Right, but I was thinking more in terms of how a large percentage of fuel
is usually spent on plowing through the atmosphere with a traditional
vehicle. So if you're "offloading" that work the the electromagnetic
launcher then perhaps you're coming out ahead? Just trying to give the
benefit of the doubt here. I don't personally think it's a economical idea.
The g-forces involved in launch rule out so many kinds of cargo I wonder
what payloads it _would_ be useful for...
On Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 10:42 Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 11 Nov 2021, Anton de Winter wrote:
...it looked like the launcher would provide (iirc) ~25-30% of the delta
V required for orbit which didn't seem like much and therefore not worth
all the hassle. However, I didn't take atmospheric drag into
consideration at all. Maybe that makes things work out better?
Worse -- it means the projectile is slamming through thick air at high
speed, producing nasty aerodynamic and thermal loads, and a substantial
negative delta-V from drag, whereas an ordinary liquid-fuel rocket reaches
such speeds only at high altitude in much thinner air.
Henry