Can Spinlaunch Throw Rockets Into Space?

[wimvb]

I think this is a viable option to get small payloads (not humans) into lower earth orbit. Spin launch a small rocket to a sub orbital trajectory and give it a boost for final orbit insertion. Much less fuel needed. Mind you, this won’t get humans to Mars.

[Swoop1]

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

I think this is a viable option to get small payloads (not humans) into lower earth orbit. Spin launch a small rocket to a sub orbital trajectory and give it a boost for final orbit insertion. Much less fuel needed. Mind you, this won’t get humans to Mars.

It might be a cheaper way of getting the Lego bricks and Meccano into orbit so we can build an orbital Mars Express construction and launch station though. 

[ONIKKINEN]

Looking at the site you see a picture of what looks like an ion thruster of some kind (blue sci-fi looking thing), which is a curious detail. Ion thrusters have inherently very low thrust so they will need days or weeks to accelerate to the few km/s needed to reach a final orbit after the initial push from the launcher.

But gravity will give you 10 minutes tops, so not something that will be usable. Whatever small cubesat gets put into the projectile will still need to be about 50% chemical high thrust propellant (IE no ion stuff, solid or liquid propellant of some kind) to be fast enough to reach orbit.

If this is somehow made to work so that only minor repairs are needed per launch + new projectile it could be cost efficient for very small satellites

Edit:hmm, not sure where i got the ion thruster idea, cant find it anymore in the site😀. 

Edited January 31, 2022 by ONIKKINEN

[Alien 13]

I would have thought that scaling one of these up would be better 😂

Alan

[PeterW]

the Americans already had a rapid repeat satellite accelerator decades ago… last bits are rusting in Barbados.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP Basic, reliable and functional, I’m sure new tech could improve the capability even further…. 

 

Peter

 

[wimvb]

2 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

If this is somehow made to work so that only minor repairs are needed per launch + new projectile it could be cost efficient for very small satellites

I think that that's the idea. They're probably not going to compete against SpaceX, but aim at a high volume market for small satellites

[Macavity]

The Science & Engineering of "Spinlaunch".  (Me? I'd be standing WELL back!) 🥳

 

 

[Rusted]

The centrifugal/centripetal forces place severe limitations on its cargo feasibility.
Certainly NOT a human bod launcher. 

[Macavity]

Extreme G-forces are not a good look? lol. (Oops -Thanks for merging the threads!) 🥳

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Macavity