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Russian Supply Rocket Malfunctions, Breaks Up Over Siberia En Route To ISS (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: An unmanned cargo rocket bound for the International Space Station was destroyed after takeoff on Thursday. The Russian rocket took off as planned from Baikonur, Kazahkstan, on Thursday morning but stopped transmitting data about six minutes into its flight, as NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reported: "'Russian officials say the spacecraft failed [...] when it was about 100 miles above a remote part of Siberia. The ship was carrying more than 2 1/2 tons of supplies -- including food, fuel and clothes. Most of that very likely burned up as the unmanned spacecraft fell back toward Earth. NASA says the six crew members on board the International Space station, including two Americans, are well stocked for now.'" This is the fourth botched launch of an unmanned Russian rocket in the past two years. Roscomos officials wrote in an update today: "According to preliminary information, the contingency took place at an altitude of about 190 km over remote and unpopulated mountainous area of the Republic of Tyva. The most of cargo spacecraft fragments burned in the dense atmosphere. The State Commission is conducting analysis of the current contingency. The loss of the cargo ship will not affect the normal operations of the ISS and the life of the station crew."
Apparently, it was rather Tuva and bust .
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Usually they don't wait for upper atmosphere for starting the gravity turn - Apollo started the roll and pitch program at 15 seconds into flight, having only cleared the tower 5 seconds before. For altitude reference, the Apollo 11 flight plan has them passing 14,000 feet at 51 seconds into flight.
But you are correct - orbit is mostly not about altitude, rather it's about going fast enough horizontally to continually fall back to Earth and miss.
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You should probably add that one of the key reasons for this being that they don't want debris to fall back down onto the launch facility, either 'cause something goes wrong early on or because a stage gets jettisoned.
Also, it is actually more economical to start the turn early on, it gives you a way better flight profile that also puts less stress onto the parts.
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