Posted on 10/03/2017 10:07:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
“A generation-1 StarTram design intended to launch cargo vessels will feature a 81-mile tube built up the side of a mountain to reach a launch altitude of 12,0000 to 20,000 feet. The Andes Mountains of Chile or the White Sands Missile Range of southern New Mexico might be ideal locations.”
An 81 mile underground tube = financially impractical.
Cost, cost, cost is ALWAYS a consideration and cannot be dismissed just because the idea sounds “neat”. Witness the Concorde supersonic airliner. Cool idea, financially impractical.
For a projected 81 mile trip, the trip/launch would take about 20 seconds.
No human could survive that kind of acceleration.
Yes!
It took something like 40 launches to build the ISS. Using BFR and Bigelo Aerospace’s largest modules, it would only take two launches to build another space station of equal inside volume.
Ping
The answer to headlines that
pose a question is usually “no.”
Sounds like they are onto something. I doubt they are the first to think of it, since it seemed like an old idea when I posted some wild speculation on FR a couple of years ago. Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
Read the same about railguns years ago.
Oh, I don't know. The Channel Tunnel is 31 miles long, so I don't think the tunneling technology is going to be the long pole in tent for this project.
Sealing the tunnel so it can be evacuated, actually evacuating 81 miles of atmosphere from the tunnel, and the aforementioned electromagnetic drive energy generation, storage, and delivery challenges would kill the project long before digging an 81 mile long tunnel would.
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