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Like many others I was very skeptical of SpinLaunch's claims. Even with their successful demo launch you wondered if you'd be able to build a viable payload (es

Like many others I was very skeptical of SpinLaunch's claims. Even with their successful demo launch you wondered if you'd be able to build a viable payload (especially one with a rocket motor, not just solid state electronics). Though if NASA have chosen to enter into a contract them that gives a big credibility boost. It'll be very interesting to see how it goes.

belter 5y ago
Hopefully NASA watched this video, before making the contacts public instead of first examining the claims privately. "Spinlaunch: BUSTED!": https://youtu.be/9ziGI0i9VbE https://youtu.be/9ziGI0i9VbE
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Never ever recommend Thunderfoot for anything. He is an embaracing.
  - belter 5y ago
    Your argument would be stronger if you would address the technical challenges he commented on.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      I have years ago stopped watching his videos. He has long ago discredited himself and should not be promoted. He should improve his video making skill beyond 2003 and stop making insulting people a core part of his message. I have no interested in addressing his arguments, whatever they are on SpinLaunch. And I don't want to defend SpinLaunch anyway as it is terrible idea.
      - belter 5y ago
        I think you are taking him too seriously and being maybe being a bit harsh. He is a mix of John Oliver and Johnathan Colbert with a bit of more precise shades of Veritasium. He is primarily producing entertainment, and there is no harm in that. But he does it with a correct scientific background and some humorist tones not everybody appreciates. It's not a purely scientific channel, sometimes he get's some things wrongs, mostly on his opinions about the economics of projects. The only thing I found too many, easily dismissing in this thread, is that when he makes one these busted videos he is also daring to make a statement and they are not random ramblings. For example his first video of SpinLaunch, if you ignore the tone is a much better analysis than the one from Scott Manley, even if Scott Manley is a much better source for anything else related to Space. Can you point me one of those egregious errors he made? Because I looked at this whole thread out of curiosity, and every single commentator criticizing him, did not provide a single concrete example. It's a new genre...Scientific Entertainment ( bit still scientific) Not sure everything in this short life of ours, needs to be taken so seriously:-)
        panick21_ 4y ago
        His fans believe any video by him is the god given be all and and all statement on any topic. He employs a large number dishonest lines of arguments. Drawing large conclusions for limited unrepresentative data. Not actually fairly representing the things he is arguing about. What he does is build narratives to lead viewers to the conclusion he want them to reach. > Can you point me one of those egregious errors he made? Because I looked at this whole thread out of curiosity, and every single commentator criticizing him, did not provide a single concrete example. I have not one of his videos in a long time. I remember watching his videos on Falcon 0 and struck by him clearly have no understanding of the issues with his driving goal seeming to be to gather all possible evidence and building a 'Busted' narrative while ignoring any evidence that points into another direction. In general, looking at his videos he seems to have made a career out of calling Musk an idiot. To be fair their are a lot of low equally low quality channels that made a career out of calling Musk a genius but those are equally stupid. He even attacks some of those channels in his own videos, but its very telling that those are the kinds of channels he interacts with. Because that the level he is playing at. > It's a new genre...Scientific Entertainment ( bit still scientific) Not sure everything in this short life of ours, needs to be taken so seriously:-) You don't have to be serious but I very much get the vibe that he thinks he is very serious and his fans think he is very serious as well. A also think he is deeply unfunny and his videos are pure cringe to watch. Somehow he is a genius who knows everything about everything and yet his videos production quality is worse then a 8 year old on Instagram. His channel is the kind of channel that is designed around making online interactions worse for any topic, not better. This is the kind of video that I find actually helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43ckxS8gJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43ckxS8gJY
- Laremere 5y ago
  "Busted" videos like this are low quality armchair analysis aimed at giving giving the viewer a sense of intellectual superiority. Saying "this solution breaks the laws of physics" can be valid if analysis is done correctly, saying "this problem is hard, and they haven't already solved every single piece of it so their whole business is stupid" is not valid.
  - belter 5y ago
    I agree with you that the video could be more detailed on some of the technical analysis. However it raises enough technical arguments, to justify any approach to SpinLaunch to be done in private and with a very skeptical attitude.
    - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
