Not Your Daddy’s Trebuchet
SpinLaunch and Crew
SpinLaunch, a start-up that is building an alternative method of launching spacecraft to orbit, conducted a successful first flight test last month in New Mexico.
The Long Beach, California-based company is developing a launch system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method to reach the required velocities – with a vacuum-sealed centrifuge spinning at super sonic speeds before releasing a rocket.
Poetrooper sends.
Space Launch Start-Up Just Used A Giant Centrifuge To Fling A Projectile Into The Upper Atmosphere
SpinLaunch plans to use its kinetic launch system to put small satellites into orbit rapidly and cheaply, and the Pentagon is interested.
BY THOMAS NEWDICK AND TYLER ROGOWAY
A U.S. space launch start-up has, for the first time, demonstrated a kinetic-based system that’s intended one day to put small spacecraft into orbit. The SpinLaunch concept, which feels ripped right from the classic age of science fiction, is based around a vacuum-sealed centrifuge that spins an unpowered projectile at several times the speed of sound before releasing it, hurling it into the upper atmosphere, and ultimately into orbit. In this way, the company, based in Long Beach, Calif., hopes to challenge traditional rockets for putting payloads into space.
The first test flight of a prototype — a so-called suborbital accelerator — took place at Spaceport America in New Mexico on October 22, but the company only announced the milestone yesterday.
The system uses a vacuum chamber within which a rotating arm brings a projectile up to very high speed without any drag penalty, before hurling it into the atmosphere “in less than a millisecond,” according to the company, as a port opens for a fraction of a second to release the projectile.
It’ll be interesting to see how far they get, right SpaceX?
Thanks, Poe.
Category: Guest Link, It's science!, Science and Technology
Whoa… Very cool.
Not gonna get KoB excited as much as Saddam’s superguns, but that’s pretty cool. For launching satellites, this could bring the costs way down. All you need is electricity on the ground.
I don’t know, Mason. I do believe that my “rocket” might have shot off. 😛
DAAAAAAAAYYUUUUUM!!!!!! I need a cigarette. Oh…and watch out for that wet spot.
Ol’ Poe and Kid Squid are pleased to have provided an ol’ Jawja redleg/redneck with a story with such a happy ending on this special day.
Do you plan on re-reading it after a little rest-up, or is a single salvo pretty much it for the day?😁😁😁
Kid Squid.
*sigh*
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Swimlane. You. In. Stay. Good doggy.
Hey, you gotta admit, it IS sorta catchy in a gun-guy kinda way.
Woof…😜
Single Salvo? Naw, Ol’ Poe…we ’bout ready to do some full on Counter Battery Fire. Am trying to figure out how to download that video to the Smart TV… 😛
And Pappy, while you ain’t got nothing better to do than sit around and try to gloat a bit, get some your boys to work on that “engine” that keeps the Yuenglings cool. They ain’t quite frosty enough. (tho that might be caused by my hotness)
*Tap Tap Tap*
As I have said on many occasions, Field Artillery is the son of the Engineer. This makes my point…giant trebuchet, a siege ENGINE, origin of the term Engineer as one who built, operated, and repaired these ENGINES.
ESSAYONS!
Signed,
Your Pappy…The Engineer
🤣💣🧨🪓🛠🏗
Call it “David” (and Goliath) and the Seven Smooth Stones.
That was ol’ Poe’s first thought–they should call it David or Little David…
That has to be so finely balanced, make a turbine fan blade look like an unfinished casting.
That’s really cool, but I find it amusing that the group photo looks like a 90s grunge band survivor’s reunion.
I think I’ve seen this method before.
https://youtu.be/B-H5g9WEqCc
WOW, my head is spinning after watching that head spinning video.
This is what happens when a couple of brainiacs got drunk together on a Saturday night a couple of years ago and were all like”dude, what if we spun it real fast and then flung it straight up!”. And then when they sobered up the next day they did the math and decided they really could do it.
There has to be a counterweight on the other end of the rotor arm from the payload to keep the arm balanced. When the payload is released, what do they do with the counterweight?
Cool!
And I can identify with the nerds and the hardhats.
Neat concept for small cubesat type payloads that you want to get into orbit. G-forces inside the centrifuge would be unbearable for a person to handle.
I came here to offer a number of celebrities and politicos a seat on this for a test.
I can see it now… “Did it work?? Nope… OK, next, nuh unh… try again, …alrighty…Damn, next… nothing, see who’s next… how many shot we got??? I dunno, at least a few thousand to start, … how fast can we load and fire this bitch?? “ …and America… “THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE 👏 “, anyway…
The German WWI Paris gun enters the chat…
The problem is not getting fast enough for escape velocity but to keep it from being burnt to a cinder from friction when it hits the atmosphere.
Helluva first step, but were they able to track and recover the projectile for further research?
Reminds me of the time I reversed my moms vacuum cleaner hose
and filled it with dry beans. Stuck a nozzle on the end and I
was pretending I had a machine gun and mowed down all the Nazi’s.
Then I grew up and joined the Army.
Then I became a vet and ended up here.
So that explains the handle.
Jules Verne would be proud. I have to wonder how well the small satellites survive the spin-up, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8jGqdE2iw
We did it,, LIVE!