4 ms·
This may be a stupid question, but why not do 2 stages, like today ? The railgun replaces the first stage but there's a second stage, like today, that gives all
by rakoo 11y ago
This may be a stupid question, but why not do 2 stages, like today ? The railgun replaces the first stage but there's a second stage, like today, that gives all the lateral velocity.
- logfromblammo 11y agoStage I of a Saturn V contributes a maximum of about 3600 m/s of delta-v. Replacing a first stage of that magnitude would require a 3g acceleration track 220 km long. It still takes a lot of launches before the track starts to be cheaper than just building a new first stage for each launch. It takes a lot more if the first stage rocket is reusable.
- rakoo 11y agoThere has been documented tests of railguns launching raw material around those speeds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun#Tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun#Tests). As the sibling comment said, there's no reason to limit ourselves to 3g (yet), and indeed someone laid out a plan to launch material to space with a railgun, where the first "stage" would be a railgun and the second stage would be a traditional rocket (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun#Launch_or_launch_assist_of_spacecraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun#Launch_or_launch_assis...). It says that acceleration can reach a little less than 2000g. Unfortunately I haven't found any realization of this.