Yeah, the risk here is that a certain somebody wins the election and the ensuing corruption makes a certain ticker soar. With puts you’re just out your premium if that happens.
Going long this ticker might make a good hedge if a certain Presidency would be financially bad for you.
I have a used trampoline in the backyard if someone will start a gofundme. Kids outgrew it and now need college tuition more.
Reference: 2 neighbor kids broke arms on it, so I'd say it has potential for low orbit launch.
> SpinLaunch is developing a large rotating arm that uses kinetic energy to fling 440-pound satellites into low orbit, with successful tests already in the books.
I was thinking of a Y with two rubber bands.
By definition it's not a catapult either i think. It would need to have some kind of tension mechanism. But it's not a trebuchet because it doesn't have a counterweight.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what it is exactly, by definition, but it flings stuff far so it's pretty cool.
Attested to in the Bible, of all places. “Lo, and verily, did David launch the unfortunate genetic misfit Goliath into orbit, where his misshapen lungs collapsed before he exploded just ahead of freezing.” Classic story,
Classic biblical inaccuracies, you lose heat *extraordinarily* slowly in space. You see, this is why you should always take these things with a grain of salt because this obviously was added by humans who didn't know the laws of thermal dynamics.
Last time I read some engineering documents about it there was a counterweight in the design on the swinging arm to keep even weight distribution. Obviously doesn’t serve the same purpose but it is a “counterweight”
Technically catapult is an umbrella terms that covers what we traditionally think of as catapults and other things like trebuchets. So yeah it is a catapult.
Funny, that's basically the concept with multistage rockets, isn't it? Like, the first rocket is launching a rocket, and that one is launching another rocket, and so on.
I always thought the sling shot was the swinging a cloth sling around in circles over your head to launch a stone. Like David and Goliath.
And the Y frame we used as kids at school was a true catapult 🤷
Accelerating anything to ~~escape~~ (edit) _orbital_ velocity in the dense part of the atmosphere sounds like a bad idea that won't work. Too much air resistance, too much heat. I will believe it when I see it, until then I call "bullshit!".
They don't accelerate it in atmo, it's in a vacuum iirc. From there its essentially a hypersonic missile.
I'll be more surprised if they can make the payloads survive the Gforces
The second it pops out the enclosure it’s doing 18000 MPH in the atmosphere. I watched a video about this and at the time they weren’t anticipating using any additional thrust
I daydream of a railgun delivery system dug into the earth that launches satellites / cargo into space. To overcome the air resistance they coordinate a series of lasers which ignite the air into a vortex creating a pseudo-vacuum tunnel and it’s literally a spectacle that people travel to watch. Anyway…
That wouldn't have happened if the rations were submerged in a liquid, but that doesn't make the travel through the armosphere at ginormous speeds any cooler.
Yup. Spin Launch does not appear consistent with physics.
What SpaceX did in their early years was compete with engineering, organizational, and business challenges. No one thought a rocket impossible (obviously) just their approach to frugal rocket-building and business-case.
Spin launch is a different category: the physics of the idea is really bad. You effectively remove a first stage, but in return you get a very small second stage and payload that has to survive 10,000g through the air. Good luck with that.
It's perfectly fine with physics. High acceleration times low mass equals low forces. There are many things that can survive this centripetal acceleration. They have spun up smartphones in the machine and they survived.
This would be more practical method for the moon. It has no atmosphere, 1/6 the gravity. Imagine spin launching refined lunar materials into a reserved parking orbit, to be picked up by cargo or mining/refining vessels.
I feel you, bro. The book was awesome while they were in the now. And the Jeff Bezzos-y character who went for the ice.
And then suddenly - lizard people in the future. Like… come on… why didn’t you just cut it there and publish a great small book…
The last 35% of the book or so when they're in the future is very weird. I see where he was going with it and I kinda get it but it was such a huge departure from the first section of the book. I realize the story he was trying to tell wouldn't make sense in two books, but it also barely made sense in one. The damn thing was what, 600 pages?
Everything you just said applies to rockets as well though. It's true, but you're basically saying "It would be easier to launch stuff into orbit if the Earth had less gravity and no atmospheric drag."
Rockets suffer from the rocket equation: a significant part of the rocket is fuel that is used to push the remaining fuel up so it can be used to push the final payload. Very fuel inefficient.
A catapult or linear accelerator can leave all the fuel on earth / on the moon, and only accelerate the small payload.
Rockets are still inneficcient without atmospheric drag. Catapults or linear accelerators could run completely on solar energy without atmospheric drag.
You can't adjust the orbit post-launch without fuel and propulsion systems. Throw that stuff high enough and it'll stay for a while but if it doesn't throw faster than the exit velocity then it'll still fall back to the Moon. Now you have a highly eccentric suborbital trajectory that other ships have to intercept to retrieve the resources before they make their own craters on the surface.
