4 ms·
I don't see how this will work. You need to launch through the entire atmosphere and still end up with orbital velocity. The only acceleration happens at the be
by wkat4242 2y ago
I don't see how this will work. You need to launch through the entire atmosphere and still end up with orbital velocity. The only acceleration happens at the beginning so you must launch at speeds much higher than orbital speeds. Which in turn means heating will be insanely high as your highest speed is going to be at the highest drag. The satellite will heat up a lot more than one simply re-entering. Meaning a totally different design or a bulky fairing. Because sats aren't made to withstand that kind of heat. Also yes the forces will be extreme. They seem to be going for the fairing, but how does that reenter then?
I just don't see this happening tbh.
Besides, with spacex and reusability launch capacity is already more available and cheap enough than humanity needs.
- stevage 2y agoYou're missing the fact there's a second stage.
- lalalandland 2y agoInsane g-force in the spin up. Reminds me of Gerald Bull who wanted to launch a satellite using a huge artillery piece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull
- wcoenen 2y agoIt is not possible to go into orbit from a single speed boost at the surface, even without an atmosphere, because the "orbit" would still contain the starting point. In other words, the orbit would intersect with the surface of Earth. (Well, unless you go all the way to escape velocity.) To fix this, an additional "apogee kick" is needed. The Spinlaunch concept is to get a small rocket + payload to 60 km altitude. Then the rocket would fire and actually put the payload in orbit. The catapult would only provide up to 2 km/s out of the ~ 10 km/s or so required to get to orbit. Saving those 2 km/s of rocket delta-v could be significant, because rocket size goes up exponentially with delta-v.