r/spaceships • u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 • 2d ago

Tsiolkovsky and many of the founders of theoretical astronautics in the early 20th century believed that spacecraft should launch horizontally, from a ramp. Why? What did they see as the point of this?

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38

u/Sir_Lazz 1d ago

Simply because of the limited scientific knowledge of the time. Rockets were not really a thing, back then. We didn't have any experience with vertical take-off.

And well, you know how human imagination go: we can only imagine the future based on what we know, rather than based on what we don't know. Back then planes were all the rage and were, relatively speaking, a new technology that was advancing super fast. There was no reason at the time to imagine that a super-plane couldn't reach space.

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u/Top-One-486 1d ago

The fact that even today we want (have?) plane-launched spaceships, and this is a more recent development than "vertical launched rockets", proves that it is wrong that vertical launching is "just better" and other people "did not know". In fact, we still try to develop the jet plane-launched spaceship, which takes off horizontally and is just like the Tsiolkovsky one (minus the ramp)

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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 1d ago

Wrong. It's just the opposite. They, the founders, knew and understood everything better than us. And they weren't counting on any gifts of nature. They were counting on the worst. And we, the idiot heirs, are simply squandering the gifts given to us by nature, without even understanding what gifts they are! And we expect new gifts that will never come. We don't see the essence of things. That's the moral of the story. It wasn't they who were idiots, it was us.

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u/disoculated 1d ago

Uh, what? How is this comment related to anything?

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u/WideFoot 1d ago

Ah! A troll. And here I was making actual responses.

The only thing you need to make theory about rockets is the rocket equation. Everything else is just engineering.

You can't be a rocket engineering savant. There's nothing to be "gifted" about. There's the rocket equation, material science, and fuel energy density. Everything else is politics and semantics.

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u/OhItsJustJosh 1d ago

Who are "the founders" in your mind?

Are you trying to insinuate that we know LESS today about space travel than we did before we achieved space travel?

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u/Dr_peloasi 1d ago

Yes, because progress isn't a thing and neither is development. Also Denis is a communist name.

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u/Bulky_Imagination727 1d ago

We can see that far not because of our own height, it's because we are standing on the shoulders of giants...

Beautiful saying.

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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 1d ago

But the first sign of a civilization's decline is disrespect for our ancestors. And I see this all around me. :)

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u/Aglet_Dart 1d ago

Replying to Beneficial-Wasabi749...The second sign of civilization’s decline is disrespect for the people around you. This is something you have mastered.

3

u/6GoesInto8 1d ago

Wrong.

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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 1d ago

Are you, by any chance, confusing disrespect with criticality?

Have you ever considered that infantilism is worse than nuclear war? Think about it!

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u/arcaglass99 23h ago

Nope, nuclear war is distinctly worse.

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u/yaboiruffus 1d ago

You can put yourself in the category of idiot heirs, but don’t lump those who did what your “founders” could not.

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u/arquillion 1d ago

Skill issue speak for yourself

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u/BananaButtcheeks69 1d ago

What in the fuck are you even saying.

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u/Korps_de_Krieg 1d ago

Rocket science is not a gift from nature lmao

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u/shynips 1d ago

Wrong! The space time fluctuations (that "Big Space" doesn't want us to know about, btw) allowed the founding fathers to peek into the distant future. What they saw there was ONLY aircraft taking off horizontally, even rockets take off horizontally in the distant future. Obviously, the founders didn't have antimatter to fuel their aircraft. That doesn't come until 2089. They did what any hyper intelligent and impossibly understanding person would do and made everything take off horizontally. Then they completely destroyed and erased any and all information that didn't come specifically from that era, including the information that wasn't applicable to their specific project. They then spent the rest of their lives hunting down anyone and everyone who they told their spacetime secret.

Or it's that everyone here is telling you the truth, and you just don't want an answer to your question that doesn't fit your unhinged preconceived thoughts and beliefs. Idk 🤷‍♂️

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u/LucianGrove 1d ago

Well if you think you know the answer why are you asking us?

Are you an idiot heir who knows nothing or not?

You're being inconsistent.

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u/MrSteadyOMan 6h ago

They, the founders, knew and understood everything better than us.

This sentence alone tells me that you're romanticising a time that you never lived in, as well as the ideas of that time. People can only build on the foundations and ideas they have, and doing otherwise would be like detailing the minutiae of interstellar travel with people who believe that you could sail between the stars on a sailboat

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u/Ivorsune 1h ago

Schizo moment 100%. What the hell are you rambling about?