Posted on 10/04/2022 2:52:10 PM PDT by Vermont Lt
U.S. startup SpinLaunch — the company that aims to disrupt the rapidly-growing satellite launch industry by catapulting payloads into space with minimal rocket fuel — has just passed a massive test.
(Excerpt) Read more at interestingengineering.com ...
I know someone who works there.
“launched skyward” ... isn’t orbital.
Would like to see some graphs on the functional envelope for this. 100 miles of air is a lot of friction to shoot through. 5,000 MPH starting velocity isn’t 14,000 MPH lateral velocity necessary for low orbit. Release window is very very small, and a millisecond off means a lot of energy going in the wrong (or many) direction. A little extra launch mass means a lot more energy involved.
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I wonder if they were inspired by the spin speed of the Clinton administration?
Can you imagine the Gs if/when this thing gets up to LEO launch speed?
Hopefully their rockets don’t end up as white stains on the blue dress of the sky.
It is probably a good bet we have carried this analogy as far as good taste allows.
Hope that my neighbor’s kitty doesn’t see this. He thinks that all things involving cats are his domain. I have to apologize to him every time I have a CAT scan without him.
This is actually pretty cool although they admit it’s just a prototype.
Something tells me they might encounter intractable problems trying to scale this thing up to escape velocity.
And "Missed it by THAT much" might be very,very ugly.
But something will be learned along the way.
As I’ve heard it said before “You just won the internet”. That’s brilliant.
What kind of payload can take 10,000G? a ball bearing. That’s like 1-2 million lbs for the average human!
Might be an interesting application for laser boosted launches.
10,000 G. Think of what would happen if Michael Moore and Stacey Abrams sat on you.
At least to me. The only thing I can that would together under the forces of the launch is a solid block of metal. I can’t see a sophisticated satellite holding itself together in this machine.
Good question . From the article, weak info.
SpinLaunch has revealed little in the way of concrete details about the test flight, though it did say it had a similar trajectory to its previous tests that flew to altitudes of 30,000 ft (9,150 m).
Back in May, the company added an optical payload to its launch system to capture its test flights in first-person.
So 30,000 , maybe ?
What if those two faced each other ?
They would kiss and make monsters
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