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
Rockets are huge and heavy, by placing the vehicle in a vertical position all the weight and stress is down the structure of the rocket, if it was horizontal you would need far more support in the structure to prevent it collapsing under its own weight. More support needs a lot more weight and in a rocket the additional weight makes a massive difference.
It’s less energy to go straight up than to go horizontally and angle up. Rockets are already massive things that are almost entirely fuel storage.
It would just be adding steps and complexity that aren’t as efficient as vertical launches. You’ll need wings now, you’ll still need a rocket system at altitude to get to escape velocity, and there would be a lot more time in the atmosphere trying to get to speed which means more heat, more drag, and more energy.
There are some concepts for high-altitude launches from a plane (Virgin), but the reason that most space programs don’t pursue this is that it adds an extra layer of complexity on top of getting your already-complex engines to fire. With the efficient engines that have been designed recently, it’s really not too wasteful to just keep the traditional vertical launch profile, especially for large rockets that any aircraft just can’t lift.
A rocket has to go really fast to reach speeds fast enough to orbit, and the atmosphere is thickest close to the ground. So a rocket tries to get out of the thickest part as fast as it can to save fuel, then it turns sideways to get to orbital speeds. Basically it would waste too much fuel going through the atmosphere like a plane.
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.
It takes a lot of power to get into orbital altitudes, and the best way to reach that amount of power is to just burn a ton of fuel up to get the necessary amount of momentum going in a really short amount of time.
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