4 ms·
It might be feasible to use a mass driver to substitute for a first stage, especially if the mass driver mouth is high enough up to substantially reduce air res
by Symmetry 7y ago
It might be feasible to use a mass driver to substitute for a first stage, especially if the mass driver mouth is high enough up to substantially reduce air resistance on the things coming out - the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro say. But that would be at most a few km/s of the 8 you need to get into low Earth orbit.
- loeg 7y agoYeah, you need a 2nd stage to make it remotely viable. A single stage mass driver would need to have escape velocity minus drag loss at the exit mouth, which is vastly faster than any real chemical rocket is going at ~10-15 km elevation, where the air is still reasonably dense. Also, 10-15 km is around the range of Max Q for real-world rockets and given the equation, q = 0.5 p v², a higher velocity is going to result in some extreme structural stress.