3 ms·

G force isn't even the issue. It's friction from the air as soon as the vehicle leaves the launch contraption.

• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• colechristensen 5y ago
  Mach 6 or 7 at launch? No big deal to mitigate that. On reentry from orbit vehicles are going mach ~25.
  • sidewndr46 5y ago
    Those kind of speeds are common at altitude, in the upper atmosphere. The drag and resulting heat production at sea level would not be as easy to deal with if you were zipping along at Mach 25 right after launch. Even supersonic aircraft don't run full speed (for a whole host of reasons) at sea level.
    • robonerd 5y ago
      The Sprint missile could hit mach 10 from sea level in 5 seconds. But I think by the time it got that fast it would already have considerable altitude.
      • pdoege 5y ago
        Yeah, Spinlaunch is going to dump a lot of energy into the lower atmosphere, shed its glowing white hot shell, and then need get enough deltaV to put up a payload. Anyway, the earliest patent I could find was a steam centripetal launcher in 1918. It never went anywhere and it has been followed by a number of improbable reinventions that all faded away. NASA and the US Army tried again in 1982 and thought they could put a 60g projectile down range at 3 km/s. Mach 8. Guns and rockets could perform as well or better with simpler systems and the idea was shelved. https://patents.google.com/patent/US1332992 https://patents.google.com/patent/US1332992 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982ITM....18..209F/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982ITM....18..209F/abstra...
      • sidewndr46 5y ago
        I hadn't read much about that missile before now, but apparently it got so hot it required an ablative coating just to survive it's very short intercept mission.
• gameswithgo 5y ago
• TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  10,000 g is certainly going to be an issue for anything squishy!