Spin Con
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This Company Wants to Launch Satellites Into Orbit Using a Giant Spinning Centrifugal Slingshot
It's cheaper and safer than burning rocket fuel, but satellites have to be built Tonka-tough.
an object spinning at 5,000 MPH experiences g-forces in excess of 10,000, which means the SpinLaunch system is only suitable for satellites built around modern electronics with rugged components that can survive these extreme launch conditions.
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@Zecc In turn I propose using Schwerer Gustav.
Oh wait...
In the 1960s, the United States Department of Defense and Canada’s Department of National Defence formed a joint partnership called Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project) to essentially develop giant Earth-based guns that could blast objects into space.
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@Zecc Scott Manley had a video on this thing yesterday.
10000g apparently sounds worse than it is - that is unless you're talking squishy human bodies, in which case it's pretty bad.
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@Zecc said in In other news today...:
This Company Wants to Launch Satellites Into Orbit Using a Giant Spinning Centrifugal Slingshot
It's cheaper and safer than burning rocket fuel, but satellites have to be built Tonka-tough.
an object spinning at 5,000 MPH experiences g-forces in excess of 10,000, which means the SpinLaunch system is only suitable for satellites built around modern electronics with rugged components that can survive these extreme launch conditions.
I'm wondering
- how is the centrifuge going to survive the vibration from the sudden change of balance as it releases the payload and
- how they plan to convert the vertical velocity (needed to get out of the draggy atmosphere quicky) to the horizontal velocity (needed to keep orbiting)?
They already started experimenting, so they may have some idea, but the article does not have any details.
Update: The video shows the planned system at oblique angle rather than straight up, and obviously there still has to be a rocket stage.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
how they plan to convert the vertical velocity (needed to get out of the draggy atmosphere quicky) to the horizontal velocity (needed to keep orbiting)?
Rockets. You still need them, but they won't need to be so big if you don't have to get out of the atmosphere and bottom of the gravity well.
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
10000g apparently sounds worse than it is - that is unless you're talking squishy human bodies, in which case it's pretty bad.
Scott Manley said:
it can literally strip your flesh out of the bones
But you guys wear clothes, don't you?
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@Zecc said in In other news today...:
But you guys wear clothes, don't you?
I guess the stripped-off flesh may remain neatly contained in your astronaut-suit?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project) to essentially develop giant Earth-based guns that could blast objects into space.
By coincidence, YIL that Project HARP's gun barrel was made, in part, from one of the original 16" gun barrels from the WWII battleship USS New Jersey. They were replaced in the 1950s because they were worn out from use during WWII and Korea. The original barrels were refurbished in the 1960s but never returned to service on any ship. Most are on display in various places, a couple are in storage, and one went to Project HARP, where it was welded to another barrel of unknown (to the USS New Jersey historian who narrated the video I watched) origin to make a really long gun barrel. Project HARP did succeed in firing a projectile to an altitude >100 miles, so they did technically achieve space.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
but they won't need to be so big if you don't have to get out of the atmosphere
That indeed seems to be the main point.
@dkf said in In other news today...:
and bottom of the gravity well.
The vehicle is still pretty much in the gravity well on Low Earth Orbit. Most of the Δv is really the horizontal speed. But due to the way rocket equation works, even small reduction of it can have quite a bit effect on the payload fraction.
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Hey, look who conned more people:
NASA will test SpinLaunch's ability to fling satellites into orbit
NASA has signed up to test SpinLaunch's extraordinary whirl 'n' hurl space launch technology, which accelerates a launch vehicle to hypersonic speeds using an electric centrifuge instead of a rocket, hurling it skyward like a space discus.
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@Dragoon said in In other news today...:
Hey, look who conned more people:
NASA will test SpinLaunch's ability to fling satellites into orbit
NASA has signed up to test SpinLaunch's extraordinary whirl 'n' hurl space launch technology, which accelerates a launch vehicle to hypersonic speeds using an electric centrifuge instead of a rocket, hurling it skyward like a space discus.
Is this a con?
I mean, the idea sounds kind of cool, not the least because the rocket equation means you normally spend all fuel just transporting the fuel. But I have no idea where the feasibility ranges between "we have a cold fusion device" and "we can land reusable rockets upright".E: huh, didn't realize we have a thread for this.
