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Catapult to Orbit - SpinLaunch


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48 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Or if you could find a way to use a supergun of some kind to produce a persistent, coherent plasma beam which the payload could ride into space. Like a rainbow bridge.

I thought we were trying to reduce energy use here. Of course, if you enclose the stream in some sort of a tube and confine the plasma, you can recycle it on the other end. But then you are just back to launch loop, and you might as well have a train riding in the tube.

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Project "Kansas".

Hurricane + sails.

Attach sails to the payload and let a tornado whirl lift it high, spin, and throw fast.

(Best use in Kansas. You know...)

***

Project "Malstrom".

Generate an overturned vortex in the ocean
(either cause a vortex, then quickly suck it up to inverse,
or cause if at the underwater face of the ocean surface to let it whirling up instead of down).

Let it suck the payload from water into space.

***

Project "Syringe"

A large volcanic island with two throats.

Put the payload into the narrow throat, then either open the valve in between, or nuke a nuke in the wide throat.

The water column will push it up.

(Best use near the South America due to high mountains next to the deep ocean, so you can have a reservoir on top and the launch throat on the beach.)

***

Project "Northsea".

"Malstrom" vortex (next to Norway) + "Syringe" throat (next to Iceland, enforced with volcanic exhaust).

If there are tornados there, the "Kansas" sails can be added as well.

***

Took a look in Goofle Earth.

Spoiler

A funny fact. wiki/ru tells that Malstrom is at the North-West coast of Norway.

(Pensively looks at the Norway map.

Any other places but the "North-West coast" there?..
Any other coasts but the "North-West" one?..)

From Malstrom to Iceland volcanoes it's about 1 400 km.

10 000 m /s by the 1 400 km distance...

100002/(2*1.4*106)/9.81 ~= 3.6 g.

It's just ideal.

1. Deepen the Malstrom.
2. Dig a tunnel.
3. Connect the Iceland throats to merge the pressure.
4. Fill the Mallstrom with water up to the surface.
5. Open the valve.
6. Let Malstrom insuck the submarine (like a busted sink makes a plop when you plunge it).
7. Let the submarine pass to Iceland by the tunnel.
8. Let it jump out of throat, additionally pushing it with volcanic exhaust.
9. ?????
10. PROFIT !!!

P.S.
The project Northsea is for polar orbits.
For the equatorial ones use Andes. (Maybe also this reveals the purpose of the Easter Island and its highly standardized statues with cylindric pusher plates.)

If continue the Malstrom-Iceland line, it crosses the coastline of North Peru.
Probably, this point can interconnect several launch routes.

 

Upd.
And see! There is a nice 2 km high pyramidal mountain in Iceland - Hvannadalshnjúkur.

It can be the escape point of the launch tunnel, tilted to the horizon, and at 2 km altitude.

So, buy your tickets for Moskstraumen - Hvannadalshnjúkur Express and have a nice journey!

Edited by kerbiloid
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1 hour ago, FleshJeb said:

Project "Moo"

Just let Kerbiloid talk until the manure stacks up high enough that you can WALK to orbit. :D

I just make the most viable  suggestions among other projects, and don't have a need in clever face and wise words.

As we can see, total number of any suggestion implemented in the thread is 0.

Edited by kerbiloid
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23 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Or if you could find a way to use a supergun of some kind to produce a persistent, coherent plasma beam which the payload could ride into space. Like a rainbow bridge.

It's called a road, it's called a Rainbow Road

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23 hours ago, K^2 said:

you might as well have a train riding in the tube.

... - Okay - well, what about a mix of conventional and absurd rocket? 

A 'put the Germans to shame' large bore cannon built inside a mountain firing a discarding sabot for the initial push with the 'second stage' being the rocket?  Don't fire from sea level -- ship the cargo by rail up into the Peruvian Andes - launch from 15000 feet...

Propellant is cheap, right?

 

Edited by JoeSchmuckatelli
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41 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

A 'put the Germans to shame' large bore cannon built inside a mountain firing a discarding sabot for the initial push with the 'second stage' being the rocket?  Don't fire from sea level -- ship the cargo by rail up into the Peruvian Andes - launch from 15000 feet...

Propellant is cheap, right?

