CW: It’s a video of the incident.

Not graphic but still…

So spaceplanes are a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceplane

But they do take off vertically. From my experiemce with kerbal space program, it’s because of the density of the atmosphere. The closer to sea level, the denser the atmosphere and the more drag from air resistance. So instead of burning a ton of fuel trying to get through the thick atmosphere, you go straight up until it’s thinner and then you start to turn. Makes a huge difference.

There’s also the fact that bigger rockets with more fuel create more drag so the solution isn’t “just make it bigger”

You can just search ip on ddg and it’ll show you