Hmmm...certainly thinking outside the box... SpinLaunch is testing its centrifugal launch system with a scaled-down suborbital accelerator at Spaceport America in New Mexico. Image Unavailable, Please Login https://spacenews.com/spinlaunch-raises-71-million/
The article mentions that payloads will experience 10,000 g's during the launch process, but "a very gentle 10,000 g’s." Right . . .
That # is incomprehensible to me. What are they trying to send up that won't get crushed? Dive weights?
Actually, those G forces are manageable for certain payloads. Sending a test rat wouldn't be advisable, but many payloads can take that kind of G force and survive nicely. When they say a "gentle" 10k G's, they mean the forces build up gradually, so there's little in the way of shock forces except when the payload is released and the force goes to nearly zero G's. This isn't unprecedented. The Excalibur munition experiences wildly fluctuating G forces that can exceed 4,000 G's on firing, so a smooth acceleration to 10,000 G's might even be a milder environment.
We saw much higher G loads with huge variations on hard target smart fuzes. Electronics can be made very tough now-a-days.
Not sure for what......if you are just sending things up to watch them fall down.....it should work great. Low earth orbit is "only" 100 miles away but you have to have orbit insertion velocity to sustain it. Their answer of having an upper stage engine on the payload that will still fire after getting spun to 10,000 Gs is pretty funny. Just another "solution" in search of a problem. Another ******** warning is that their main investor is also financing their debt.
I visited their facility. They have a great point-only 7%[I think] of the weight of a traditional rocket is payload. they think that technology is maxed out in terms of increased efficiency. I have no idea if this is true. If you go to their website there is a video of their first launch. If it takes young, smart enthusiastic people to make this work it is a slam dunk. It was a fun visit. Malcolm
OK, am I being stupid here? The tip speed of the rotor will be 5000mph with a 200kg odd projectile attached to it. The whole apparatus will obviously be finely balanced in order that it doesn’t shake itself to pieces in the acceleration phase. BUT….how are they managing the out of balance forces once the projectile is released?? Am I missing something blindingly obvious??
Real accurate with a precision guided warhead and reasonably accurate without. Our ICBM reentry vehicles are unguided after a precision release from the bus.
