In light of the recent launches I was wondering why rockets launch straight up instead of taking of like a plane.
It seems to take so much fuel to go straight up, and in my mind I can’t see to get my head around why they don’t take off like a plane and go up gradually like that.
Edit – Spelling and grammar
Edit 2 – Thank you to everyone who responded. You have answered a life long question.
In: Physics
The higher up you go, the less air there is, a plane can only go so high before there is too little air resistance plus lift and can therefore never really get into space. Also you need a certain vertical speed to escape the earths gravity which you just aren’t going to achieve whilst flying like an airplane or horizontally in general.
Fuel is mainly burnt to accelerate to the speed you want to be at and to counter air resistance. If you were to fly more diagonal instead of straight up, you encounter more air due to flying a diagonal, therefore you have more resistances against you and therefore you burn even more fuel.
If you were able to launch a rocket from 10 kilometres up it would help, but launching from an aircraft is quite hard. There is testing in that field though, I believe by Virgin Atlantics space detachment, but I could be wrong about that.
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