SpinLaunch

[Hokulea]

Unless you're James Bond, the wind-up before launching into space is probably not a great way to send humans into space, but it's a clever way to get other things into orbit. They actually wanted to build a site on Hawaii Island very near where I live but the NIMBY's put it off. Forget conveyer belts or circular runways, this is much more spectacular.

Short version:
https://youtu.be/YB6Nw4MKE2g

Longer version:
https://youtu.be/JAczd3mt3X0

[SimonPaddo]

21st century trebuchet. Must have been a good evening in the pub to come up with that.

[treadigraph]

A genuine up-chuck! Probably watched a Scotsman throwing a hammer...

[Less Hair]

Might work for UK mail to the continent as well. Or fish?

[Hokulea]

Fish paste more likely.

[SimonPaddo]

Will not be long before Amazon adopt it for parcel delivery, more efficient than thousands of van drivers throwing them at the front door.

[Ninthace]

Beating the wobble as the payload releases is going to be fun on the fully sized version.

[visibility3miles]

The Goddard Space Flight Center has a huge centrifuge that once upon a time was used to test things prelaunch, but was used for storage for decades when they realized that it was easy to design for high G forces. What replaced it for testing satellites was a sealed chamber that subjected things to extremely high decibel noise levels to see what would fail when hit with severe vibrations during launch.

Amazing how easily a seemingly sturdy structure will break if flexed back and forth too much over a fairly short period of time. And loose bolts can become unscrewed and fall out of place.

I presume that this spin launch will be kinder and gentler than the vibration from a rocket launch.

[SimonPaddo]

They have various procedures for testing, as mentioned acoustic shock, but also vibration and solar radiation to simulate launch an in operation environments

[wiggy]

You’ll never get me up in space with all that whirling around nonsense, I think I’ll wait until they’ve developed this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCx4T8MKbjk

[HOVIS]

YEET!

😁😄

[nonsense]

R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say five minutes late. (https://donotpanic.fandom.com/wiki/R) It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death.

R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast. - Douglas Adams

This thing looks like it involves an analogous angular velocity of at least Omega 17.

[ORAC]

Good, I suppose, for launches of small hardened payloads from a small footprint. You would get away from most of the atmospheric issues by building on top of a mountain as with major telescopes.

Not sure using kinetic energy as a storage mechanism is better than capacitors once overcoming friction is taken into account.

Linear mass drivers using maglev stretching over many kilometres and finishing by climbing up mountains have long been considered as they would allow slower accelerations suitable for other loads, including people.

[wiggy]

You can harden the payload but as Scott Manley mentioned in the longer video whilst you can chuck something out of this thing (or improved versions) at high speed you still need a rocket stage of some sort to finish the job off and actually inject that payload into a stable orbit.

It be interesting to see you can build a liquid fuel system (such as that hinted at in the diagrams/graphics in the video) that can survive the advertised g's or if it get’s done it gets done with solids.

As you rightly say ORAC linear systems have been proposed for decades..(from WW2 if not before)