physics so this may be an exceptionally dumb question.
Edit: Thanks for all the explanations! I understand why now
In: Physics
There’s 2 parts to getting into orbit. First you have to get out of the atmosphere obviously, but then you need to be travelling REALLY fast. Orbit speed is around 17,000 miles/hour depending on exactly how high you are. You make a full circle of the earth in about 1.5 hours. Getting up to that speed involves burning a LOT of fuel. If the space shuttle burned 1,000 tonnes of fuel getting into orbit I’d it was an easy launch.
So spending time in the atmosphere when you intend to accelerate to such crazy speeds is actually a bad idea. That’s a lot of drag that you just don’t want to deal with.
Honestly, the vertical launch itself burns fuel at varying rates so that as the shuttle puts in more effort as the air gets thinner to reduce drag.
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