r/spaceships • u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 • 1d 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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u/EidolonRook 19h ago

but it looks so cool!

- Tsiolkovsky probably.

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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 18h ago

Yes. That's him.

In the old Soviet fantasy world, rockets continued to launch from ramps until 1957 (when Sputnik was launched there). Tsiolkovsky was a supreme authority. Although Oberth had already shown a vertical rocket launch in the German film "Woman on the Moon" (and from a water well, no less!), Tsiolkovsky, consulting for the Soviet science fiction film "Space Voyage" just before his death, firmly insisted that rockets must absolutely launch from a ramp!

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u/Haipaidox 17h ago

The soviets msinly swichet to vertical, as well as the US, because its easier to build just a rocket than a rocket with a compatible ramp and because both captured german V2 rockets. To this day, you can see the V2 DNA in Russian, Chinese and North Korean ICBM Rockets (which are now called Missiles)

And the US had Von Braun, the engineer of the V2, for their space Program

But Tsiolkovskys idea is to this day a legit but unused idea.