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Lotta coulds, ifs and mights in this breathless koolaid-drinker's puff piece (actually he's probably just a shill). Lotta rendered images and animations. Lotta lack of anything tangible. Lotta totally irrelevant misdirection in the bottom half of the puff piece.
This isn't a news piece. Nothing new has been done with this idea. It's basically an ad (for vaporware). The headline is technically misleading, as no such thing has been done yet.
Thunderf00t busted this three years ago: https://youtu.be/9ziGI0i9VbE
Vaporware then, vaporware now
Engineers who spent their whole childhood watching Loony Toons: βMy time has come!β
You can (theoretically) reach "space" with a single impulse from earth's surface, but you cannot achieve earth orbit that way. To make orbit, you need a circularization burn at apogee to raise your perigee above the atmosphere. Otherwise, its ballistic trajectory will cause your spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere.
Yeah, this is just a first stage replacement. You still need a rocket to get most of the way into orbit.
The first stage counts for the bulk of the fuel and total mass, so this would still be a big deal.
Yeah definitely. The way the rocket equation works out, the second stage gives most of the Delta V, but the first stage needs to be much bigger because it needs to lift itself and the second stage.
I only understand what you're talking about because of Kerbal Space Program
I only know it because of Kerbal Space Program. :)
In theory, with an impulse hard enough to reach the moons orbital altitude, you could get a slingshot maneuver that leaves your object in a highly elliptical orbit around earth without burning fuel, but it would eventually be unstable from the moons gravitational pull changing it.
I haven't see any kind of news or update from them in over a year
Yeah looks like they ran out of money.
Actually, I stand corrected. It looks like they raised $11.5 million a few months ago and are working on a ruggedized little satellite that would survive their centrifuge.
Also, "founder and CEO Jonathan Yaney left the company" ?
https://payloadspace.com/spinlaunch-raises-11-5m-to-hurl-more-spacecraft-into-the-sky/
No wonder no one trusts the news when they make clickbait headliens like this
Has it ever launched anything into orbital altitudes yet? So it's like AI, then? Let's pour money into it asap!
I remember watching debunking video of this years ago. If I remember right, the problem was how to stop a projectile (a rocket in this case) from spining once it's released. I need to find that video ...
I did watch that and there are problems but the debunking video itself was really bad and acted like there were problems that had already been addressed in the video it was a direct response too. It still seems like a crazy idea but they have had test launches and there didn't seem to be a spinning issue.
There are many more problems... Creating that vacuum takes time and the centripetal forces involved limit what you can launch. Mammals and complex machinery are a no-go.
OK, but couldn't the item have some small thrusters with a control system to cancel out any tumbling/spinning once it's launched? That would require some fuel, but a lot less than required for a traditional launch...
And wouldn't fins like on an arrow take care of stabilizing spin around the major(?) axis?
Pls don't flame me, I'm not a physicist or rocket-scientist :)
Did it tumble during it's test launch?
Can we use this to throw people we don't like?
It would squish them first.
That's fine we didn't like them to begin with.
Spin your enemies at high speeds in a vacuum until they're dead then launch their corpses into space
Throwing them is gonna kill them anyway, squishing is fine
I want it to work because it would be so fuckin cool. Yeet my ashes into orbit pls.
Launcher may handle 10,000 g's, but satellites tend to be kind of fragile
How many oceangates is that? Can we send CEOs in it?
euthanasiacoaster without the extra steps
Satellites have to go through shock and vibe testing based on the vehicle bringing them up, satellites using spinlaunch will need to be built around it.
Youβd be surprised how well modern cubesats are already designed implicitly with high-G components. There was a video about them testing an βoff-the-shelfβ sat from a professor and it held up with only some minor modifications.
Why not use a magnetic launch and put rockets on a rail gun? You could put it on an inclination and accelerate that sucker over multiple kilometers if you wanted to in order to build up the velocity you need. The g-forces would be concentrated in one direction Wouldn't that reduce the number of problems?
The spin launch thing is easier to do than what you're proposing.
A straight rail gun would require INCREDIBLY LARGE amounts of energy to be outputted in minimal time.
The spin launch contraption inputs energy into the spinning hand or whatever slowly over time. The spinning hand stores this energy as rotational energy. This way, while the payload has to go through high g forces for a longer time, you don't need fancy apparatus to input energy.
When it's time to launch, the hand suddenly lets go of the payload, instantaneously converting all that energy to kinetic energy.
The challenge here ofc is to make the hand VERY strong. That's why it's literally a block of carbon fiber.
I really want this thing to work, but uk... They haven't demonstrated any significant breakthroughs yet. I just hope they don't run out of funding before showcasing something substantial.
Let's all go reread "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."
Haven't heard from these guys in a very long time. Good to see they're still going and actually making successful test launches.
I'm disappointed it's not a trebuchet
