Camera Films Itself Getting Launched Out of a Centrifuge at 1,000mph | Hacker News Reader

Camera Films Itself Getting Launched Out of a Centrifuge at 1,000mph

petapixel.com

> The company plans on building a larger version of the accelerator, which is capable of launching a payload in excess of 440 pounds (200 kg) and at speeds of over 5,000 miles an hour, plenty of speed to reach low earth orbit.

5000 mph is actually not orbital speed which is approximately 18000 mph.

So will the scaled up version spin a "second stage" fully fueled to launch it?

Yes. I believe the idea is to get the rocket up to where the atmosphere is extremely thin so you don’t need much fuel to complete the journey. The hard part of the initial acceleration through the thick atmosphere which burns most of the fuel is bypassed.

But on the other hand you add a lot of mass to deal with the air heating and increased structural loads. Will be interesting to see if it ends up being worth it.

I'm mostly curious how they deal with the sudden change in load on the spinner.

Looks crazy! What can be launched with the G forces involved here?

Fuel canisters? Raw materials? Potted electronics?

I believe their plan is smaller satellites. I remember a video saying the Gs weren’t too bad, just in a different direction at first.

The problem is more maximum physical size right now. The centrifuge is only so big. So it couldn’t launch full size satellites (in the initial full scale design) even if they were light enough.

But is fine for launching multiple CubeSat like things at once.

I have not done the math, but "not too bad" is gonna mean higher than people think.

Looks like a "devil is in the details" effort.

I like it, don't get me wrong here.

Will be one to watch!

It's "not too bad" in the sense that lots of electronics (e.g. phones) can already withstand the high accelerations - they have to otherwise they'd break every time you dropped them. It's still very high acceleration though.

There is a lot more to this than electronics.

Sure.

I just had a thought. This tech seems like "space junk" type tech. It won't launch high mass items.

But it can launch a lot of low mass ones, right?

If moderate to high decay orbits are selected as targets, maybe it ends up being less overall space junk. Launch a lot, and as the items fall back, replenish them as needed.

And maybe there are ways to package. Imagine a chemically active packing. Like spray foam, only with some sort of trigger.

Once the ship, satellite, item (not sure what to call low mass things) has been launched, Abbas release is triggered that essentially vaporizes the packing material.

A day or so after arrival in the target orbit, maybe hours and who knows there. I have no idea how chemistry might work in this application....

After arrival, the packing vaporizes away, leaving the rest to do whatever it is supposed to do during the course of it's service life. Being small, the burn on reentry is likely going to break it all down into the basic elements, circle of life style.

Thinking about it this way jas me intrigued.

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