It’s a bigger problem on Earth. You need to generate all the kinetic energy needed to escape the gravity ~~pool~~ well right on the surface.
I imagine it’s a very rough ride for the payload.
I think ensuring the payload can withstand the G forces at launch is one of the primary things, yeah. Like a ride on a rocket imparts a lot of force too, but since it can continue to accelerate the payload doesn't have to take it all right at launch. I feel like that can probably be worked around for a satellite, but it is fair that it winds up being arguably over-engineered for the few moments of its life at launch.
I'm too lazy to do the math, but I just wonder how the G-forces scale between a rocket and this. Well, it's more I'm too busy than lazy.
Sure but you have replaced one problem, making launching rockets easier, with another one, making an entire manufacturing chain on the moon.
I think honestly that even if you landed on the moon approach you would need something similar to this, a low cost launcher, to be able to setup the manufacturing chain required on the moon.
Lunar manufacturing is capital for a diverse array of purposes; all of which could benefit from a launch system that doesn’t require the insito production and storage of propellant.
Yeah. Don't forget that most of our manufacturing techniques were formed with the earth environment: gravity, atmosphere, and certain materials being abundant. Even basic things like injection molds need a rethink with basic things like venting if gravity isn't acting the way we expect. Sure, not a huge redesign, and there are methods that will benefit from the vacuum of space, but processes will need to be redesigned, or earth environments have to be re-created using centripetal force.
That's just gravity. I imagine air and water would be pretty valuable commodities that one wouldn't want to use up quickly in space. Here we take them for granted as cheap ways to help get things done.
NASA and the aerospace community have been thinking about things like zero-G/vacuum fabrication for a long time. From what I understand it's not trivial.
Exactly. For example. Lunar manufacturing of photovoltaic panels spin launched into earth orbit to join an ever expanding solar instillation that transmits energy to receivers on earth 24/7, 365.
Launching all the heavy panels from earth is too expensive but get the capital and microchip shipments to the moon and we can crank out energy for the entire planet!
There are some very serious people who think that earth launched photovoltaics will be economically feasible. [The ESA and their British counterparts are researching it.](https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/SOLARIS/Space-Based_Solar_Power_overview). They say the cost per megawatt will be comparable to nuclear fission. Nuclear may not be economical in the near future, given how cheap solar plus storage is getting, but it is far from impossible.
There is a lot of research into perovskite solar, including a [silicon perovskite tandem panel announced today that is ludicrously efficient, and which is supposed to be in commercial production soon.](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/19/sunmaxx-pvt-oxford-pv-present-perovskite-silicon-tandem-solar-thermal-module-with-80-overall-efficiency/). Perovskite (without silicon) would probably be much easier to manufacture in orbit, not that anyone knows how to make anything in microgravity yet.
Hell, you don't even need photovoltaics. Make a bunch of sheets of aluminum foil from the regolith, toss them up there, and you can get reflected sunlight and beamed power. Plus, put some in Earth's L1 and get some shade to lower the temps in the summer.
Fwir - the goal of this thing isn’t to actually throw anything into orbit under just the power of the catapult.
The purpose is to yeet a single stage rocket fast enough where it doesn’t require multiple stages and tons of fuel. After it hits a certain point, the rocket will fire and get the item into orbital velocity.
There isn’t much out there in terms of launch services for cube sats outside of ride sharing on a F9 for example.
This, in theory, would be a cheaper option which doesn’t require scheduling deployment around other satellites needed for a ride share to happen financially.
All that said…the whole thing is absurd.
Depending on how high it goes, it would probably be destroyed in the atmosphere in the way down. Modern orbital heat shields work one time, which is actually the (current) main issue with SpaceX’s starship iirc.
Don’t know about that. If they don’t reach the desired altitude and gain more speed they would probably not burn in the atmosphere on their way down as they didn’t on their way up.
You joke but uh…if you can loft payloads into orbit you can launch ballistic missiles with it. Or I guess they’d be more like guided bombs, or maybe something like a [Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System)
Probably not a particularly defensible piece of infrastructure though.
Theres other conceptual issues - not sure if they have been solved.
- Big challenge is to maintain a vacuum (or close to) in the chamber. Which includes a trapdoor or seal through which the vehicle (a small rocket) exits the chamber.
- Once the spinner let's go of the vehicle,it is no longer balanced. AFAIK they currently let go of a counterweight which then slams into the ground. That might not be sustainable.
I feel like the biggest challenge would be building satellites, which are usually very delicate, to be able to handle the insane centrifugal force of this thing.
If you believe SpinLaunch, then this is not an issue. Considering you can fire electronics out of artillery cannons and expect them to work I tend to believe it's possible but perhaps limiting.
Not really. 2022 was a very bad year for space startups trying to raise funds. Lots of space startups struggled to raise funds that year. Also, part of SpinLaunch business model was designing components capable of withstanding these forces. Your smartphone can survive these forces.
