Generally I don’t mind naysayers at all provided they have the education and experience to understand what they are talking about and explain why they hold their view. Sadly several here do not.
Re ski-jumps, it does not take much thought to realise that the ramp delivers any aircraft into free air in a nose up attitude and climbing. This saves the pilot having to arrange all of this when departing from the flat. Indeed back in 1977 when the boffins thought I was exaggerating how easy a jump was compared to a flat takeoff, I gave them the next record with a straight line on the tailplane and aileron traces for 35 secs after crossing the end. At the debrief they showed me the traces and apologised for the instrumentation drop out on the tailplane and aileron channels. I said “It was not a drop out I was not touching the stick - can you have a lower workload than doing nothing?”