10,000G on Launch

Post Reply
Message
Author
PHXPhlyer
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 8242
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2018 2:56 pm
Location: PHX
Gender:
Age: 69

10,000G on Launch

#1 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Apr 14, 2022 4:16 pm

Reach space with no rockets?
NASA agrees to test flight with new launch system


https://www.12news.com/article/news/nat ... 3302a0a3a2

NASA has reached a partnership with a company to test launch a payload to suborbital space at high speed from a centrifuge-like device that requires no rocket propulsion. The ultimate goal: to establish a new way, cheaper way to send payloads into orbit.

SpinLaunch announced Monday it will work with NASA to launch a payload using its Suborbital Accelerator Launch System based in New Mexico. That test launch is expected to come this year.

The device is a round steel vacuum chamber, 300-feet in diameter, attached to a launch tube. A carbon-fiber arm holds the payload, circling inside the accelerator and reaching speeds up to 5,000 mph. The launch vehicle and payloads of up to 440 pounds are then released through the launch tube.

The SpinLaunch Suborbital Accelerator Launch System in Spaceport America, New Mexico. The company says the device could one day send small payloads into suborbital space without the need for rockets.
If successful, the launch vehicle will reach beyond the stratosphere before small rockets will be used to place the payload in its final orbit.

By using this method, "over 70 percent of the fuel and structures that make up a typical rocket can be eliminated," SpinLaunch said in a statement.


That can mean more opportunities for companies to launch payloads into space. With no need for large rockets and massive amounts of fuel, launches would be less cost-prohibitive.

"What started as an innovative idea to make space more accessible has materialized into a technically mature and game-changing approach to launch," SpinLaunch CEO and founder Jonathan Yaney said in a statement.

SpinLaunch said it has conducted several test launches since October 2021 that have reached speeds of more than 1,000 mph. The first test launch to send something into orbit is planned for 2025.

But, at least for now, this isn't an option to send astronauts into orbit. SpinLaunch said on its engineers have looked at systems that can endure 10,000 Gs. The average human can withstand no more than 9 Gs for a few seconds, according to Scientific American.

PP

PHXPhlyer
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 8242
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2018 2:56 pm
Location: PHX
Gender:
Age: 69

Re: 10,000G on Launch

#2 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Jun 15, 2022 4:14 am

SpinLaunch wants to radically redesign rocketry. Will its tech work?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/14/tech/spi ... index.html

This startup want to spin rockets into space -- literally
New York
CNN Business

A California startup wants to put satellites into a circular chamber and whip them around to more than 5,000 miles per hour before letting them burst out, allowing a rocket to fire up its engine only after it’s escaped the smothering tug of Earth’s gravity.

Humanity has been putting objects into orbit for six decades now. This is not how it’s been done.

Is it possible? The answer is different depending on who you ask.

SpinLaunch, as the startup is called, wants to — as the name implies — spin projectiles, using centrifugal force to drum up enough energy to send an object to space. The company plans to use a small rocket, shaped like a razor-sharp ballpoint pen that encapsulates a satellite, and tether it to a motor at the center of a 300-foot wide vacuum-sealed chamber. The rocket would then exit a hatch and tear into the upper reaches of the atmosphere before an onboard rocket motor fires up to propel the vehicle to orbital velocities.

The concept “shares a lot more in common with maybe, like, an amusement park ride than it does with a rocket,” Jonathan Yaney, the CEO of SpinLaunch, told CNN’s Rachel Crane.

So far, the seven-year-old company has completed nine high-altitude test flights using a scaled-down version of the centrifuge it envisions will be necessary to put objects into orbit, a feat that requires speeds greater than 17,000 miles per hour. It’s still the very early stages, and it’s not yet clear if SpinLaunch will be technologically or financially successful.

But the hurdles have not proved large enough to scare off SpinLaunch’s investors, including GV, formerly known as Google Ventures, and Airbus Ventures, which have collectively poured tens of millions of dollars into the company.

Yaney said that the idea for SpinLaunch was born from his desire to reevaluate the past in order to rethink how we might explore the future.

He cites Jules Verne — a science fiction writer who died 50 years before the first satellite traveled to space — as a muse for the origin of SpinLaunch. Verne imagined that massive cannons would fire things into space. Yaney surmises that the reason we use rockets at all is a quirk of history, a byproduct of the Cold War, when advancing weaponry was just as important as putting a satellite into space.

“SpinLaunch was just an exercise in taking a fresh look at how can we use renewable energy and ground based energy to really just do this in a different way,” Yaney told Crane. “I ran about maybe 20 or 30 different scenarios from rail guns to electromagnetic accelerators, to, you know, space cannons, to light gas guns.”

Ultimately, Yaney said, he estimated that a massive centrifuge would be the most efficient.

Traditional rockets require thousands of complex components that are stretched to their mechanical limit during flight and then either discarded or undergo costly refurbishments, Yaney said. A centrifuge can keep all the components needed to work up massive amounts of energy close to the ground — a steadier, more fixed approach, according to Yaney. This means they can use heavy, industrial components and reuse the centrifuge again and again, reducing the overall cost of a mission, or at least that’s the hope.

PP

User avatar
unifoxos
Capt
Capt
Posts: 959
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2015 10:36 am
Location: Twycross Zoo, or thereabouts
Gender:
Age: 78

Re: 10,000G on Launch

#3 Post by unifoxos » Wed Jun 15, 2022 9:15 am

I'd like to see (but not be in range of) the rotor when the payload is released - the forces on it must be incredible.
Sent from my tatty old Windoze PC.

User avatar
llondel
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 5913
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:17 am
Location: San Jose

Re: 10,000G on Launch

#4 Post by llondel » Wed Jun 15, 2022 4:10 pm

Imagine the timing accuracy needed for the release mechanism, too. A fraction of a second off and either the hatch gets bigger or there's a new one created.

Post Reply