Why do space rockets not take off like planes (i.e. straight up vs sideways and up)?
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Planes rely on the atmosphere to fly. They’re not trying to get away from the atmosphere, they need the lift to fly.
With a rocket, the atmosphere is getting in the way, it’s slowing it down. It doesn’t need any atmosphere to accelerate either.
Ultimately, a rocket wants to go sideways very fast. But the best way to do that is to first go up fast to get to where the atmosphere is thinner so you can go sideways as fast as possible.
So while we usually only see the first part of the launch, the actual path of a rocket is a curve. It starts straight up then curves until it’s eventually going horizontal.
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