Launch sites on Mountains

[hieywiey]

Today's Question: Why don't we put a space center on Mt. Everest? What are it's advantages and disadvantages?

Well, here's what I came up with after about 15 minutes of research.

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Distance to Kármán line in meters from the highest peaks of tall mountains:

91,152 Everest

91,389 K2 (Not the Kerbal one)

93,038 Aconcagua

93,832 Mt. McKinley

94,105 Mt. Kilimanjaro

95,705 Mauna Kea

VS.

Distance to Kármán line in meters from Space Centers/Cosmodromes:

99,997 Kennedy Space Center (NASA, SpaceX, United States)

99,987.8 Wallops Island (SSIA, Orbital ATK, United States)

99,909 Baikonur Cosmodrome (Roscosmos, Russia)

????? Guiana Space Center (ESA, European Union)

100,000 SeaLaunch (Private)

99,888 Vandenburg AFB (USAF, Orbital, NASA, SpaceX, United States)

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The launch facility wouldn't be placed on top of the mountain peak, instead on a suitable area somewhere on it.

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Ok, now it's time for pros/cons!

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Advantages to launch facilities at higher altitudes:

•Greater engine efficiency

•Less distance to travel to escape the atmosphere

•Good for sounding rockets that need to go higher

•Could create jobs in surrounding area

Disadvantages to launch facilities at higher altitudes:

•You have to get a heavy rocket up on top of a mountain

•Rocket exhaust may trigger avalanches if on a snow-covered area

•Hypergolic fuels (Hydrazine, Aerozine, UDMH) are toxic, and may damage wildlife and surrounding ecosystem

•Challenger-esque SRB problems because of colder temperatures at higher altitudes

•Damage from precipitation

•Angry bear attacks

•Spent stages may fall onto inhabited areas, depending on site

•Putting a launch facility on a (presumably) inclined area would be difficult

•SpaceX-style stage recovery, and stage recovery in general wouldn't be very plausible (if area isn't surrounded by/near water)

•Mountain climbers and locals might not be too happy about it

•A ton of other things I'm too lazy to list

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I know I kinda went overboard with the horizontal lines, I just discovered them so I have this urge to use them a ton.

[Camacha]

The main reason is that mountain tops generally are appalling environments and that crew and gear safety is hard to guarantee. The gains are not that big, so it is better to just plow through those first few kilometres.

You could launch from lower altitudes, but that means your gains quickly vaporize and you still have to deal with logistical issues and bad conditions. It is just not worth it.

[Vaporo]

Because any mountain tall enough to give a big enough advantage is also too tall to breathe at the top without acclimation. Plus the fact that you'd have to haul that enormous thing up the side of the mountain. Money/engineering-wise, it's better to just go to Florida.

[smjjames]

Plus theres the whole issue of hauling stuff up into the mountains and also building a base up there.

[pincushionman]

Because it's easier and cheaper to just build a bigger rocket.

[Nibb31]

Because Mount Everest is in Nepal.

- There are no rocket factories there

- There are no rocket propellant factories there

- There is no industrial base to build rocket factories there

- There are no seaports or large airports or logistics hubs to bring stuff to build rockets there

The cost of building all that on top of a mountain, plus transporting thousands of tons of supplies and equipment, plus the difficulty of working in such extreme conditions, with the associated training, equipment, and safety constraints, plus the risk of investing all this in a potentially unstable foreign country, is not worth the 50m/s delta-v advantage. It's just easier to build a rocket with 50m/s more delta-v.

Latitude is far more important than altitude.

[Tiberion]

Also the bears wouldn't care, they aren't crazy enough to go up that high. They'd see you dragging a rocket up the mountain and go "Nope, good luck with that buddy" and go find a fish to eat.

[peadar1987]

Everybody knows bears hate spaceflight

[YNM]

Because Mount Everest is in Nepal.

Worser, it's a border between China (Tibet Autonomous Region) and Nepal.

A slightly better option maybe... Andes range ? Thinking that VLT, CTIO and ALMA are friggin huge, and they're all there... Quite near to Korou as well. Chile - Brazil border isn't that problematic as well...

Edited June 25, 2015 by YNM

[Shpaget]

Wouldn't astronomers throw a hissy fit if you tried to launch near a telescope?

[Jouni]

Mountains are essentially huge piles of stone hauled high above the surface. Whatever force created them, it doesn't sound very safe. Most high mountains have a high risk of earthquakes and/or volcanic eruptions.

The fact that mountains are essentially huge piles of stone high above the surface also creates problems of its own. There is a lot of potential energy waiting to be released, making landslides a serious problem. And because mountains rise high above the surface, they really mess up the weather patterns. Mountain weather is highly unpredictable, and extreme weather conditions are quite common.

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A slightly better option maybe... Andes range ? Thinking that VLT, CTIO and ALMA are friggin huge, and they're all there... Quite near to Korou as well. Chile - Brazil border isn't that problematic as well...

Just like Las Vegas is close to New York. South America is huge.