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Well, since
has done all the hard work, you can see the brief discussion we had a few months ago.Anything that could survive this launch style could survive the canon launcher from HARP and that is more practical and less prone to URD
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Anything that could survive this launch style could survive the canon launcher from HARP and that is more practical and less prone to URD
Still makes me wonder: aren't the high acceleration forces due to the radius of the accelerator more than due to the final velocity? I would have (naively, because I obviously have no idea) built the thing horizontally with much bigger radius, then have a ramp to turn it vertically. (Although the ramp then can't have much higher curvature either, but it's only quarter-circle-ish.)
E: watched the video linked above, interesting.
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I would have (naively, because I obviously have no idea) built the thing horizontally with much bigger radius, then have a ramp to turn it vertically. (Although the ramp then can't have much higher curvature either, but it's only quarter-circle-ish.)
Not sure the physics on that turn are any better, remember they want to launch this thing at 5k mph.
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I would have (naively, because I obviously have no idea) built the thing horizontally with much bigger radius, then have a ramp to turn it vertically. (Although the ramp then can't have much higher curvature either, but it's only quarter-circle-ish.)
Not sure the physics on that turn are any better, remember they want to launch this thing at 5k mph.
I was also mostly wrong about the effect, as it's v^2/r and not v/r^2 or whatever I might've had in mind. And the planned final design is bigger than it looked at first glance, so there's only so much scaling up you can do.
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Well, since
has done all the hard work, you can see the brief discussion we had a few months ago.Not gonna lie, this one was a bit tricky due to the original posts being over a thousand posts upthread, because you can only start Jeffing from the bottom of the thread. The secret was to use the navigation thing to navigate up to the area of the original post.
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Looks like "In other news" is still locked.
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@Dragoon d'oh.
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Looks like "In other news" is still locked.
It's just latency from his spin-launched satellite Internet connection
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@HardwareGeek This reminds me of the work of Gerald Bull, if I'm remembering the name properly - the fuel-air hypersonic cannon guy.
The David puns near this device must be of Goliath proportions.
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they want to launch this thing at 5k mph.
I don't remember if the videos discuss this. But I'm also wondering about going from essentially vacuum to earth-atmosphere when exiting the VFST (very fast spinny thrower). Aside from the transition itself ... if the throwee starts tumbling...
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It shouldn't start to tumble at that point, the force vectors will still heavily favor straight flight. However, their demo video has them several degrees off of 90°, so it very well might start to tumble before it reaches appropriate alititude. But I honestly find tumbling unlikely, the capsule has to be airodynamic, so that will naturally disfavor tumbling.
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@Dragoon I'm actually more interested in the moment when the capsule breaks through the opening - the plasma eruption should be something to behold.
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@Rhywden There's also the question of how they're going to keep things economical if the "spin chamber" loses its vacuum with every launch. Evacuating the atmosphere will take time, especially if their upscaled design is a hundreds of meters wide chamber. And if they want to preserve the vacuum, they need to come up with a sluice system that can somehow close and open around an object moving at Mach 6 ~= 7410 km/h with various pressure differences between sides of the sluice doors.
Then there's still that question of how they're going to rebalance the rotor the moment the payload is released and how the central shaft's bearing is going to hold up. Likely someone assumes an exotic material there. Of course, the KISS way is that they add a sacrificial counterweight which they release at the same moment as the payload so that it just slams into the ground. That way the rotor won't be unbalanced, but I guess the neighbors might feel the ground tremble a bit and the debris cleanup team will have a steady employment.
Other question remains if they are sure that they can release the payload at the right time every time so that it does not miss the exit pipe and slam into the walls of the spin chamber (or even releases prematurely - INB4
). If the circumference is really smooth and solid then I guess the now-unguided projectile would find its way out eventually, but most likely it will be an "interesting time" for all involved, and most surely the end of that launch facility.Finally, I believe they marketed this thing as driven by electrical motors. The power requirements for this thing need to be amazing (especially at start-up). The bearings and gearboxes for this would be a marvel on themselves.
I've read some hearsay from somebody close to NASA that NASA is mostly agreeing to bankroll this just to have somebody looking at it and seeing what they might learn; preferring to lose some cash rather than missing out on interesting research when nobody is incentivized to look at it at all.
That person was unconvinced that it would ever get to a workeable system though, so people calling it a "con" are not really wrong.
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I've read some hearsay from somebody close to NASA that NASA is mostly agreeing to bankroll this just to have somebody looking at it and seeing what they might learn; preferring to lose some cash rather than missing out on interesting research when nobody is incentivized to look at it at all.
