2 ms·

Eh, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, mostly because they appear to be able to attract large amounts of VC funding. When it comes to orbital mec

by phire 9y ago

Eh, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, mostly because they appear to be able to attract large amounts of VC funding. When it comes to orbital mechanics, the idea works. You just need to make your starting velocity high enough after it has decelerated though our atmosphere slows down to orbital velocity. Then you just design your ascent capsule to "deal" with the extreme declaration and heating, which isn't a huge problem: Heat shields exist, and so do g-force hardened electronics. Nobody should be under the impression that this will be used to launched anything other than small specially designed g-force hardened satellites. It's not like "solar freaking roadways" which has blearlying obvious economic and efficiency flaws, the designs for catapult based launchers have been well studied and there is nothing physically stopping them. It's more of a engineering problem. Honestly, I'm more concerned about the engineering practicalities of building an extremely large centrifuge spinning at some absurdly high RPM (presumably at the top of a mountain, so it bypasses some of our atmosphere)

zaarn 9y ago
>Eh, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, mostly because they appear to be able to attract large amounts of VC funding. Just because someone is giving them money doesn't mean they can do it. >When it comes to orbital mechanics, the idea works. Of course it does, similar systems have been suggested for lunar transfers to earth (IIRC). Without atmosphere these systems are trivial to implement and use. (Comparatively) > Heat shields exist, and so do g-force hardened electronics. Heatshields are rather large and expensive. There is also a difference between heatshields for reentry and heatshields you'd need for leaving the atmosphere efficiently. At the moment, heatshields are basically ramming through the air and compressing it in front of the aircraft, this is most efficient in reducing velocity and can reduce the temperature at the shield somewhat. When you fire something through the atmosphere with the goal to get it into a suborbital trajectory you need a different solution; your aircraft becomes a spike/spear, generating friction with air instead of compression. Friction is harder to deal with if I recall correctly from various pages on the topic.

by phire 9y ago

zaarn 9y ago

>Eh, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, mostly because they appear to be able to attract large amounts of VC funding. Just because someone is giving them money doesn't mean they can do it. >When it comes to orbital mechanics, the idea works. Of course it does, similar systems have been suggested for lunar transfers to earth (IIRC). Without atmosphere these systems are trivial to implement and use. (Comparatively) > Heat shields exist, and so do g-force hardened electronics. Heatshields are rather large and expensive. There is also a difference between heatshields for reentry and heatshields you'd need for leaving the atmosphere efficiently. At the moment, heatshields are basically ramming through the air and compressing it in front of the aircraft, this is most efficient in reducing velocity and can reduce the temperature at the shield somewhat. When you fire something through the atmosphere with the goal to get it into a suborbital trajectory you need a different solution; your aircraft becomes a spike/spear, generating friction with air instead of compression. Friction is harder to deal with if I recall correctly from various pages on the topic.