from the you-spin-me-right-'round-baby-right-'round dept.
SpinLaunch has released onboard footage from its eighth kinetic launch test:
SpinLaunch has released on-board footage from its eighth suborbital flight test, giving us a unique opportunity to imagine what it'd be like to be hurled skyward out of a centrifugal accelerator at more than a thousand miles per hour.
Rockets are big, dangerously explosive, and environmentally hazardous – and there are other ways to get stuff up into orbit. Green Launch, for example, is planning to get satellites into orbit within just 10 minutes, by replacing the first-stage rocket booster with a hydrogen-powered hypersonic impulse launch cannon that can fire a launch vehicle upwards at more than 17 times the speed of sound.
The approach is meant to lower costs for getting materiel into orbit.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:11AM (12 children)
This is an extremely high g centrifuge. The simulation would, to be accurate, start with "Whee", then excruciating pressure, red as the blood vessels in your eyes break, and then black as hypoxia takes over. Nature is kind enough that you'll be unconscious during the liquefaction of your tissues and their subsequent redistribution around the passenger compartment.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:18AM (6 children)
Yeah, I'm sitting here reading, and wondering, "how many gs are we pulling here?" "extremely high g" sounds pretty accurate to me!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Tuesday May 17 2022, @05:30AM (1 child)
If you read the linked source you need wonder no longer....
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday May 17 2022, @01:34PM
I believe that's the expected g's for the full scale, high speed version, which is intended to replace the first stage for orbital launches, at I believe somewhere around 2,000 m/s
This 1/3 scale version launches at much slower speeds (only around 340m/s), so the acceleration will be much lower (though still probably around 1,000g)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 17 2022, @08:25AM (3 children)
ibSJ_yy96iE Spinlaunch: BUSTED (Part 2)
9ziGI0i9VbE Spinlaunch: BUSTED!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday May 17 2022, @01:49PM (1 child)
I seem to recall Thunderf00t likes doing poor-quality "busting" based on baseless assumptions (often in direct contradiction to reported information), bad analogies, and fallacious understandings of physics and engineering.
Then again those flaws are so ubiquitous in most "busted" claims that I could be mis-remembering Thuderf00ts specific contributions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:18PM
I haven't seen this channel, but is it safe to assume that the "busted" videos come with a sufficiently misleading thumbnail?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:22PM
Scott Manley's review was better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0 [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:19AM (2 children)
Alternatively, you could read TFA;
(Score: 3, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:28AM (1 child)
TF headline says: "New Video Gives First-Person View of What It's Like to be SpinLaunched" . I was just providing an honest answer to that. :)
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:31AM
What about the right of Earth-bound materiel to experience what it's like to go to space in a giant centrifuge? It's not all about mankind :)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:46AM (1 child)
Imagine a scene from Futurama -- Fry and Bender have to take Public Transport to get into orbit because the Planet Express ship is having a grump. Fry is amazed that it only costs $9 to get into Space, compared to the billions needed back in 1999..
It's a centrifuge, of course. Cue Fry liquefying, while Bender just sits there going "doopdedoo"...
Bender then gets the idea to have a cigar.
He can't get it to light.
Another robot leans over to point at a "No smoking section" sign... because all the oxygen has separated to the bottom of the ship they're where the nitrogen is.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:22PM
This *feels* like a futurama episode. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @05:04AM (3 children)
a neutral buyont yellyfish (or fish made from water with no hollow cavaties) suspended in a container with water and launched so, would experience a "depth" of 100 km of water column (pressure at 10m water depth equals 1 bar).
so yeah, maybe not ... however the jellyfish should survive 400g's which is about the pressure at 4km.
on a more brighter note, if the launch opening could be angled, we could use solarpanels to power artillery. ("sorry, sir, all out of gun powder and it's cloudy. we have to let them gather food and water ...")
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:27PM (2 children)
It takes an hour and a half to spin up. That isn't practical as a weapon. Spinlaunch also runs at 10,000g's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:56PM (1 child)
sheesh, the "artillery" part is all you took away? wat about "jellyfish", "g-force limiting tech", "ginormous distances in space" and "constant (survivable) acceleration at 20g for 1 hour"?
also the "madh" is not completely correct.
if the water covering the buyont jellyfish is only 10 cm (0.1m) on all sides to the "indestructible container" ..uhm..err... containing it, then at 10g acceleration of container, then the pressure would equal the pressure the spacetravelling jellyfish would encounter at a depth of 1 meter @ 1g (earth-normal).
(assume: 0.1m water buffer on all sides / jellyfish is buyont / water cannot be compressed / container is spherical and "indestructible")
10g = water pressure at 1m depth @1g
100g = ditto 10m
10'000g = ditto 100m
100'000g = ditto 1km.
so it deep-ends (he-hehe) how little water you can make the star-jelly buyont-in without it touching the walls?
whatever happens during a 1000g acceleration if the jelly should contact the container wall ... i am not sure.
as for artillery, maybe one can add "boaster rockets" china-like-spiral-fireworks to get it going faster? :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @05:10PM
oopsy. fun with zer0s.
1'000g = ditto 100m
10'000g = ditto 1km
100'000g = ditto 10km (impossible? but a buffer-coverage of only 1cm would be 1km water pressure doing 100'000g)
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday May 17 2022, @09:00AM (2 children)
Let's say LEO is 7800 m/s.
Let's ignore the gravity and drag losses during launch. Just pretend.
Let's say their full version is 100 m in diameter, that makes radius of 50 m.
Now I have found http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/ [artificial-gravity.com] and it shows me that it will be 124079 g at launch time while doing 1489 rpm. That is about 25 rotations per second.
I cannot imagine what would be the launch window time opportunity and the accuracy of the trajectory.
Or the impact to the launch platform once the payload was released and it is now out of balance.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:01PM
The intent is not to launch directly to orbit - reaching orbit requires imparting roughly half of the required delta-V at the highest point in the trajectory anyway, in order to raise the lowest point in your orbit. Otherwise the surface of the Earth gets in your way halfway through your first "orbit"
Instead it's intended to replace the insanely inefficient first stage booster, which typically only reaches about 2,000m/s while consuming ~90% of the total fuel, mostly "wasted" fighting gravity.
Interesting side note - lunar escape velocity is only ~2,400m/s, and unlike from Earth, you *can* launch directly into Earth orbit from the moon, with only a tiny extra boost needed to "stop" at the lunar L4 or L5 points.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:34PM
Spinlaunch isn't yeeting all the way to orbit from the ground. They are only getting it fast enough for the second stage rocket to take it the rest of the way. That cuts the g-force down to 'only' 10000g. They reportedly have a 1ms release window, which should be plenty if the release mechanism is consistent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @12:40PM
In the paragraph it has a link to a launch howitzer [newatlas.com]. For me, that just has a great Wile E. Coyote vibe to it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 17 2022, @01:59PM
This is a very interesting method of launching objects into space. This will never be used to launch humans into space though, due to the fact that you can't survive the G forces that you would be subject to. Still, it could be a fairly clean and cheap way to launch (some, very sturdy) satellites, etc. into space.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"