"Slingatron" To Hurl Payloads Into Orbit

cylonlover writes "People have been shooting things into space since the 1940s, but in every case this has involved using rockets. This works, but it's incredibly expensive with the cheapest launch costs hovering around $2,000 per pound. This is in part because almost every bit of the rocket is either destroyed or rendered unusable once it has put the payload into orbit. Reusable launch vehicles like the SpaceX Grasshopper offer one way to bring costs down, but another approach is to dump the rockets altogether and hurl payloads into orbit. That's what HyperV Technologies Corp. of Chantilly, Virginia is hoping to achieve with a 'mechanical hypervelocity mass accelerator' called the slingatron."

Comments

HyperV?

[mingot]

Are they virtualizing this?

Re:HyperV?

[NatasRevol]

Nobody uses HyperV for virtualization.

My oh my

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Be careful if you build one on the moon, though. Those people will get uppity and use it as high ground to gain independence from the democratically-elected governments of Earth.

Re:My oh my

[sweatyboatman]

TANSTAAFL

Re:My oh my

[jamstar7]

Yup. In the West, they vote with dollars. The voter with the most dollars elects their own government.

Re:My oh my

[organgtool]

Just to clarify: it's not that the person with the most dollars gets his guy into office. The system currently allows someone to contribute money to all possible candidates and without those candidates knowing that you paid their opponents as well. Since you have paid all possible parties, your views are guaranteed to be represented regardless of who wins. And then a whole bunch of people will call the voters stupid for electing these guys when the fact of the matter is that all sides were bought because the system is corrupt. I hate to sound cynical, but at this point, it really doesn't matter who you vote for in federal elections.

Limited cargo use

[stewsters]

That sounds cool for launching tungsten balls into space, but probably wont work if you put any astronauts in it.

Re:Limited cargo use

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

It’s questionable whether any rocket system could survive such stresses and there’s certainly no chance of a slingatron being used on a manned mission because it would turn an astronaut into astronaut pudding. Only the most solid state and hardened of satellites built along the lines of an electronic artillery shell fuse would have a chance of survival. The developers say that a larger slingatron would reduce the forces, but even with a reduction by a factor of 10,000, it would still be restricted to very robust cargoes. This makes it mainly attractive for raw materials, such as radiation shielding, fuel, water, and other raw materials.

Re:Limited cargo use

[tmosley]

Stop anthropomorphizing space. It hates it when you do that.

I'll save you some reading

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's a Kickstarter campaign.

Wonder if it can be weaponized.

[ron_ivi]

Anything that can launch stuff into orbit can probably also be tweaked to drop stuff literally anywhere in the world.

Wonder if this'll turn into the poor-man's ICBM -- where you target a house of an enemy with google maps; and drop rocks on it with this 15,600 mph slingshot.

Re:Wonder if it can be weaponized.

[flyingfsck]

Yeah, but Intercontinental Trebuchet sounds like a helluvalot of fun...

Hmmm ...

[gstoddart]

So we're going with the Wile E Coyote school of engineering then?

Awesome!!

Might be sure your payload doesn't get any sudden G-forces it's not built for, but it sounds interesting.

Cargo is expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything astronauts need is currently either on board or was put into orbit using expensive heavy lift rockets.

Imagine a low cost way of getting things into space, it would be an instant game changer.

Re:Cargo is expensive

[Jeremi]

Unlimited pudding rations for all ISS crew members!

Re:Cargo is expensive

[nojayuk]

A surprisingly large amount of stuff sent into low earth orbit and even geosynchronous orbit consists of fuel and oxidiser. The Shuttle launched with over 14 tonnes of manoeuvering fuel and oxidiser on board for the OMS and RCS motors. That's 14 tonnes that couldn't be dedicated to payload, food, water etc. Similarly a geosynchrononous satellite weighing 6 tonnes will be carrying two or three tones of fuel and oxidiser so it can maneuver into its final orbit and allow it to maintain station for a decade or more. Some GEO birds have been decommissioned when they nearly ran out of fuel, not because they broke down or became obsolete.

Using a slingshot or other brute-force technique to put tanks of fuel and oxidiser into orbit cheaply could well be worthwhile; robot tugs could collect them into a tank farm of some kind in a higher orbit and then deliver fuel and oxidiser to various vehicles as needed rather than them having to lift their entire fuel and oxidiser loads along with delicate electronics, structural components for Mars landers, fleshy meatbags etc.

Re:Cargo is expensive

[Andrio]

Yeah.

Taking stuff into space requires a huge amount of energy. Right now, the stuff we sent into space has to carry its own energy, stored in fuel. Because so much energy is needed, lots of fuel is needed. But fuel is heavy, so even more energy is needed.

Externalizing the energy source for what gets sent into space can severely lower costs of getting stuff up there. I don't know if a slingshot is the best way to do it, but at least it's thinking in the right direction.

If it's cheaper it's still good

[Firethorn]

Just because you can't put astronauts or unhardened electronic/mechanical bits up with it doesn't really reduce it's value.

If it can reduce launch costs for the stuff it can launch to around $100/pound vs $2k, it changes the dynamics even if it's just launching oxygen, water, and such to the station.

"One true solution" arguments (it doesn't replace every use so it's useless!) don't help solve problems.

Re:If it's cheaper it's still good

[mmcxii]

"One true solution" arguments (it doesn't replace every use so it's useless!) don't help solve problems.

True but pointing out how a solution doesn't solve every aspect of every problem is what gets a post modded up around here. This reinforcement of short-sightedness keeps rearing it's ugly head with nearly every article. Thus even people who know better are still prone to postings such as this just because they know it'll be modded up. The cycle continues and we help to breed a new generation of cynics who don't think that things getting a little better today is a worthwhile goal if it's not the future promised to them by the most optimistic sci-fi stories.

Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:If it's cheaper it's still good

[FatLittleMonkey]

Payload on a ballistic arc is worthless (**) unless you can do a subsequent burn at apogee to raise the perigee above the atmosphere. They are unlikely to be able to build a rocket that is hardened enough to survive launch, but is large enough and has enough thrust to raise perigee before it and the payload reenter and burn up.

(** Outside of lobbing nukes at people.)

That said, this might be more useful on a low-gravity, atmosphere-free body like the moon, where you can build the spinner much larger, and launch at a much more horizontal trajectory (improving efficiency, and making interception easier, via an orbital tether). So as long as these guys aren't wasting my money, I'm happy for them to waste their own time and money to develop and prove version 0.01a of the technology.

Re:60,000Gs ?

[wjh31]

did you even look? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(acceleration) its basicly the sort of acceleration a bullet undergoes, and artillery shells exist with electronics in them that are designed to survive launch.

Have they studied physics?

[Cyberax]

Have they actually studied physics? This project is so bogus on multiple levels:
1) It's much easier to use a linear accelerator. It won't have to deal with tremendous loads from centrifugal forces, for one thing.
2) Acceleration will be murderous for anything that's not a solid material.
3) And finally, it still won't work even if a payload is accelerated to orbital speed. That's because the payload would re-enter the atmosphere and return to the point where it left the accelerator at the end of its first orbit - that's simple freaking orbital mechanics. And you need quite a bit of delta-v to lift the perigee high enough to avoid it, which requires a rocket with an engine, see 2) why it's not feasible.

I see an obvious problem with this concept: heat

[Ihlosi]

The payload heats up quite a bit through friction - and then ends up in space, where basically the only way of getting rid of excess heat is radiating it away (slowly).

This is quite unlike atmospheric braking and descent, where the heat can easily be dissipated by convection once the payload has slowed down enough.