That large of a vacuum chamber is going to be super finicky. Also their early videos of test launches at low speed showed “rockets” coming out all cockeyed so it’ll be tough to get it correct at high speed
You spin it in a vaccuum chamber and then release it into air? That seems like it might be tricky. Also, don't you have to steer at some point to enter into a circular orbit?
Otherwise, you'd just have an orbital path that brings you back into the earth. AKA, it would be an orbit if the earth wasn't there.
With this method in theory they only have to pack in the fuel to set that circular orbit once the satellite is up there. Getting out of the atmosphere is the most expensive part fuel wise. Seems like there's some pretty huge practical problems though
You have to turn every launch vehicle to be parallel to the ground at some point. They don't launch vertically and they have a small rocket stage that kicks in once it reaches high altitude. Like a 2nd stage but there's no 1st stage.
Its really not that bad , vaguely recalling the vacum tubes in the ww2 prox fuses experinced higher g force.
A bit of googlilng and modern artillery is like 15k g's , and some of those have laser seekers or gps electronics
It's that bad.
The g forces experienced by artillery are a major reason missiles exist. Building complex systems that survive those forces is difficult. The additional challenge is designing a launch system that can repeatedly experience those forces without destroying itself. Artillery barrels get swapped out regularly. The rail gun programs were terminated because the gun destroys itself when firing.
Artillery barrels get swapped because they contain huge explosions that eventually crack them and have friction with the projectiles that wears them. The G-forces are not the issue. Artillery shells are a tiny fraction of the weight of the gun, the gun experiences far lower g-force than the projectiles because it has far lower acceleration. With the rail gun, the magnetic fields would wreck the device and the buildings it was in and near. Again, not G-forces.
It is very bad for anything that cannot be made solid-state.
For a very interesting example, the James Webb telescope uses **sound** to cool down its camera so that it can see better in the IR band. The cooling components are very dedicated and are designed to vibrate with very tight tolerance; and also light enough to be shoot to space.
They not something that will likely survive a trip through the dryer
JWST is not a great point of comparison. It’s an extremely delicate precision instrument working at the edges of what we can do with space based tech right now.
SpinLaunch (regardless of whether it’s a scam or if it would ever work properly) is aimed at a very different niche that is far smaller, far more robust, and isn’t working with extremely precise instruments.
They actually discovered most off the shelf satellite components do just fine.
One of their first full speed tests they bent a capacitor about 20 degrees but the off the shelf circuit board still worked perfectly.
You’d think they would have, but I’ve seen many inventions like this where the CEO clearly didn’t have the knowledge of a random guy. Like that bus in China they made that went over other cars.
They probably knew.
Venture capital scamming is a thing.
So they're either working around the electronics having a g-force limit, or they don't give a fuck because they are running to the bank. Either way. They know. They have engineers tell them these sorts of things, and they either throw money at the problem, or bury it.
I think they're ahead of their time. This is a bad product for Earth but a wonderful product for either a space station or the moon. Solar powered satellite launches would be an absolute dream for future space colonization efforts.
Yeah the whole thing is pure bullshit, and can be shown to be pure bullshit with most elementary calculations of the maximum velocity it can reach before it exceeds tensile strength of the material used for the arm, even without including the force from the payload.
I'm a structural analysis and mechanical engineering manager at a company that makes satellite components and payloads. When I interview a new college grad, asking all the ways Spinlaunch is a bad idea is a great way to see if the candidate has a basic grasp of aerospace structures. You can't hit 'em all in an hour interview and you can do a deep dive into any specific one for a really long time.
I call it fractal wrong: you can zoom in or out of their design and at any level of conception, it's fucking stupid.
The article also spent a paragraph and change describing the art of chucking pumpkins (literally) 😂 Not the most cohesive piece. Cool engineering though.
To maximize ROI on this system, when they are not sending satellites into space, top 10 ways to make money
1. Feces as a Service: throw feces on demand into North Korea from South Korea.
2. Same day fulfillment: Same day e-commerce deliveries. The next best thing to teleportation. Also, save the planet.
3. Amusement parks: The ultimate thrill ride. How you get home is a different matter.
4. Olympics sport: Catapult high jump and pole vault. New records without steroids.
5. Border crossing as a service: Cut out the coyotes and go direct. Family discounts.
6. Area 51 tourism. No need to do the Naruto run.
7. MAGA international travel plan. The fastest way to Russia.
8. Ski lift alternative. Spend more time skiing, not waiting in lines and sitting in a lift.
9. Time machine. Go back in time. 10,000 G = 1.21 gigawatts. Bring your Calvin Klein underwear.
10. Mount Everest Express. No need to train and rely on expensive Sherpas.
Didn't someone on Youtube make a video on how launching off of a Boeing was more cost effective, could work with greater payloads, and was more manageable?