      Presumably NASA, who's paying for test launches, did a more thorough analysis than a YouTuber.
      - belter 5y ago
        Only thing NASA seems to have contracted the company for is for a technology demonstrator, of throwing a small rocket at Mach 2. The article describes it like they are throwing satellites into orbit. In reality even the far fetched plan, is to throw a small rocket into high altitude to save money on the first stage. Then the rocket is what will put the satellite in orbit. I can't find a single reference to this agreement (yet) in any NASA official site. Not saying it's not real, just that I can't find an official NASA reference yet. It's not yet listed here under the current available ongoing agreements: "Current Space Act Agreements" https://www.nasa.gov/partnerships/about.html https://www.nasa.gov/partnerships/about.html
        attilaperez 5y ago
        Theranos had Walgreens, Nikola had GM...
  - 5y ago
- gchadwick 5y ago
  Well I would hope NASA is doing their due diligence. Perhaps though there's a big push to invest in private space and they're not looking too closely at lower value/more speculative prospects.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I can't tell if you're joking.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Ah of course it's thundrfoot. His phosphine "debunking" video was high on "hot takes" but low on actual intellectual honesty There are ways of criticizing and going about that don't involve patronizing and shallow dismissals
- blackholesRhot 5y ago
  FYI I'm a Spinlaunch invesetor. Just watched this video. His argument for why Spinlaunch won't work is basically: 1) in the video of their first test chamber (12m diameter) there's some dirt and rust, therefore they don't know anything about vacuums 2) in their first ever test fire of a projectile leaving their 33m chamber, the projectile is wobbling, therefore they don't know anything 3) in a mock up video they made of a future launch system the headquarters is close to the launcher, which might explode if there's a misfire, therefore they don't know anything 4) the founder has an uninspiring resume when you look online 'Add these up and there's no chance they'll succeed. What they've done isn't as impressive as 50+ year old gunships.' Give me a break. Their rate of progress is exceptional. They've already overcome so many challenges. These are weak arguments. Doesn't mean they'll be successful. But these arguments are weak. Some quick counter-arguments 1-) the 12m test chamber was a demo chamber. they were constantly spinning it up and letting people go inside. doing tours. stress testing new materials and arms. blowing stuff up. if anything the fact that it was so reliable even with the imperfections is a positive 2-) when someone is learning to throw a football there's tons of wobble. spinlaunch needs to figure out a perfect spiral. these videos were from their first couple attempts ever out of a chamber. what they're showing is very hard. this team has shown an ability to innovate and improve. those were images of their first few attempts to "throw the football" 3-) give the team some credit. these videos are designed for the general public. what they built already has an incredible amount of kinetic energy. they stress tested many tethers (past their limits) before going to this scale. when you're picking on things as small as "they're going to kill themselves by sitting right next to the system" you clearly don't have much left to nitpick 4-) jonathan is an absolute genius. just because he has a spartan online bio and unorthodox background doesn't mean he's not an absolute force of nature. thunderf00t is a very smart dude. but i'd bet anything that in a debate -- on basically any topic -- jonathan would absolutely decimate thunderf00t cheers to the builders
  - sebzim4500 5y ago
    >thunderf00t is a very smart dude I just saw one of his videos on why Falcon 9 will never be economically viable so I would strongly disagree with this assessment.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  I really hope NASA is making better use of taxpayer dollars than paying their decision-makers to watch clickbait trash on Youtube. How any serious person could take this sort of thing seriously is beyond me.
- rozab 5y ago
  Richard Woolley springs to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_van_der_Riet_Woolley#Views_on_the_practicality_of_space_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_van_der_Riet_Woolley#V...
colechristensen 5y ago
Launch conditions are already very harsh. Rockets vibrate a lot. I have no doubt that useful payloads could be designed to withstand the spinning as well as later rocket thrusts. (source: a couple of years on a satellite design project in university)
- consumer451 5y ago
  One other detail I've learned is that the G load increase is incremental, not all at once. Which apparently is very significant according to the company.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ColinWright 5y ago
    The G load increase is comparatively slow, but the release is pretty sudden. Lots of things "bounce" in funny ways when you put them under very large loads, then release that load suddenly.
    - consumer451 5y ago
      OK, so my knowledge of physics is lacking, but wouldn't the decrease of non-centrifugal G-load also be a bit slow as it takes the atmosphere some time to slow down the speed of the projectile?
      - ColinWright 5y ago
