why do space rockets take off from a upright position instead of taking off of a runway like a plane, reach 40,000 ft and entering space from there.
In: Engineering
Air resistance, the biggest enemies to getting to orbit are gravity and drag, you’ve gotta go 10 x faster than any aircraft to get into orbit and your engines don’t have the benefit of using the oxygen in the air as an oxidizer, therefore you want to get above as much of the air as fast as possible so as little as possible of the energy you’re putting in to go fast gets wasted as air resistance. Some small rockers do launch from a carrier aircraft but there’s only so big you can carry on a plane. Another sub category of this is a spaceplane or an ssto (single stage to orbit) aircraft that uses either seperate air breathing and rocket engines it if possible a hybrid that can breath air then turn into a rocket, this is what skylon is attempting and it’s super cheap because no expended hardware, just fuel
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