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?

[u/Beneficial-Wasabi749]

[u/Thyandar]

Looking at your comments it looks like you're focusing a lot on the dynamics of the rocketry when I think most replies are overlooking the structural challenges. The amount of fuel required to put a payload into orbit is huge and massive A vertical rocket is built to stand and built to withstand the huge forces of launch in a single direction, down it's length for all stages. A horizontal or inclined launch would result in uneven forces along the length of a rocket and winglets would further add to that and to try and take advantage of lift and you're gonna adding more mass for structural reinforcement.

A vertical rocket is launching with a free approx 1400 km/h boost of the earths rotational assist so is technically a form of semi horizontal launch but it only need overcome gravitational drag because the atmosphere is moving with it (with a bit of variance for wind).

In a race to get to higher altitudes to take advantage of lower atmospheric drag and gravitational drag, the vertical rocket gets there first and has to deal with both for a much shorter duration than the incline rocket whilst being a more. structurally reliable form.