        During spin-up the lateral force on the projectile increases slowly until it reaches maximum. When it's released, this load disappears almost instantaneously and the object is effectively in free-fall ... effectively 0g. Then it hits the atmosphere and is subjected to significant drag, but that onset is reasonably slow (by some metric) compared with the release mentioned above, but it's along a different axis. What's more, the projectile has spin along its long axis ... I don't know how that's imparted. Yeah, there are some huge forces that change rapidly in lots of directions.
dotnet00 5y ago
I think their basic idea is sound, it'll probably eventually function. My concerns are if it'll be worth it, since there's a trade-off being made between fuel mass and heat shield mass, and at least based on Scott Manley's summary video this week, the rocket with the heat shield is close to the same mass as the Electron rocket. In which case I'm not sure the complexity of SpinLaunch is worth it. Edit: the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Phy3n_S3ng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Phy3n_S3ng and a more honest and detailed look at the company, again from Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0
- gnramires 5y ago
  I haven't seen Scott Manley's video; but if the mass cost of a heatshield is so significant that's a problem. However, there's a benefit in this case: heat shield probably scales with area (often something like mass^(2/3)), making it progressively less significant compared to fuel mass (which is roughly a constant fraction, i.e. it scales like mass^(1)). I think a high altitude launch site could make a significant difference as well (although that creates other logistic inconveniences). Atmospheric pressure approximately halves every 5km, and air resistance is roughly proportional to pressure.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    Building and SpinLaunching at above 10k feet (3km) seems like a no-brainer. It reduces heating and weight while increasing terminal altitude substantially... like 2x. It would be more efficient, if they could use a whip effect to (match impedance) capture much more of the rotational energy they put into the spin, more like a trebuchet.
    - Schroedingersat 5y ago
      Is there any material strong enough to provide the whip? Or would you just make the spinning part slower?
    - sacrosancty 5y ago
paxys 5y ago
There is no launch contract, just a planned test.
adastra22 5y ago
It cannot be a coincidence that spinlaunch’s first stage (the spin) is designed to release at a speed equal to trans-earth injection from the lunar surface, and with a total mass equal to what a starship can deliver to the lunar surface. They’re playing the long game.
- phire 5y ago
  What's currently worth mining on the moon and sending back to earth? Most resources are great for building more things on the moon, but valuable enough to send back. Helium-3 is the obvious one, but that is also betting on fusion reactors becoming viable in the near future. Some "rare earth" minerals might also be economically viable.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    Water, Oxygen, Hydrogen, possibly aluminium. Not to send back to Earth, but into Earth orbit to use as consumables and fuel. And these bulk materials aren’t going to be bothered by G forces.
    - phire 5y ago
      Ah yes. I forgot that you might want consumables in earth's orbit itself. Silicon could be useful in orbit for building solar panels.
  - adastra22 5y ago
    Rare, but industrially useful metals (cobalt, lithium, etc.) should be present in localized concentrations of high-grade ore on the lunar surface, along with platinum-group metals. We didn't use to think so, but our understanding of regolith and impact dynamics has come pretty far in the last few years and we now expect that a lot of the small impact craters on the moon asteroid cores that survived and are either dispersed in the crater floor, or for metallic impactors buried a few 10's of meters underground. So basically everything you would go to the asteroid belt to get, you can find on the lunar surface, far more accessible to humans in the decades to come. But beyond that, the moon will no doubt export large amounts of volatiles from the permanently shadowed craters in the poles, and structural building materials for construction in Earth orbit or elsewhere in cis-lunar space, or the fueling of expeditions to the rest of the solar system. You'd just have to tilt the spin launcher to a different angle and adjust the throw velocity to send payloads on other trajectories through cis-lunar space.
bArray 5y ago
> Though if NASA have chosen to enter into a contract them that gives a big credibility boost. It'll be very interesting to see how it goes. NASA also funded experiments into the microwave engine thing [1], and that turned out to be bunk [2]. The point is, these are just tests. They give them a fair shake and see what happens. I highly suspect there are simply too many problems with flinging stuff into space for it to be practical. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nasa-impossible-emdrive-physics-peer-review-space-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nasa-impo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Plus the soul of NASA is innovating material and techniques for doing what can't yet be done -- even attempting the plainly impossible is likely to give engineers a fair shot at inventing something novel just trying to make it work.

