Hacker News Reader

Pointing your rail gun up is best for getting out of the atmosphere ASAP, but how do you build a gun that goes, say, 20 km high into the air?

It's physically possible for us to build a 100km tall tower with current technology. (Columns formed from many highly pressurized tanks made from boron.) It's not really economically feasible, however.

View on HN

I wonder how well such a tower would withstand the forces involved in also launching projectiles at escape velocity.

As of around the year 2000, I remember a figure of 11 miles as the height limit for a fairly conventionally built skyscraper. If we used lightweight truss construction, I suspect we could build a load bearing tower. If we used aerospace grade materials, we could do even better. (Yes, it would be quite expensive.)

Quite expensive like "a significant portion of the annual gross global product"

Most of the load could likely be mitigated by wings and buoyant structures.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com