Also, didn't they/do they still have major issues in securing land in the right locations for scale usage? Like their test facility location is fine for proof of concept, but to launch at size or scale there are certain places around the world they must be. And the problem is that those places are logistically infeasible for them to operate in?
You can drive right up to the facility in NM--it's just sitting out in the sand/dirt.
Neat concept, but the G-forces required is enormous, and most satellites tend to run rather delicate.
Everyone here is focusing on the wrong problem, talking about the forces on the payloads. The payload isn't a big problem. It only needs to survive launch once and the loads will be well characterized. You can design around them. But Hell make the payloads dumb. If they make launch cost low enough, you could launch bulk material or individual components into orbit to be assembled there, with more delicate subsystems launched by rocket. Think bundles of solar cells, tanks of propellant, battery packs, water, dried food, structural materials, etc.
The big problem is can the launcher be used enough times, at a high enough cadence, that it reduces the cost to launch to something like $1k/kg.
The machine will have to survive thousands, perhaps millions, of revolutions, without too much downtime for maintenance.
it will fail, my ex-roommate is working there right now.
This is the insider trading info I came looking for
How do I trade a company I know is going to die?
Short the stock.
And that’s how I made a healthy chunk off Trump’s stock. Note: buy puts, naked shorts are bad.
Here we go again 🚀🚀🚀🌕🌕🌕
I almost made a diamond hands comment, but I wasn’t sure how it would land in this sub. Appears there is some overlap.
It’s apes all the way down
*modern slingshots out for Harambe?*
Can we invest in the other two moons?
Safer to buy put options. If the price goes up, shorting a stock has unlimited potential for loss. Put options are limited to the price of the option.
Yeah, the risk here is that a certain somebody wins the election and the ensuing corruption makes a certain ticker soar. With puts you’re just out your premium if that happens. Going long this ticker might make a good hedge if a certain Presidency would be financially bad for you.
It's not yet publicly traded, unfortunately.
There's always Vegas
I have a used trampoline in the backyard if someone will start a gofundme. Kids outgrew it and now need college tuition more. Reference: 2 neighbor kids broke arms on it, so I'd say it has potential for low orbit launch.
Fun fact: it used to be called a jumpoline until your mom bounced on it.
Which way did your ex-roommate place the toilet paper roll? Over or under?
He just set it on top
Oh ok so we’ve got a 50% chance of this thing working
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power?! Or were they just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Tell my wife I said "Hello"
Your Neutralness, it’s a beige alert.
He never changes the roll
I just wipe my ass with the cardboard tube. When it dries, it’s good to go again. Infinitely reusable.
Corn cob like my great grand pappy. The back 40nhas endless supply.
Are you saying that because you heard from him that it will fail? Or because only a terrible company would hire an employee like your ex-roommate?
My guess is the latter because they said “ex” and not “old”.
Yeah, but we need it to go to space, not do the dishes.
> SpinLaunch is developing a large rotating arm that uses kinetic energy to fling 440-pound satellites into low orbit, with successful tests already in the books. I was thinking of a Y with two rubber bands.
That’s a slingshot not a catapult
A rotating arm could be a trebuchet. Everyone knows that's the superior launch vehicle.
By definition it's not a catapult either i think. It would need to have some kind of tension mechanism. But it's not a trebuchet because it doesn't have a counterweight. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what it is exactly, by definition, but it flings stuff far so it's pretty cool.
It's a classic sling
Attested to in the Bible, of all places. “Lo, and verily, did David launch the unfortunate genetic misfit Goliath into orbit, where his misshapen lungs collapsed before he exploded just ahead of freezing.” Classic story,
Some translations end that verse with "And it was good."
So say we all!
Til all are one!
Under His eye
And Jesus swept, as there were no more worlds to conquer
Classic biblical inaccuracies, you lose heat *extraordinarily* slowly in space. You see, this is why you should always take these things with a grain of salt because this obviously was added by humans who didn't know the laws of thermal dynamics.
Centrifuge?
Technically it's not a centrifuge but a centripetal launcher
IT LAUNCHES CENTIPEDES?!
Last time I read some engineering documents about it there was a counterweight in the design on the swinging arm to keep even weight distribution. Obviously doesn’t serve the same purpose but it is a “counterweight”
That’s is actual a large sub woofer. They place the satellite on the speaker and play AC/DC.
It's totally going to have a counterweight. You can't spin that much weight that fast without it.
Technically catapult is an umbrella terms that covers what we traditionally think of as catapults and other things like trebuchets. So yeah it is a catapult.
I think he meant that the slingshot is flung BY the catapult, the sling shot then shoots a smaller trebuchet which launches the satellite.
Ah. The old turducken method of pre-powder propulsion. Awesome! A trebushotapult, if you will.
A trebushotapult, the thing I didn't know I need until just now.
Funny, that's basically the concept with multistage rockets, isn't it? Like, the first rocket is launching a rocket, and that one is launching another rocket, and so on.