While Chile is stable and safe for a South American country, their relations with Bolivia (Brazil is over 1000 km from the Atacama Desert) aren't that good.

[Scotius]

In a ideal world the best place to build a proper spaceport would be Kenya. It's on the equator, there is a huuuuge expanse of water downrange, and seaport of Mombasa would be a huge logistical asset. Plus Kenya is a relatively well developed country for the region, with some heavy industry.

[YNM]

Wouldn't astronomers throw a hissy fit if you tried to launch near a telescope?

Not for some auxiliary interferometry radio telescopes I guess... Would make an extremely decent launch tracking station ! Calibrating a lot of telescope every other launch is a problem though, even when all ALMA telescopes are mobile.

A slightly better option maybe... Andes range ? Thinking that VLT, CTIO and ALMA are friggin huge, and they're all there... Quite near to Korou as well. Chile - Brazil border isn't that problematic as well...

Just like Las Vegas is close to New York. South America is huge.

While Chile is stable and safe for a South American country, their relations with Bolivia (Brazil is over 1000 km from the Atacama Desert) aren't that good.

Quite near by means of borders... Yeah it's coast-to-coast.

Height data :

Cerro Paranal (quite far from other countries): 2500 m

Cerro Tololo (near Argentina) : 2200 m

Atacama desert (near Argentina and... yeah Bolivia) : 5000 m

Hmm, finding another suitable cerroes ? Also, staging would happen over land... Guess SpaceX should make one, saves their money than trying to get on a barge or RTLS.

[WeirdCulture]

"•You have to get a heavy rocket up on top of a mountain"

this is more expensive than build a bigger rocket...

[smjjames]

In a ideal world the best place to build a proper spaceport would be Kenya. It's on the equator, there is a huuuuge expanse of water downrange, and seaport of Mombasa would be a huge logistical asset. Plus Kenya is a relatively well developed country for the region, with some heavy industry.

In an ideal world, yes, but Kenya has the problem of terrorists from Somalia (it's neighbor) and a spaceport would make a tasty target for terrorists. Then again, I haven't heard of any terror plots targeting Cape Canaveral, so, a spaceport might not have threats coming from there.

[Wesreidau]

Putting a Westerner-operated spaceport within range of the budding young minds at "Hezbollah Amateur Model Aerospace Society" and they'll enthusiastically launch celebratory rocket fire (all home-made from hospital parts!) every time they hear a Western rocket is being prepped.

We better abandon this idea and line of thought before it goes to hell. Back to mountains. I believe tracked launches running up the sides of mountains were considered extensively as a cheap LEO launch system. In fact there are quite a few novel concepts in that category, a few of which resemble ski resort skylifts...

[smjjames]

Putting a Westerner-operated spaceport within range of the budding young minds at "Hamas Amateur Model Aerospace Society" and they'll enthusiastically launch celebratory rocket fire (all home-made from hospital parts!) every time they hear a Western rocket is being prepped.

We better abandon this idea and line of thought before it goes to hell.

FIFY, lol

Back to mountains. I believe tracked launches running up the sides of mountains were considered extensively as a cheap LEO launch system. In fact there are quite a few novel concepts in that category, a few of which resemble ski resort skylifts...

You're probably thinking of maglev railguns. I think there was one sci-fi book* that had such a maglev railgun tunneled through (I don't remember for sure if it was inside or on top of) Mt. Kilimanjaro. Besides the fact that Mt. Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano (last eruption was 150,000-200,000 years ago) and the dangers inherent to tunneling into a volcano, launches would be constrained by the tunnel size.

*Honestly though, I don't know if it actually was Mt. Kilimanjaro, but I do remember reading in a sci-fi book somewhere about a maglev railgun that was built in Africa.

There is one major constraint with such railguns, you can't change the launch angle or direction if you wished or needed to do so. However, if you were doing lots of launches into a particular orbit, then yeah it would work.

[YNM]

"•You have to get a heavy rocket up on top of a mountain"

this is more expensive than build a bigger rocket...

Each ALMA telescopes weight ~ 115 tons each - isn't that around the weight of an empty rocket ?

[Camacha]

In a ideal world the best place to build a proper spaceport would be Kenya. It's on the equator, there is a huuuuge expanse of water downrange, and seaport of Mombasa would be a huge logistical asset. Plus Kenya is a relatively well developed country for the region, with some heavy industry.

It sounds like Kenya might need a couple of freedoms.

[Kryten]

In a ideal world the best place to build a proper spaceport would be Kenya. It's on the equator, there is a huuuuge expanse of water downrange, and seaport of Mombasa would be a huge logistical asset. Plus Kenya is a relatively well developed country for the region, with some heavy industry.

Northern Brazil is better developed, just as equatorial, has the major seaport of Sao Luis, and has an actual launch base already (Alcantara).

Each ALMA telescopes weight ~ 115 tons each - isn't that around the weight of an empty rocket ?

They didn't lug them up in one piece.

[YNM]

They didn't lug them up in one piece.

They did from 2900 m to 5000 m... Granted these things aren't tall like rockets though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6922967.stm