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
It takes less fuel, which is the most restrictive part of rocket design.
By going straight up the ticket gets above most of the atmosphere, eliminating must of the drag on the rocket. This means that girl is not spent shoving air it if the way, but in accelerating the rocket.
The rockets do turn and start moving sideways fairly soon though, to build up lateral speed. the hard part about teaching orbit isn’t getting the height, it’s getting the sideways speed to circle the earth before it “falls back” to the ground.
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