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Comment by 7e | Hacker News Reader

I think the economics of space are are much more likely to be transformed by something like https://www.longshotspace.com/. Rockets are complex, still costly, and polluting.

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The problem with space guns is you can't just yeet rocks into orbit. Any orbit that starts at the surface returns to the surface. So you still need a disposable rocket and avionics and fuel in every payload to change the orbit once out of the atmosphere. Only now the rocket needs to survive being literally shot out of a gun and then traveling at orbital velocity in atmosphere. That puts a pretty high floor on the cost per shot.

Plus, your payload needs to be gun compatible. Not gonna put people in there.

Well, in WW2 we did manage to put working radar in artillery shells.

With vacuum tubes, no less!

Space is for robots.

While mass to orbit costs as much as it does now, sure. However later on it's gonna be great to have humans closer to the working robots to reduce the round-trip latency. They could also perform tasks robots are not suited for.

Consider operators living on Mars and operating drones near their habitat each day. It would be like modern day drone operators and robot assisted surgery. Like remote operators of mega-trucks today.

Those robots could interact with the operators - driving into a "garage" that can be pressurized for maintenance, upgrades or science.

StarShip promises to reduce the cost of mass to orbit, making larger and more complex scientific, industrial and habitat options feasible.

If you want to look at someone that is further along on a concept like this you can look at SpinLaunch. Exactly what it sounds like with a gigantic centrifuge to spin and throw things really fast. But they are still throwing a small two-stage rocket.

https://www.spinlaunch.com/orbital

I think a reusable orbital tug which rendezvous with payloads is the play here. The tug would refuel from some of the gun-launched payloads.

I think it would probably have to refuel with every payload. Changing orbits that fast isn't cheap. It would be cool to see an analysis of this, I don't know if it would really make sense. I've seen some interviews with the space gun guys but unfortunately nobody really pressed them on this issue and they didn't mention any plans for space tugs.

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