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
Just to add to the other answers something I didn’t see: doing what you’re suggesting would require the rocket to have wings, and wings are essentially dead weight for the main part of the rocket’s flight because it’ll be in atmosphere too thin for them to help. Any extra weight you add to your rocket has a significant fuel cost, which means you have to make the fuel tanks larger and the rocket itself larger, and everything gets very expensive very quickly.
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