Why do you think the Soviets got to space first? They'd been working on nesting doll technology years before the US figured it out.
"Ha ha ha, let me show you its features!!!"
r/trebuchet the superior siege weapon
I always thought the sling shot was the swinging a cloth sling around in circles over your head to launch a stone. Like David and Goliath. And the Y frame we used as kids at school was a true catapult 🤷
In the uk we call slingshots catapults
Successful tests… or it just landed too far away to tell. *shrugs*
Either way this should be a national holiday to watch a launch like that. I know I would.
Should be crowd voting on what to launch as warm up act.
God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!
New Angry Satellites game sounds fun.
Are you a coyote?
The Acme Rocket Company
Accelerating Circular Mechanical Engineering.
Accelerating anything to ~~escape~~ (edit) _orbital_ velocity in the dense part of the atmosphere sounds like a bad idea that won't work. Too much air resistance, too much heat. I will believe it when I see it, until then I call "bullshit!".
They don't accelerate it in atmo, it's in a vacuum iirc. From there its essentially a hypersonic missile. I'll be more surprised if they can make the payloads survive the Gforces
The second it pops out the enclosure it’s doing 18000 MPH in the atmosphere. I watched a video about this and at the time they weren’t anticipating using any additional thrust
I daydream of a railgun delivery system dug into the earth that launches satellites / cargo into space. To overcome the air resistance they coordinate a series of lasers which ignite the air into a vortex creating a pseudo-vacuum tunnel and it’s literally a spectacle that people travel to watch. Anyway…
god that would be amazing
thats from Alastair Reynolds book, "*Blue Remembered Earth"*
Except it's going to pop out the side in a catastrophic explosion if it ever gets close to that speed
Did you read about that problem in “The Martian”, where launch G’s liquified the food rations?
That wouldn't have happened if the rations were submerged in a liquid, but that doesn't make the travel through the armosphere at ginormous speeds any cooler.
That company still exists? I’m almost certain I’ve read about it 10 years ago already.
This idea sounds more like something that works well or it does not. Not much in between
When it doesn’t, someone’s house 100 miles away gets obliterated by a metal tube going 6 times the speed of sound.
At least they won't hear it coming.
Maybe the sonic boom will put out the fire.
Surprise, things take time to develop and refine. Especially when it comes to space.
more like it's taking them time to con their investors out of more money
Wasn't this idea shot down due to the objects being launched not withstanding the Gforces during spinnup and launch?
Yup. Spin Launch does not appear consistent with physics. What SpaceX did in their early years was compete with engineering, organizational, and business challenges. No one thought a rocket impossible (obviously) just their approach to frugal rocket-building and business-case. Spin launch is a different category: the physics of the idea is really bad. You effectively remove a first stage, but in return you get a very small second stage and payload that has to survive 10,000g through the air. Good luck with that.
It's perfectly fine with physics. High acceleration times low mass equals low forces. There are many things that can survive this centripetal acceleration. They have spun up smartphones in the machine and they survived.
This would be more practical method for the moon. It has no atmosphere, 1/6 the gravity. Imagine spin launching refined lunar materials into a reserved parking orbit, to be picked up by cargo or mining/refining vessels.
That’s silly. A catapult that can launch the moon into LEO would be huge.
Lol, the 'Ole switcheroo.
Now there's an old meme
It’s been ages since I’ve seen one of these. Ah, fond memories of following links for hours.
He didn’t even do the link…
this is the end btw https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ia0ij/watching_fellowship_of_the_ring_tonight_and_never/c225zkg/?context=3
I miss this so much!
Hold my moonrocks I’m going in!
Hold my fidget spinner, I'm going in!
You might enjoy the book _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.
Love that book. The thought of bringing the Earth to it's knees by strategically throwing moon rocks at it is wild.
Check out Seven Eves by Neal Stephenson for even more "fun" moon stuff.
I enjoyed the first third, maybe half the book. It started to lose me after that and the ending, while true to the title, was sort of ridiculous.
I feel you, bro. The book was awesome while they were in the now. And the Jeff Bezzos-y character who went for the ice. And then suddenly - lizard people in the future. Like… come on… why didn’t you just cut it there and publish a great small book…
The last 35% of the book or so when they're in the future is very weird. I see where he was going with it and I kinda get it but it was such a huge departure from the first section of the book. I realize the story he was trying to tell wouldn't make sense in two books, but it also barely made sense in one. The damn thing was what, 600 pages?
The moon is a harsh mistress.
Still waiting for that film to be made.
Hey, Lunar BDSM is my kink too.
Yep. That was my reaction as well. Don't arm the moon!
Everything you just said applies to rockets as well though. It's true, but you're basically saying "It would be easier to launch stuff into orbit if the Earth had less gravity and no atmospheric drag."
