No wonder no one trusts the news when they make clickbait headliens like this
Lotta coulds, ifs and mights in this breathless koolaid-drinker’s puff piece (actually he’s probably just a shill). Lotta rendered images and animations. Lotta lack of anything tangible. Lotta totally irrelevant misdirection in the bottom half of the puff piece.
This isn’t a news piece. Nothing new has been done with this idea. It’s basically an ad (for vaporware). The headline is technically misleading, as no such thing has been done yet.
Thunderf00t busted this three years ago: https://youtu.be/9ziGI0i9VbE
Vaporware then, vaporware now
Thunderfoot is a dumbass and shouldn’t be referenced for anything. If he gets something right it’s only by luck.
Lmao don’t be so dramatic.
It just takes building enough energy to launch the object of whatever mass.
It’s a mathmatical equation that will be solved by someone someday.
Edit: lmao do you babies bitch about all new tech?
A bunch of old men shaking their fists at clouds
It’s mathematically impossible to send an object into orbit just from energy imparted on the ground. Depending on the speed you launch it, either it falls back down or it flies off into space.
To achieve orbit you need a circularization burn at the highest point of your trajectory.Or as Scott Manley put it:
“Getting into space is easy. Getting into orbit is hard.”“sends” in a headline means one thing to most people. They should have said “may one day send” if they wanted to be accurate.
In mice.
“Just”.
Lmao those idiots who want propulsion engines to take us out of the atmosphere, the con men say it would “just” require enough energy to be stored in the fuel tanks!
Lmao idiots!
The difference between a catapult and a jet engine is, that the jet engine allows a slow, controlled and steady release of the energy. Once the catapult has released its object it has to go well or else it will come down.
It would work fine in a vacuum, e.g. on the moon. Unfortunately, on earth we have a thick atmosphere to deal with. Orbits are about going sideways VERY fast. If you try and plough through the atmosphere at 7km/second it creates a LOT of heat, and uses a LOT of energy. You also can’t just lob a satellite up. It will need to circularise its orbit, so you need to log an engine and fuel too.
Basically, it’s viable as a technological idea, but not on earth.
Technically, the Alcubierre drive is also just a mathematical equation that will be solved by someone someday if we figure out how to acquire and concentrate enough negative energy. That doesn’t mean it’s happening anytime within the next 1000 years though.
Do you struggle with reading comprehension?
I didn’t say anything about whether this concept was viable from a physics standpoint.
I said that the article is a puff piece (which it is) and probably a paid advertisement, and that the headline claims that a thing has happened which has not actually happened.
I’m disappointed it’s not a trebuchet
You can (theoretically) reach “space” with a single impulse from earth’s surface, but you cannot achieve earth orbit that way. To make orbit, you need a circularization burn at apogee to raise your perigee above the atmosphere. Otherwise, its ballistic trajectory will cause your spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere.
I only understand what you’re talking about because of Kerbal Space Program
I only know it because of Kerbal Space Program. :)
Yeah, this is just a first stage replacement. You still need a rocket to get most of the way into orbit.
The first stage counts for the bulk of the fuel and total mass, so this would still be a big deal.
Yeah definitely. The way the rocket equation works out, the second stage gives most of the Delta V, but the first stage needs to be much bigger because it needs to lift itself and the second stage.
In theory, with an impulse hard enough to reach the moons orbital altitude, you could get a slingshot maneuver that leaves your object in a highly elliptical orbit around earth without burning fuel, but it would eventually be unstable from the moons gravitational pull changing it.
Engineers who spent their whole childhood watching Loony Toons: “My time has come!”
Has it ever launched anything into orbital altitudes yet? So it’s like AI, then? Let’s pour money into it asap!
They’d have more luck just using a real big cannon , at least that was attempted in the 60’s with Project HARP, with moderate success (180km altitude , prototype orbit circularisation system) before the project was cancelled.
Gauss cannon might work a lot better.
I haven’t see any kind of news or update from them in over a year
Yeah looks like they ran out of money.
Actually, I stand corrected. It looks like they raised $11.5 million a few months ago and are working on a ruggedized little satellite that would survive their centrifuge.
Also, “founder and CEO Jonathan Yaney left the company” ?
https://payloadspace.com/spinlaunch-raises-11-5m-to-hurl-more-spacecraft-into-the-sky/
This was the comment I was looking for. Thanks for sharing!
Let’s all go reread “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”
I remember watching debunking video of this years ago. If I remember right, the problem was how to stop a projectile (a rocket in this case) from spining once it’s released. I need to find that video …
Thunderf00t made a good one.
I did watch that and there are problems but the debunking video itself was really bad and acted like there were problems that had already been addressed in the video it was a direct response too. It still seems like a crazy idea but they have had test launches and there didn’t seem to be a spinning issue.
There are many more problems… Creating that vacuum takes time and the centripetal forces involved limit what you can launch. Mammals and complex machinery are a no-go.
OK, but couldn’t the item have some small thrusters with a control system to cancel out any tumbling/spinning once it’s launched? That would require some fuel, but a lot less than required for a traditional launch…
And wouldn’t fins like on an arrow take care of stabilizing spin around the major(?) axis?
Pls don’t flame me, I’m not a physicist or rocket-scientist :)
Did it tumble during it’s test launch?
Looks like they’ve conducted 10 test launches, but nothing since 2022.
Removed by mod
Can we use this to throw people we don’t like?
It would squish them first.
That’s fine we didn’t like them to begin with.
Spin your enemies at high speeds in a vacuum until they’re dead then launch their corpses into space
I think I saw this in one of the bond films. Only his watch saved him iirc.
Throwing them is gonna kill them anyway, squishing is fine
This project will not succeed. Dont waste time on it.
No reason engineering wise it wouldn’t work. But the economics probably don’t work compared to falcon 9 or starship. But theoretically it’d work great for launching mined material from the moon or astroids back towards Earth.
The moon is a harsh mistress.
I want it to work because it would be so fuckin cool. Yeet my ashes into orbit pls.
good news
10 successful test flights
None of which reached orbit iirc. So y(literal)mmv.
hmmm, I would not call that successful considering it has 1 job.
but I guess actually launching is a good milestone considering the forces involved if anything goes wrong.
No worries. Adam savage’s panjandrum showed the large forces could be countered by about 6" of mud.
Launcher may handle 10,000 g’s, but satellites tend to be kind of fragile
You’d be surprised how well modern cubesats are already designed implicitly with high-G components. There was a video about them testing an “off-the-shelf” sat from a professor and it held up with only some minor modifications.
How many oceangates is that? Can we send CEOs in it?
euthanasiacoaster without the extra steps
Satellites have to go through shock and vibe testing based on the vehicle bringing them up, satellites using spinlaunch will need to be built around it.
10000 g’s of centigrugal acceleration for half an hour. I think that alone makes this project a dead end.