That would possibly make some sort of sense (lots of weasel words...).
At one time in my company there was a big management push about "innovation" and we had trainings and seminars and probably a lot of highly-paid consultants who got fat checks out of our stupid
, but I'm digressing. One constant idea, which seems obvious enough (but probably cannot be heard unless said by a lot of HPC getting fat... sorry, digressing again, but it's hard not to when talking about management stuff!), is that to get to a successful idea you need to fail a lot. Kind of like the idea that a successful entrepreneur is one who has failed several times before etc.Pretty basic, but pretty easy to forget when you're looking at a single failure in isolation.
Anyway, it makes sense for a huge organisation like NASA to dedicate a tiny part of their budget to pie-in-the-sky stuff, on the off chance that something might come out of it. And sometimes you need to actually build some physical prototype to truly test the idea. I know of at least a couple of techniques in my domain that 20 years ago were thought as physically impossible, but a couple of university teams or similar kept pushing, and nowadays it's a major tool of my industry. Sure, the investment wasn't the same, but our budgets also aren't the same as NASA's!
And the "something" may not even be what the project is primarily looking at -- I remember at least one occasion in my work where an ambitious long-term project failed at its primary objective, but spawned what was initially just a "utility tool" that ended up being an extremely successful thing by itself. So who knows, maybe here the NASA will learn how to make doors that open/close fast enough, or electric motors that can handle that load, or whatever other secondary technique they'll look into.
So yeah, it seems ludicrous and ridiculous, and it probably is, but it's not really surprising they're looking into it. Kind of like the US army looking into paranormal stuff...
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And the "something" may not even be what the project is primarily looking at
I once read that the glue used in post-it notes was actually a failed superglue formula.
And that a certain type of miniaturized microphone was designed as a flow sensor. They didn't get a signal from it until one of the scientists yelled "Why won't you work" at it in frustration.
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@PleegWat I'm not really surprised. Even in software, it happens that you look at users and go "oh... this is how you use that feature? We never thought of that!"
(followed by
/ 
/ 
: / 
/ ..., depending on cases)
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Of course, the KISS way is that they add a sacrificial counterweight which they release at the same moment as the payload so that it just slams into the ground. That way the rotor won't be unbalanced, but I guess the neighbors might feel the ground tremble a bit and the debris cleanup team will have a steady employment.
That could work. If it was a mostly liquid counterweight (a container of water springs to mind) then cleaning up wouldn't be too hard.
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Of course, the KISS way is that they add a sacrificial counterweight which they release at the same moment as the payload so that it just slams into the ground. That way the rotor won't be unbalanced, but I guess the neighbors might feel the ground tremble a bit and the debris cleanup team will have a steady employment.
That could work. If it was a mostly liquid counterweight (a container of water springs to mind) then cleaning up wouldn't be too hard.
Eh, the container to handle that much force is going to be pretty substantial. Might as well make it a completely solid object and devise a way to "catch" it with minimal damage.
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@dkf I think a solid counterweight and a pool of water for it to drop into would be more effective.
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Catching anything at mach 6 is going to be tricky. From my Googling, most tank shells are quite a bit slower (even the kinetic energy penetrators). There were apparently plans for a fancy ship-based railrun that could reach those speeds...
Even water won't be fun. It's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but apparently water jet cutters have jets moving at ~mach 3. I don't see anything non-destructive coming from releasing water in vacuum at that twice that speed.
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Catching anything at mach 6 is going to be tricky. ...
Even water won't be fun. It's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but apparently water jet cutters have jets moving at ~mach 3. ...This sounds like a case for a ton of silica aerogel.
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Catching anything at mach 6 is going to be tricky. From my Googling, most tank shells are quite a bit slower (even the kinetic energy penetrators).
About 1900 m/s, tops.
Even water won't be fun. It's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but apparently water jet cutters have jets moving at ~mach 3. I don't see anything non-destructive coming from releasing water in vacuum at that twice that speed.
Design it that way, then? A container that is intended to break apart when it hits the water and by doing so, releases gravel or something that will now move through the water as small, individual pieces and be slowed down much quicker than a large, single mass would?
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a pool of water
Problem with that is that you can't have liquid water in a vacuum.
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@ixvedeusi You could quite easily isolate the water with some sort of screen that would shatter with the impact. You'd just have to replace the screen for each launch, which adds a bit to the cost, but likely not that much. It would also mean a bit of setup/cleaning time between launches but again, likely not that much compared to the cleaning cost of the rest of your pool of water wildly splashing around!
