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.

Question

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

Answer 1

Lot of good answers here, but one more thing to consider:

To get into orbit, you have to get to a *certain height* and a *certain speed*. Of those two , the *second* is — unintuitively — the dominant hurdle, by a huge margin. Getting to the height is *easy*. Getting to the speed is a *huge* expenditure of energy.