Santa

Why dont we send rockets north of the north pole or south of the south pole?

We seem to only send rockets for a lack of a better term east and west or outwards from the equator. What i would like to know is why we have not sent rockets south of the south pole or north of the north pole. If we have why don't we talk about it and or what did we find? Thanks.

Public Comments

1. Sending rockets from those places would mean setting up bases there and that would be very difficult when looking at the environments there. Its not as if you just launch from a random location, you need to have the rocket and all the equipment and man power and back up support to be there.
2. are you talking about satellites? if so than the reason we send them around the equator is because of the spin of the earth. It makes it alot easier to have a satellite going around the earth at the equator. And the reason we don't send anything north of the north pole is because you can't get any more north than the north pole, same with the south pole.
3. idk
4. Think of the Earth as a ball and your spinning your finger around that ball. Once you get to the top of the ball, can you get any closer to the top? No, you can't, you're at the top. The north pole is the "top" of the Earth. You can't go any further north, because you're already at the northern-most point. Going in any direction will be travelling south. Same for the south pole, the only way is north.
5. I think you mean: Why do we not launch in a N-S orbit that is 90 deg to the equator instead of and E-W that orbits (more or less) in the plane of the equator. the answer is we can. first a rocket goes (almost ) straight up to gain speed and altitude. then it pitches and rolls to the attitude where it gains height (radius from the earth) and tangent speed to get into an elliptical orbit (circle if chosen) that is inclined at an angle to the equatorial plane the earth is still spinning and the orbit plane is fixed relative to the stars. the earth and satellite are still going around the sun. a lot depends on your point of view, earth, sun, earth moon cg etc. that is why the orbital mechanics math guys earn the big bucks You can begin to see how difficult it was for Kepler, Copernicus, and Newton to deduce the orbits of the planets from a rotating moving earth when all they had to work with were the relative observation angles to fixed stars. and they did not know for sure if the stars or the earth was moving
6. in order for a satellite or space ship to reach a "stable" orbit, it has to be traveling at tens of thousands of miles an hour relative to the planet it is circling... by launching a ship from the equator, WITH or in the direction of the earths spin, the vehicle already has thousands of miles per hour velocity.... it can always shift orbit later to reach the poles, but at and shortly after launch..... travelling east on lift off saves TONNES of fuel. After acheiving orbit, if you are talking about travelling south of the south pole or north of the north pole... well, the "solar plane"... all the planets and bodies in the solar system... lie roughly along the same plane as the earths equator. the earth, the sun and most of the planets spin in the same direction and except for some minor axial tilts, they all share a common "equator"... the solar system is basically a disc.... theres just not much of interest "north of north or south of south".... all the cool stuff is either "in or out" from the earths equator in relation to the sun
7. They do have polar orbits which cover more territory than other orbits.