belter 5y ago

Hopefully NASA watched this video, before making the contacts public instead of first examining the claims privately. "Spinlaunch: BUSTED!": https://youtu.be/9ziGI0i9VbE https://youtu.be/9ziGI0i9VbE

panick21_ 5y ago
Never ever recommend Thunderfoot for anything. He is an embaracing.
- belter 5y ago
  Your argument would be stronger if you would address the technical challenges he commented on.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    I have years ago stopped watching his videos. He has long ago discredited himself and should not be promoted. He should improve his video making skill beyond 2003 and stop making insulting people a core part of his message. I have no interested in addressing his arguments, whatever they are on SpinLaunch. And I don't want to defend SpinLaunch anyway as it is terrible idea.
    - belter 5y ago
      I think you are taking him too seriously and being maybe being a bit harsh. He is a mix of John Oliver and Johnathan Colbert with a bit of more precise shades of Veritasium. He is primarily producing entertainment, and there is no harm in that. But he does it with a correct scientific background and some humorist tones not everybody appreciates. It's not a purely scientific channel, sometimes he get's some things wrongs, mostly on his opinions about the economics of projects. The only thing I found too many, easily dismissing in this thread, is that when he makes one these busted videos he is also daring to make a statement and they are not random ramblings. For example his first video of SpinLaunch, if you ignore the tone is a much better analysis than the one from Scott Manley, even if Scott Manley is a much better source for anything else related to Space. Can you point me one of those egregious errors he made? Because I looked at this whole thread out of curiosity, and every single commentator criticizing him, did not provide a single concrete example. It's a new genre...Scientific Entertainment ( bit still scientific) Not sure everything in this short life of ours, needs to be taken so seriously:-)
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        His fans believe any video by him is the god given be all and and all statement on any topic. He employs a large number dishonest lines of arguments. Drawing large conclusions for limited unrepresentative data. Not actually fairly representing the things he is arguing about. What he does is build narratives to lead viewers to the conclusion he want them to reach. > Can you point me one of those egregious errors he made? Because I looked at this whole thread out of curiosity, and every single commentator criticizing him, did not provide a single concrete example. I have not one of his videos in a long time. I remember watching his videos on Falcon 0 and struck by him clearly have no understanding of the issues with his driving goal seeming to be to gather all possible evidence and building a 'Busted' narrative while ignoring any evidence that points into another direction. In general, looking at his videos he seems to have made a career out of calling Musk an idiot. To be fair their are a lot of low equally low quality channels that made a career out of calling Musk a genius but those are equally stupid. He even attacks some of those channels in his own videos, but its very telling that those are the kinds of channels he interacts with. Because that the level he is playing at. > It's a new genre...Scientific Entertainment ( bit still scientific) Not sure everything in this short life of ours, needs to be taken so seriously:-) You don't have to be serious but I very much get the vibe that he thinks he is very serious and his fans think he is very serious as well. A also think he is deeply unfunny and his videos are pure cringe to watch. Somehow he is a genius who knows everything about everything and yet his videos production quality is worse then a 8 year old on Instagram. His channel is the kind of channel that is designed around making online interactions worse for any topic, not better. This is the kind of video that I find actually helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43ckxS8gJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43ckxS8gJY
Laremere 5y ago
"Busted" videos like this are low quality armchair analysis aimed at giving giving the viewer a sense of intellectual superiority. Saying "this solution breaks the laws of physics" can be valid if analysis is done correctly, saying "this problem is hard, and they haven't already solved every single piece of it so their whole business is stupid" is not valid.
- belter 5y ago
