Why do we have to fly rockets straight up and out of the atmosphere? Why can’t we fly a ship like a plane and just go higher and higher and higher, then rocket booster out past the exosphere. I know the air is thin way up there, so at the highest, tilt upwards and rocket boost
In: Engineering
In a sense, that’s what we do. First we go straight up to get out of the thick atmosphere to reduce drag and fuel consumption. then as we get higher, we actually move towards the horizontal to build up speed and gain orbital velocity. If you took off from an air strip and flew up like a plane, you’d just be fighting the thick atmosphere and taking a lot longer to get to an altitude that lest you get your speed up enough to get into orbit.
Virgin Galactic tried to bridge that gap by making the orbital module launch at very high altitude from an aircraft designed to get it there, so kind of a hybrid concept.
Another idea was to put a launch platform under a bunch of ultra-high altitude balloons and launch from there. Whatever the case, the most expensive fuel consuming part of the flight is from ground level to very high altitude where you don’t have to fight the atmosphere to get your speed up.
ELI5: Air is thick, so you want to get above it as fast as possible. You can worry about getting orbital speed when you’re really high up.
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