This is sort of what the eventual goal of HARP project was. Idea being that it's possible to build a sabot that will allow a rocket to survive a brief G-shock and remain operational. Then any cargo that can survive being fired out of a cannon is fair game. Alternatively, skip the rocket and use a skyhook instead. That requires a lot more infrastructure, but also makes bulk cargo launches dirt cheap. And skyhook itself is a megastructure, of course, but is not nearly as much of an engineering challenge as many other proposals. Plus, you'd be able to use the same skyhook with human-rated launches of much smaller/lighter rockets. So it's a great combination of launch systems to have if you are serious about space exploration.

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3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

... - Okay - well, what about a mix of conventional and absurd rocket? 

A 'put the Germans to shame' large bore cannon built inside a mountain firing a discarding sabot for the initial push with the 'second stage' being the rocket?  Don't fire from sea level -- ship the cargo by rail up into the Peruvian Andes - launch from 15000 feet...

Propellant is cheap, right?

 

If only there was an eccentric billionaire with spaceflight aspirations who owned the boring company that could used to bore the bore of that cannon into the side of a mountain…

A light gas gun can get some terrific muzzle velocities but that might be overkill. 

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19 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Project "Kansas" ...

As a Kansas native... I see no flaws

 

Other than the fact that something interesting would start happening here...

Edited by .50calBMG
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The more I think about this the more I just don't understand why this is a good idea.

The full scale 100m diameter centrifuge will have an instantaneous acceleration of 10,000Gs when launching at 8000kph (2222m/s). If they simply built a 100m linear accelerator the acceleration drops to 2500Gs. Plus it's a lot easier to imagine a 500m (500Gs) or 1km long (250Gs) linear accelerator than it is to imagine centrifuges at that scale. Ok, the instantaneous power requirements of a linear accelerator are a lot higher, but there are multiple ways that can be achieved. 

 

I'm suddenly reminded that Mount Chimborazo is within 1 degree of the equator and goes to an elevation of ~6200m. its prominence is ~4km and its slopes are ~30-40deg. So with a little tunnelling you could build an 8km linear accelerator up its flanks and the acceleration required would only be about 30Gs, which is actually getting towards survivable for humans. Plus as it would emerge roughly 6km above sea level the air pressure would be reduced to 50%, much better than launching from a centrifuge at Spaceport America.

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a compressed gas, steam, or liquid air system (probibly not a nuke pumped steam boiler though), with some flow control actuators and a little bit of control theory could probibly actively maintain sane g loads for a tube launch. it would probibly also be very straightforward to convert it to a maglev facility at a later date. spinlaunch does give us some technologies. the high speed airlock for example. this would enable an evacuated launch tube and opening a big hatch to a vacuum chamber really fast at altitude is probibly easier than opening one at sea level. now that we have demonstrated a door that can get out of the way fast enough. 

i think the big problem is that they can only launch in one direction. so a complex with a single chamber pressure and a selection of tubes might be better. just use the tube that bests lines up with your orbit at a certain time. im also not quite sure if tbms like going up hill. you will probibly need to engineer the reinforced concrete liners in a special way to allow angled installation to spread the mountain scale loads correctly, and also survive the passing of a rapidly accelerating mass.  or if they can maintain enough accuracy to keep the ship from bouncing around inside the tube too much.

perhaps do a small diameter pilot hole with enough accuracy to shine a guidance laser through so you don't have to deal with the messiness of inertial guidance. your main tbm can follow that up. tbms dont have reverse, they progress by pushing themselves off of the tunel liners the machine just installed with big hydraulic rams. usually with a follow up team injecting concrete behind the liners to seal up any gaps. retrieving a tbm from the top of a mountain and at a weird angle is a problem to solve. perhaps setting it up to drill back down to make an extra launch tube. sending the same machine up and down several times seems like an interesting thing. i think typically they are broken down in place and brought out the tunnel piece by piece at the end of the project.  i could imagine the thing spawning several very interesting engineering documentaries. or we could just like build a rocket. 

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17 hours ago, RCgothic said:

instantaneous acceleration of 10,000G

I don't follow this.    There's nothing instantaneous about this.    It will gradually spin up to speed, release, and then gradually slow down.   There will only be two forces occurring here, one is a materials and design issue, and the other is engineering.    The will be a lot of force applied to the length of the arm, along it's major axis, so as long as the arm is strong enough to not tear itself to pieces as it spins up to speed, that will be fine.   When the payload gets released, the off-balance of the arm will be an issue, but I think they address this in their proposals and in the small test launch they recently did. 

