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Startup SpinLaunch Inc. has received $40 million in funding. The company intends to use a centrifuge to catapult small payloads to the edge of space:
The company remains tight-lipped about exactly how this contraption will work, although its name gives away the basic idea. Rather than using propellants like kerosene and liquid oxygen to ignite a fire under a rocket, SpinLaunch plans to get a rocket spinning in a circle at up to 5,000 miles per hour and then let it go—more or less throwing the rocket to the edge of space, at which point it can light up and deliver objects like satellites into orbit.
[...] Over the past few years, the rocket industry has become quite crowded. Following in the footsteps of Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., dozens of companies have appeared, trying to make small, cheap rockets that can be launched every week or perhaps even every day. These smaller rockets have been built to carry a new breed of shoebox-sized satellites—dubbed smallsats—that are packed full of imaging, telecommunications and scientific equipment. The small rockets, though, are really just miniaturized versions of the large, traditional rockets that have flown for decades. SpinLaunch is an entirely new take on the rocket-launch concept itself.
[...] SpinLaunch has a working prototype of its launcher, although the company has declined to provide details on exactly how the machine operates or will compare to its final system. The startup plans to begin launching by 2022. It will charge less than $500,000 per launch and be able to send up multiple rockets per day. The world's top rocket companies usually launch about once a month, and most of SpinLaunch's rivals have been aiming for $2 million to $10 million per launch for small rockets. If the startup were able to reach its goals, it would easily be the cheapest and most prolific small launcher on the market.
NextBigFuture puts the velocity at up to 4,800 km/h (3,000 mph) instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17 2018, @01:06PM
I was imagining a relatively vertical axis for the centrifuge, with the tilt of the "disk" equal to the aiming elevation. This means that the elevation angle can be set precisely in advance. As I understand it (without doing any numbers), getting to orbital velocity is the tough part, so most of the velocity will be downrange(?) Then the release timing provides the azimuth.
Most of the centrifuge could be behind big earthworks, with a narrow slot that the launch goes through. Seems safe enough if the launch direction is over the ocean?