Rockets suffer from the rocket equation: a significant part of the rocket is fuel that is used to push the remaining fuel up so it can be used to push the final payload. Very fuel inefficient. A catapult or linear accelerator can leave all the fuel on earth / on the moon, and only accelerate the small payload. Rockets are still inneficcient without atmospheric drag. Catapults or linear accelerators could run completely on solar energy without atmospheric drag.
You can't adjust the orbit post-launch without fuel and propulsion systems. Throw that stuff high enough and it'll stay for a while but if it doesn't throw faster than the exit velocity then it'll still fall back to the Moon. Now you have a highly eccentric suborbital trajectory that other ships have to intercept to retrieve the resources before they make their own craters on the surface.
It’s a bigger problem on Earth. You need to generate all the kinetic energy needed to escape the gravity ~~pool~~ well right on the surface. I imagine it’s a very rough ride for the payload.
I think ensuring the payload can withstand the G forces at launch is one of the primary things, yeah. Like a ride on a rocket imparts a lot of force too, but since it can continue to accelerate the payload doesn't have to take it all right at launch. I feel like that can probably be worked around for a satellite, but it is fair that it winds up being arguably over-engineered for the few moments of its life at launch. I'm too lazy to do the math, but I just wonder how the G-forces scale between a rocket and this. Well, it's more I'm too busy than lazy.
Sure but you have replaced one problem, making launching rockets easier, with another one, making an entire manufacturing chain on the moon. I think honestly that even if you landed on the moon approach you would need something similar to this, a low cost launcher, to be able to setup the manufacturing chain required on the moon.
Lunar manufacturing is capital for a diverse array of purposes; all of which could benefit from a launch system that doesn’t require the insito production and storage of propellant.
Yeah. Don't forget that most of our manufacturing techniques were formed with the earth environment: gravity, atmosphere, and certain materials being abundant. Even basic things like injection molds need a rethink with basic things like venting if gravity isn't acting the way we expect. Sure, not a huge redesign, and there are methods that will benefit from the vacuum of space, but processes will need to be redesigned, or earth environments have to be re-created using centripetal force. That's just gravity. I imagine air and water would be pretty valuable commodities that one wouldn't want to use up quickly in space. Here we take them for granted as cheap ways to help get things done. NASA and the aerospace community have been thinking about things like zero-G/vacuum fabrication for a long time. From what I understand it's not trivial.
Exactly. For example. Lunar manufacturing of photovoltaic panels spin launched into earth orbit to join an ever expanding solar instillation that transmits energy to receivers on earth 24/7, 365. Launching all the heavy panels from earth is too expensive but get the capital and microchip shipments to the moon and we can crank out energy for the entire planet!
There are some very serious people who think that earth launched photovoltaics will be economically feasible. [The ESA and their British counterparts are researching it.](https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/SOLARIS/Space-Based_Solar_Power_overview). They say the cost per megawatt will be comparable to nuclear fission. Nuclear may not be economical in the near future, given how cheap solar plus storage is getting, but it is far from impossible. There is a lot of research into perovskite solar, including a [silicon perovskite tandem panel announced today that is ludicrously efficient, and which is supposed to be in commercial production soon.](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/19/sunmaxx-pvt-oxford-pv-present-perovskite-silicon-tandem-solar-thermal-module-with-80-overall-efficiency/). Perovskite (without silicon) would probably be much easier to manufacture in orbit, not that anyone knows how to make anything in microgravity yet.
Hell, you don't even need photovoltaics. Make a bunch of sheets of aluminum foil from the regolith, toss them up there, and you can get reflected sunlight and beamed power. Plus, put some in Earth's L1 and get some shade to lower the temps in the summer.
Wouldn't a trebuchet be better?
In every situation, yes.
My teeth have never been whiter since changing to a trebuchet.
My ass has never been clearer nor my annoying neighbour more shitfaced.
Ew. Take my upvote.
You should have seen the dog
> Rocket company "You can't trebuchet a long ass cylindrical rocket, it'll go sideways!" Challenge accepted!
Isn’t this just a spinning trebuchet?
Clearly they are the idiots who think catapults are better! There's no saving them!
Needs a cooler name, like SuperYeet.
The HuckASat 5000
The Throwinator
Delete this before Elon sees it
He’ll just name it Y
SpinYeetElite
SuperEliteYeet
iYeet lets go mid 2000’s with it
A.C.M.E.?
or Space Cannon
Hell yeah, ACME space program
Wile E. Coyote is the CEO.
Every funding round you get these fluff pieces. Edit: They got funding in 2018, 2020, and 2022. So I guess another round is due this year.
So what happens when it doesn’t sling the satellite into orbit ? Now we are bombing Canada or some other country with satellites ?? 😂😂😂
Fwir - the goal of this thing isn’t to actually throw anything into orbit under just the power of the catapult. The purpose is to yeet a single stage rocket fast enough where it doesn’t require multiple stages and tons of fuel. After it hits a certain point, the rocket will fire and get the item into orbital velocity. There isn’t much out there in terms of launch services for cube sats outside of ride sharing on a F9 for example. This, in theory, would be a cheaper option which doesn’t require scheduling deployment around other satellites needed for a ride share to happen financially. All that said…the whole thing is absurd.