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Perhaps the use of the word instantaneous is not correct. I didn't mean it got up to speed instantaneously, I understand how centrifuges accelerate slowly.

The centripetal acceleration experienced by the payload at 2222m/s at 100m diameter is ~100000m/s/s or ~10000Gs. In the earth's coordinate frame the acceleration vector is constantly changing direction. Take any instant just before launch. The acceleration is 10,000Gs.

I then compare with a linear accelerator, where the acceleration to 2km/s over 100m is basically instantaneous, even if applied as a constant further impulse with constant acceleration. Yes, none of this is really instantaneous. Over 8km the acceleration would last around 7s. Imprecise language, sorry.

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from the rocket's perspective, you get a huge increasing lateral g, and then within a very short time that goes away and is replaced by a lot of aerodynamic forces. re-balancing the centrifuge is probibly not that hard. a mass on a jack screw can be raised after the release of the rocket to bring the balance back into something that wont tear the machine to bits. i think the real advancement with this whole thing is really high speed, high load, high performance actuators. especially on the ones to the launch door. getting that thing open fast enough is no doubt a hard thing to do.  the membrane the rocket has to tear through probibly cannot hold the vacuum on its own, and is only providing a delaying action, it simply takes longer to collapse than it does for the rocket to leave the tube. i bet they shoot compressed air into the gap in order to break the seals on the main door, it gets out of the way, and a very short time later the rocket goes through. 

with a tube launch, i figure with the rocket riding on a big piston, with the air in front mostly removed from the tube. you could probibly take out just enough so that by the time the rocket got to the top of the tube,  what little air left in the tube would be compressed enough to exceed atmospheric pressure at the door, and the whole thing would simply blow open without needing to break any seals or any really strong actuators. a spring would probibly suffice, not strong enough to  open while there is a vacuum on the other side, but will open the door when the air pressure is closer to the equalization point.

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48 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I thought the videos showed a membrane covering the exit which is perforated by the rocket.

No worries about timing, just use your reinforced rocket holder to poke a hole.

The membrane can not be too large as is hold out the air, this is pretty easy with an small hole but harder for an larger opening, you also want an accurate launch as it affect your inclination. 

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In an age where fuel is so precious, given the relative smaller size of spin launch to a coil tube, they could jump start space travel.

 

From orbit that is.

 

Just think, a rotating arm in orbit. I do not know the limit you can do on spin, but max it out, and then launch robot supply vessels to orbit or land on locations of interest.

For manned spaceflight it would be slightly more complex. Involving multiple rotating arms and throwing a ship to be caught by each one until it reaches the final one and is launched for good. Who knew making our own 'orbit machines' could open up space travel?

Edited by Spacescifi
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1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

In an age where fuel is so precious, given the relative smaller size of spin launch to a coil tube, they could jump start space travel.

 

From orbit that is.

 

Just think, a rotating arm in orbit. I do not know the limit you can do on spin, but max it out, and then launch robot supply vessels to orbit or land on locations of interest.

For manned spaceflight it would be slightly more complex. Involving multiple rotating arms and throwing a ship to be caught by each one until it reaches the final one and is launched for good. Who knew making our own 'orbit machines' could open up space travel?

As seen here in Freefall http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3300/fc03269.htm 
Add an fuel tank to the ship and fling it. 
Now I question parts here, yes the skyhook would be nice for an low trust ship to get pointed the right direction, its also low cost and an place to add the fuel tank. 
But they have good fusion so an 0.1 g constant burn to the belt sounds plausible, you might want reaction mass in addition to fuel to have 0.1 g at the start, few reasons not to simply have an larger fuel/ reaction mass tank but Freefall is very hard outside the gags.  
 

 

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5 hours ago, Terwin said:

I thought the videos showed a membrane covering the exit which is perforated by the rocket.

No worries about timing, just use your reinforced rocket holder to poke a hole.

it does, but i have a feeling the thing would break on its own accord if the rocket didnt go through it. i think it serves as a short delay between the opening of the main hatch and the inrush of atmosphere, long enough to fling a rocket through it. 

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