this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
169 points (99.4% liked)

news

23464 readers
2 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)

Uhhh

Can someone tell me what velocity you need to launch an object at in order to reach orbit? And what accelerative forces you need in order to achieve that?

How big is this railgun? How are they handling heat from atmospheric friction? You have the same problem going up too quickly as you get coming down too quickly.

[–] SubstantialNothingness@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

I don't know the answer to your question (unfortunately) but I've run into this idea before, and it seems that it's an idea that has been passed around for many years now including by NASA. As I understand it, one of the perks is that you don't have to carry your fuel and engines - so you don't have to move nearly as much mass. You could launch a satellite with just a protective shell around it. So the magnets don't have to instantaneously exert as much force as the rockets do during their entire burn. I assume these planes would be drones so they might be rather small.

If the idea is that they're sending up people with railguns then it's simply bullshit afaik. It would have to be rail-assisted and the output would be marginal. (edit: super long barrels have apparently been discussed for human launches [with rockets for later stages], but it appears to be generally considered unfeasible right now.)

The acceleration even for drones would be mind-numbing. Definitely some bleeding-edge engineering challenges on making something that can survive that. I'm not really well-informed on it so I won't speculate in detail, but I do get the impression that most of those challenges are theoretically solvable with today's science. However it would be a breakthrough for many applied science fields.

If any nation could do this, imo, it's China. They're really taking the lead in almost every measure right now (including the most important outside of welfare imo - research). It's not their fault if the 5eyes want to fear-monger about falling behind. (It is incredibly aggravating, though.)

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

What if the interior of the railgun accelerator was all a vacuum and the exit point was really really really really tall? So that impact with atmosphere at the exit of the gun was lower.

[–] Hexbear2@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

This is what StarTram is, the launch system maintains a vacuum. The system won't work without that feature.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (14 replies)