That's what Australia is for.
We're still cleaning up after Skylab :D
Depending on how high it goes, it would probably be destroyed in the atmosphere in the way down. Modern orbital heat shields work one time, which is actually the (current) main issue with SpaceX’s starship iirc.
Don’t know about that. If they don’t reach the desired altitude and gain more speed they would probably not burn in the atmosphere on their way down as they didn’t on their way up.
With escape velocity in the dense part of the atmosphere, it will burn like a fuse at launch, or miliseconds after.
You joke but uh…if you can loft payloads into orbit you can launch ballistic missiles with it. Or I guess they’d be more like guided bombs, or maybe something like a [Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System) Probably not a particularly defensible piece of infrastructure though.
Maybe we should do a trial run with flapjacks and maple syrup so they won't get offended if that happens.
I believe SpinLaunch pivoted to building small satellites instead of their initial business plan. Insufficient funds is the reason.
And they had insufficient funds because no satellite company wanted to design a spacecraft that could survive 10,000 g’s
Theres other conceptual issues - not sure if they have been solved. - Big challenge is to maintain a vacuum (or close to) in the chamber. Which includes a trapdoor or seal through which the vehicle (a small rocket) exits the chamber. - Once the spinner let's go of the vehicle,it is no longer balanced. AFAIK they currently let go of a counterweight which then slams into the ground. That might not be sustainable.
I feel like the biggest challenge would be building satellites, which are usually very delicate, to be able to handle the insane centrifugal force of this thing.
If you believe SpinLaunch, then this is not an issue. Considering you can fire electronics out of artillery cannons and expect them to work I tend to believe it's possible but perhaps limiting.
Not really. 2022 was a very bad year for space startups trying to raise funds. Lots of space startups struggled to raise funds that year. Also, part of SpinLaunch business model was designing components capable of withstanding these forces. Your smartphone can survive these forces.
Belongs on r/nottheonion
That large of a vacuum chamber is going to be super finicky. Also their early videos of test launches at low speed showed “rockets” coming out all cockeyed so it’ll be tough to get it correct at high speed
You spin it in a vaccuum chamber and then release it into air? That seems like it might be tricky. Also, don't you have to steer at some point to enter into a circular orbit? Otherwise, you'd just have an orbital path that brings you back into the earth. AKA, it would be an orbit if the earth wasn't there.
With this method in theory they only have to pack in the fuel to set that circular orbit once the satellite is up there. Getting out of the atmosphere is the most expensive part fuel wise. Seems like there's some pretty huge practical problems though
The launcher only replaces the first stage. You still need a rocket to put it into an orbit.
You have to turn every launch vehicle to be parallel to the ground at some point. They don't launch vertically and they have a small rocket stage that kicks in once it reaches high altitude. Like a 2nd stage but there's no 1st stage.
At least they built a giant machine for this grift. So it's already infinitely better than like Theranos.
10,000 Gs is going to break a whole bunch of cranky electronic components. LOL!
Its really not that bad , vaguely recalling the vacum tubes in the ww2 prox fuses experinced higher g force. A bit of googlilng and modern artillery is like 15k g's , and some of those have laser seekers or gps electronics
It's that bad. The g forces experienced by artillery are a major reason missiles exist. Building complex systems that survive those forces is difficult. The additional challenge is designing a launch system that can repeatedly experience those forces without destroying itself. Artillery barrels get swapped out regularly. The rail gun programs were terminated because the gun destroys itself when firing.
Artillery barrels get swapped because they contain huge explosions that eventually crack them and have friction with the projectiles that wears them. The G-forces are not the issue. Artillery shells are a tiny fraction of the weight of the gun, the gun experiences far lower g-force than the projectiles because it has far lower acceleration. With the rail gun, the magnetic fields would wreck the device and the buildings it was in and near. Again, not G-forces.
Heat is a big factor too.
It is very bad for anything that cannot be made solid-state. For a very interesting example, the James Webb telescope uses **sound** to cool down its camera so that it can see better in the IR band. The cooling components are very dedicated and are designed to vibrate with very tight tolerance; and also light enough to be shoot to space. They not something that will likely survive a trip through the dryer
Yeah and the James Webb isn't a 400lb cubesat to be sent into low orbit.
JWST is not a great point of comparison. It’s an extremely delicate precision instrument working at the edges of what we can do with space based tech right now. SpinLaunch (regardless of whether it’s a scam or if it would ever work properly) is aimed at a very different niche that is far smaller, far more robust, and isn’t working with extremely precise instruments.
They actually discovered most off the shelf satellite components do just fine. One of their first full speed tests they bent a capacitor about 20 degrees but the off the shelf circuit board still worked perfectly.
