It'd be good launching consumables like fuel and the like. Elon does
want to do orbital fuelling and he doesn't seem the sort to be too proud
about where he gets it from.
A tricky part would be circularising the orbit though, whatever you do
to do that needs to survive the launch and when it doesn't I wonder how
accurately where it's going to hit the dirt can be determined.
Talk about noise abatement though. What's the SPL of a few tonne
projectile at mach 35 at low altitude?
On 23/02/18 18:30, Jonathan Goff wrote:
Bernard,
Since the centrifuge is located inside a vacuum chamber (I'm trying to stick to only the details from the article), that probably puts some pretty solid limits on the practical radius of the spin launch system. Doing the math, and using the velocity numbers they gave in the article (~1300m/s) implies several thousand Gs. To be fair, that is quite a bit less than you see from an artillery round (those get up to 60,000Gs), and they have successfully put computers and guidance packages on those, so it isn't impossible that they could adapt that for launching some subset of satellites that could be hardened enough... But I wouldn't quite classify it as a "very acceptable minimum".
Ben, Lars,
I've seen a bit more of what they're doing and it's actually a lot better thought-out than that article implies. I'm not convinced they'll put all normal rockets out of business, especially with how much hardening would likely be required to fly on their vehicle, but if they raise the money, I think they've got a decent shot at making their system work, and finding a niche they could compete in. Not as good of a chance as say the top 5 current expendable smallsat launch startups (RocketLabs, Virgin Orbit, a certain other Bay Area stealth rocket startup that got outed this week, Generation Orbit, and Vector), since you all are going after a more straightforward technical challenge with lots of past existence proofs. But I'd give them better odds than most of the other less-well-funded expendable smallsat launch startups that seem to appear every month or so.
~Jon
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 11:30 PM, Bernard Pritchard <bernard.7gen@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:bernard.7gen@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Actually, if he can get around the heating, the G-forces can be
held to a very acceptable minimum. It all comes down to the radius
of his launcher. Do the math for yourselves.
Bernie Pritchard.
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 10:04 PM, Lars Osborne
<lars.osborne@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:lars.osborne@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
The next time anyone claims that V.C.'s are careful investors
who look at technology fundamentals, I will show them this.
Thanks,
Lars Osborne
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 9:45 PM, Ben Brockert
<wikkit@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:wikkit@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
I've been hearing rumors of them for months. They finally
came out of stealth, and are as silly as the name implies.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/22/spinlaunch/amp/
<https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/22/spinlaunch/amp/>