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Starlinks are pizzabox-shaped. That's a terrible shape to launch unless you have a stack of them, and this won't be able to launch a stack of them. As for barr
by jhgb 5y ago
Starlinks are pizzabox-shaped. That's a terrible shape to launch unless you have a stack of them, and this won't be able to launch a stack of them.
As for barrel wear...it's possible that that would be higher than for a normal gun, but I'm pretty sure that the rather famous author of that design took that into consideration. (It doesn't seem like SpinLaunch's design is immune to firing wear either, considering the sudden rush of air into a space with hypersonic machinery in motion.)
- Retric 5y agoYou can have a door close behind the projectile to limit the amount of air that gets into the main chamber. I suspect spin launch to include that simply to reduce the amount of vacuum pumping needed. The idea showed up on one of the early space gun designs for similar reasons. Starlink’s shape is optimized for it’s launch system, while I doubt spaceX is going to use a competitor anytime soon they would seriously consider sufficient cost savings.