  I agree with you that the video could be more detailed on some of the technical analysis. However it raises enough technical arguments, to justify any approach to SpinLaunch to be done in private and with a very skeptical attitude.
  - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
    Presumably NASA, who's paying for test launches, did a more thorough analysis than a YouTuber.
    - belter 5y ago
      Only thing NASA seems to have contracted the company for is for a technology demonstrator, of throwing a small rocket at Mach 2. The article describes it like they are throwing satellites into orbit. In reality even the far fetched plan, is to throw a small rocket into high altitude to save money on the first stage. Then the rocket is what will put the satellite in orbit. I can't find a single reference to this agreement (yet) in any NASA official site. Not saying it's not real, just that I can't find an official NASA reference yet. It's not yet listed here under the current available ongoing agreements: "Current Space Act Agreements" https://www.nasa.gov/partnerships/about.html https://www.nasa.gov/partnerships/about.html
      - attilaperez 5y ago
        Theranos had Walgreens, Nikola had GM...
- 5y ago
gchadwick 5y ago
Well I would hope NASA is doing their due diligence. Perhaps though there's a big push to invest in private space and they're not looking too closely at lower value/more speculative prospects.
colechristensen 5y ago
I can't tell if you're joking.
raverbashing 5y ago
Ah of course it's thundrfoot. His phosphine "debunking" video was high on "hot takes" but low on actual intellectual honesty There are ways of criticizing and going about that don't involve patronizing and shallow dismissals
blackholesRhot 5y ago
FYI I'm a Spinlaunch invesetor. Just watched this video. His argument for why Spinlaunch won't work is basically: 1) in the video of their first test chamber (12m diameter) there's some dirt and rust, therefore they don't know anything about vacuums 2) in their first ever test fire of a projectile leaving their 33m chamber, the projectile is wobbling, therefore they don't know anything 3) in a mock up video they made of a future launch system the headquarters is close to the launcher, which might explode if there's a misfire, therefore they don't know anything 4) the founder has an uninspiring resume when you look online 'Add these up and there's no chance they'll succeed. What they've done isn't as impressive as 50+ year old gunships.' Give me a break. Their rate of progress is exceptional. They've already overcome so many challenges. These are weak arguments. Doesn't mean they'll be successful. But these arguments are weak. Some quick counter-arguments 1-) the 12m test chamber was a demo chamber. they were constantly spinning it up and letting people go inside. doing tours. stress testing new materials and arms. blowing stuff up. if anything the fact that it was so reliable even with the imperfections is a positive 2-) when someone is learning to throw a football there's tons of wobble. spinlaunch needs to figure out a perfect spiral. these videos were from their first couple attempts ever out of a chamber. what they're showing is very hard. this team has shown an ability to innovate and improve. those were images of their first few attempts to "throw the football" 3-) give the team some credit. these videos are designed for the general public. what they built already has an incredible amount of kinetic energy. they stress tested many tethers (past their limits) before going to this scale. when you're picking on things as small as "they're going to kill themselves by sitting right next to the system" you clearly don't have much left to nitpick 4-) jonathan is an absolute genius. just because he has a spartan online bio and unorthodox background doesn't mean he's not an absolute force of nature. thunderf00t is a very smart dude. but i'd bet anything that in a debate -- on basically any topic -- jonathan would absolutely decimate thunderf00t cheers to the builders
- sebzim4500 5y ago
  >thunderf00t is a very smart dude I just saw one of his videos on why Falcon 9 will never be economically viable so I would strongly disagree with this assessment.
caconym_ 5y ago
I really hope NASA is making better use of taxpayer dollars than paying their decision-makers to watch clickbait trash on Youtube. How any serious person could take this sort of thing seriously is beyond me.
rozab 5y ago
Richard Woolley springs to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_van_der_Riet_Woolley#Views_on_the_practicality_of_space_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_van_der_Riet_Woolley#V...

