Comment on Tossing Satellites into Orbit with SpinLaunch: Is that Possible? | Interesting Engineering

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BastingChemina@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

It’s even far from fuel free, to reach Low Earth Orbit a rocket needs between 9.3 and 10km/s of delta-v.

According to the video the system is launching the rocket at mach 6, which is equivalent to 2km/s.

So the system is providing only 1/5 of the energy needed to get to orbit. It’s good but I’m not sure it is worth the drawback of having to handle the huge acceleration.

On the other hand the same system on the moon would provide enough energy to reach orbit, it would just need a small amount of propellant to circularize.

Or by increasing slightly the speed of the system it could even send stuff straight to earth with no propellant.

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