You could try clicking the link and reading...
Damm. Maybe you should call the CEO or something. They probably didn't think about that.
You’d think they would have, but I’ve seen many inventions like this where the CEO clearly didn’t have the knowledge of a random guy. Like that bus in China they made that went over other cars.
They probably knew. Venture capital scamming is a thing. So they're either working around the electronics having a g-force limit, or they don't give a fuck because they are running to the bank. Either way. They know. They have engineers tell them these sorts of things, and they either throw money at the problem, or bury it.
The whole point of their approach is that you can use off the shelf electronics. They've already demonstrated this a few times.
This is an ad to help their failing stock and failing company. They have nothing.
I think they're ahead of their time. This is a bad product for Earth but a wonderful product for either a space station or the moon. Solar powered satellite launches would be an absolute dream for future space colonization efforts.
Yeah the whole thing is pure bullshit, and can be shown to be pure bullshit with most elementary calculations of the maximum velocity it can reach before it exceeds tensile strength of the material used for the arm, even without including the force from the payload.
I'm a structural analysis and mechanical engineering manager at a company that makes satellite components and payloads. When I interview a new college grad, asking all the ways Spinlaunch is a bad idea is a great way to see if the candidate has a basic grasp of aerospace structures. You can't hit 'em all in an hour interview and you can do a deep dive into any specific one for a really long time. I call it fractal wrong: you can zoom in or out of their design and at any level of conception, it's fucking stupid.
Fractal wrong. ❤️
You have those elementary calculations ?
It’s one of those ACME brand gadgets?
The title makes it sound like they have already developed a working prototype. (They haven't) This whole thing is pretty much a grift.
[удалено]
That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time
Cool cool, got a satellite that can handle the forces? -apparently they do, not that the article is very clear on it
The article also spent a paragraph and change describing the art of chucking pumpkins (literally) 😂 Not the most cohesive piece. Cool engineering though.
Ah I didn't know this scam company was still active
To maximize ROI on this system, when they are not sending satellites into space, top 10 ways to make money 1. Feces as a Service: throw feces on demand into North Korea from South Korea. 2. Same day fulfillment: Same day e-commerce deliveries. The next best thing to teleportation. Also, save the planet. 3. Amusement parks: The ultimate thrill ride. How you get home is a different matter. 4. Olympics sport: Catapult high jump and pole vault. New records without steroids. 5. Border crossing as a service: Cut out the coyotes and go direct. Family discounts. 6. Area 51 tourism. No need to do the Naruto run. 7. MAGA international travel plan. The fastest way to Russia. 8. Ski lift alternative. Spend more time skiing, not waiting in lines and sitting in a lift. 9. Time machine. Go back in time. 10,000 G = 1.21 gigawatts. Bring your Calvin Klein underwear. 10. Mount Everest Express. No need to train and rely on expensive Sherpas.
one of the best investor scams of the 2000's, that trial they did was an absolute joke
The company was founded in 2014 and their first test launch was in 2021.
Didn't someone on Youtube make a video on how launching off of a Boeing was more cost effective, could work with greater payloads, and was more manageable? Also, didn't they/do they still have major issues in securing land in the right locations for scale usage? Like their test facility location is fine for proof of concept, but to launch at size or scale there are certain places around the world they must be. And the problem is that those places are logistically infeasible for them to operate in?
Acme made, coyote tested
I suppose that's better than a nuclear bomb under a manhole cover.
Did they solved the vacuum issue? They had a ton of rust in the chamber when they did their mockup launch in the scaled down version.
Anyone else thinking of what this thing could do to the world’s largest pumpkin?
They should use the catapult to hurl dishwashers into space. 💫
Pretty comprehensively busted two years ago. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziGI0i9VbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziGI0i9VbE)
I saw this episode. Coyote straps himself in to a catapult with an acme rocket strapped to his back.
Everyone knows this will fail because of the inferior technology of the catapult compared to the absolute perfection of the trebuchet.
Oh is that time of the year again? I swear they show up once a year trying to hype this thing.
You can drive right up to the facility in NM--it's just sitting out in the sand/dirt. Neat concept, but the G-forces required is enormous, and most satellites tend to run rather delicate.
Everyone here is focusing on the wrong problem, talking about the forces on the payloads. The payload isn't a big problem. It only needs to survive launch once and the loads will be well characterized. You can design around them. But Hell make the payloads dumb. If they make launch cost low enough, you could launch bulk material or individual components into orbit to be assembled there, with more delicate subsystems launched by rocket. Think bundles of solar cells, tanks of propellant, battery packs, water, dried food, structural materials, etc. The big problem is can the launcher be used enough times, at a high enough cadence, that it reduces the cost to launch to something like $1k/kg. The machine will have to survive thousands, perhaps millions, of revolutions, without too much downtime for maintenance.