colechristensen 5y ago

Launch conditions are already very harsh. Rockets vibrate a lot. I have no doubt that useful payloads could be designed to withstand the spinning as well as later rocket thrusts. (source: a couple of years on a satellite design project in university)

consumer451 5y ago
One other detail I've learned is that the G load increase is incremental, not all at once. Which apparently is very significant according to the company.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ColinWright 5y ago
  The G load increase is comparatively slow, but the release is pretty sudden. Lots of things "bounce" in funny ways when you put them under very large loads, then release that load suddenly.
  - consumer451 5y ago
    OK, so my knowledge of physics is lacking, but wouldn't the decrease of non-centrifugal G-load also be a bit slow as it takes the atmosphere some time to slow down the speed of the projectile?
    - ColinWright 5y ago
      During spin-up the lateral force on the projectile increases slowly until it reaches maximum. When it's released, this load disappears almost instantaneously and the object is effectively in free-fall ... effectively 0g. Then it hits the atmosphere and is subjected to significant drag, but that onset is reasonably slow (by some metric) compared with the release mentioned above, but it's along a different axis. What's more, the projectile has spin along its long axis ... I don't know how that's imparted. Yeah, there are some huge forces that change rapidly in lots of directions.

dotnet00 5y ago

I think their basic idea is sound, it'll probably eventually function. My concerns are if it'll be worth it, since there's a trade-off being made between fuel mass and heat shield mass, and at least based on Scott Manley's summary video this week, the rocket with the heat shield is close to the same mass as the Electron rocket. In which case I'm not sure the complexity of SpinLaunch is worth it. Edit: the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Phy3n_S3ng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Phy3n_S3ng and a more honest and detailed look at the company, again from Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0

gnramires 5y ago
I haven't seen Scott Manley's video; but if the mass cost of a heatshield is so significant that's a problem. However, there's a benefit in this case: heat shield probably scales with area (often something like mass^(2/3)), making it progressively less significant compared to fuel mass (which is roughly a constant fraction, i.e. it scales like mass^(1)). I think a high altitude launch site could make a significant difference as well (although that creates other logistic inconveniences). Atmospheric pressure approximately halves every 5km, and air resistance is roughly proportional to pressure.
- kurthr 5y ago
  Building and SpinLaunching at above 10k feet (3km) seems like a no-brainer. It reduces heating and weight while increasing terminal altitude substantially... like 2x. It would be more efficient, if they could use a whip effect to (match impedance) capture much more of the rotational energy they put into the spin, more like a trebuchet.
  - Schroedingersat 5y ago
    Is there any material strong enough to provide the whip? Or would you just make the spinning part slower?
  - sacrosancty 5y ago

paxys 5y ago

There is no launch contract, just a planned test.

adastra22 5y ago

It cannot be a coincidence that spinlaunch’s first stage (the spin) is designed to release at a speed equal to trans-earth injection from the lunar surface, and with a total mass equal to what a starship can deliver to the lunar surface. They’re playing the long game.

phire 5y ago
What's currently worth mining on the moon and sending back to earth? Most resources are great for building more things on the moon, but valuable enough to send back. Helium-3 is the obvious one, but that is also betting on fusion reactors becoming viable in the near future. Some "rare earth" minerals might also be economically viable.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  Water, Oxygen, Hydrogen, possibly aluminium. Not to send back to Earth, but into Earth orbit to use as consumables and fuel. And these bulk materials aren’t going to be bothered by G forces.
  - phire 5y ago
    Ah yes. I forgot that you might want consumables in earth's orbit itself. Silicon could be useful in orbit for building solar panels.
- adastra22 5y ago
  Rare, but industrially useful metals (cobalt, lithium, etc.) should be present in localized concentrations of high-grade ore on the lunar surface, along with platinum-group metals. We didn't use to think so, but our understanding of regolith and impact dynamics has come pretty far in the last few years and we now expect that a lot of the small impact craters on the moon asteroid cores that survived and are either dispersed in the crater floor, or for metallic impactors buried a few 10's of meters underground. So basically everything you would go to the asteroid belt to get, you can find on the lunar surface, far more accessible to humans in the decades to come. But beyond that, the moon will no doubt export large amounts of volatiles from the permanently shadowed craters in the poles, and structural building materials for construction in Earth orbit or elsewhere in cis-lunar space, or the fueling of expeditions to the rest of the solar system. You'd just have to tilt the spin launcher to a different angle and adjust the throw velocity to send payloads on other trajectories through cis-lunar space.

bArray 5y ago

> Though if NASA have chosen to enter into a contract them that gives a big credibility boost. It'll be very interesting to see how it goes. NASA also funded experiments into the microwave engine thing [1], and that turned out to be bunk [2]. The point is, these are just tests. They give them a fair shake and see what happens. I highly suspect there are simply too many problems with flinging stuff into space for it to be practical. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nasa-impossible-emdrive-physics-peer-review-space-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nasa-impo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster

jazzyjackson 5y ago
Plus the soul of NASA is innovating material and techniques for doing what can't yet be done -- even attempting the plainly impossible is likely to give engineers a fair shot at inventing something novel just trying to make it work.