Totally this is reasonable, but, I flew in AK (and a couple thousand hours in the lower 48 too) professionally for over a decade, there are other advantages up here? Not nearly as many thunderstorms up here.

Icing might be a problem? I would expect there to be basically no reasonable icing accretion possible well before max q? But I'm not sure because that's not my field.

Regardless, if we're going to be building data centers in space to avoid NIMBYs, we can build rocket infrastructure in Alaska to avoid NIMBYs too. And other infrastructure too? Maybe. I know the SpinLaunch lunatics (I mean that in the most loving way, I love that crazy idea even though it seems insane to me) were getting some sort of permit to launch from Adak. I have been out there a few times and I wish we would try to build more infrastructure out there too... with the NW passage being more traversable due to global warming there's could be a lot more infrastructure there too.

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Polizeiposaune 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Icing? Watch slow-mo video of any cryogenic liquid-fuelled rocket taking off; you see a shower of ice shards falling off when the engines start.

Liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants are loaded at cryogenic temperatures -- boiling point is -183C for O2, -161C for CH4; SpaceX does some amount of subcooling so the propellants may be even cooler than that.

Ice accumulation while just sitting on the pad is a given, even in tropical climates (the water just freezes out of the air). Might even be a greater problem in (say) florida or louisiana than in Alaska given higher humidity.

	▲	piloto_ciego 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, my thought would be on the way up? Like, you punch into the first layer and get icing on the nose of the rocket? That would largely be my only concern up here, and turbulence? I don’t know how well large rockets do in rough air? That said, cape chiniak is on Kodiak and some of the absolute worst “turn you nearly every way but loose turbulence” I’ve ever seen has been down wind of terrain around ADQ? But going up that seems like less of a problem, or only a problem for a few dozen thousand feet? I’ve accumulation on the forward end of the rocket and associated drag was what I was thinking. Regardless, I’d really like to see more space industry stuff up here.