That probably would be the easiest of all the other tons of problems all this discussion entails...
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@ixvedeusi This may have a solution:
The vapour pressure of silcone fluid DC705, which is used in diffusion pumps is 2.6e-8, and it is designed to function in a high vacuum.
If a location could be found at which it was warmed sufficiently to remain liquid (in deep space it would just freeze, whereas too close to the sun and its vapour pressure would rise) it could remain in a liquid state for some time. Not indefinitely but it could be stable for a while.
A location where it won’t freeze is easy enough for the application we’re talking about, I would think.
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Easy! You set up two vehicles and launch them horizontally, at the same time, in opposite directions
Oh, there's gravity and atmospheric drag and obstacles, but those are all foolishly practical considerations.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Spin Con:
You set up two vehicles and launch them horizontally, at the same time, in opposite directions
(Yes, I realize that they plan to maneuver the things after launch. Etc etc.)
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@cvi You alweiß eckspect ze werst. You mußt be ein programmier.
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Catching anything at mach 6 is going to be tricky.
Does it need to go that fast? The counterweight arm doesn't need to be the same length as the business arm, does it? A bigger mass, but a slower speed, would mean less energy, right?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Spin Con:
@cvi You alweiß eckspect ze werst. You mußt be ein programmier.
Here I was thinking I was optimistic by assuming things got into an orbit of sorts at all.
Edit: I also realize a major mistake with my very technical and highly accurate illustration. The exit tube for one of the directions should be at the bottom/opposite side of the spinnylaunchything.
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Catching anything at mach 6 is going to be tricky.
Does it need to go that fast? The counterweight arm doesn't need to be the same length as the business arm, does it? A bigger mass, but a slower speed, would mean less energy, right?
I think it needs the same angular momentum applied to the two arms to stay rotationally balanced.
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@boomzilla said in Spin Con:
Three things are revealed. One, the acceleration at launch quickly drops as the payload ascends.
It's not a rocket, is it? The acceleration of anything you simply throw upwards is negative from the time it's let go and increases as air drag gets smaller until it reaches g for a short while after the apex
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@boomzilla said in Spin Con:
Three things are revealed. One, the acceleration at launch quickly drops as the payload ascends.
It's not a rocket, is it? The acceleration of anything you simply throw upwards is negative from the time it's let go and increases as air drag gets smaller until it reaches g for a short while after the apex
I know the final plan is to fling rockets; the wibbly wobbly timey wimey launcher is about reducing the amount of fuel launched, not eliminating it. This one might have had an actual rocket.
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@PotatoEngineer said in Spin Con:
@boomzilla said in Spin Con:
Three things are revealed. One, the acceleration at launch quickly drops as the payload ascends.
It's not a rocket, is it? The acceleration of anything you simply throw upwards is negative from the time it's let go and increases as air drag gets smaller until it reaches g for a short while after the apex
I know the final plan is to fling rockets; the wibbly wobbly timey wimey launcher is about reducing the amount of fuel launched, not eliminating it. This one might have had an actual rocket.
AIUI the rocket is needed for final ascent to orbit altitude only. This test was nowhere near that height (this is their small test facility) so no rockets.
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Hypersonic space cannon promises 10 minutes from ground to orbit
Rockets are expensive, complex, bad for the environment and prone to occasionally exploding – so alternative launch technologies are popping up to reduce their use. We wrote about SpinLaunch's remarkable kinetic launch system earlier this week, which spins a rocket up to incredible speeds on the...
This approach, says Green Launch Business Development Director Eric Robinson, scales up far better than a spinning accelerator like the SpinLaunch system.
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Hypersonic space cannon promises 10 minutes from ground to orbit
Rockets are expensive, complex, bad for the environment and prone to occasionally exploding – so alternative launch technologies are popping up to reduce their use. We wrote about SpinLaunch's remarkable kinetic launch system earlier this week, which spins a rocket up to incredible speeds on the...
This approach, says Green Launch Business Development Director Eric Robinson, scales up far better than a spinning accelerator like the SpinLaunch system.
Now this is how we mitigate the environmental impacts of thermonuclear annihilation. If they've managed to get the ignition timing and projectile sabot such that the shockwave is stably ridden, this would follow nicely on some of the best recent doomsday weapon ideas.
