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Spacecraft Launching Maglevs

Posted by Hemos on from the use-it-on-your-enemies dept.

M1000 pointed us over to a recent Wired article regarding NASA picking up maglev technology for launching spacecraft. The reasoning is that the weight-cost of propellant when launching shuttles takes up a high amount of the weight and this would cut down the needs for rocket fuel. Rockets would still be needed for the final launch as the current max maglev speed is 600 MPH. More experiment test models are being worked on now.

2 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Should make life interesting in Florida.. by Apuleius · · Score: 4

    Every time your monitor screen goes tie-dye-t-shirt you know it's a launch time.

  2. Dr. Gerland Bull (yes he did get killed). by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4
    You can read about Dr. Gerland Bull here .

    How it works

    • Take a long tube, a gun barrel, around 100 or more meters long.
    • put a rocket in the gun.
    • Fire the rocket, and as it passes along the barrell detonate additional charges behind it keeping the pressure in the barrell approximately what it was when the main charges were fired.
    • result: hypervelocity projectiles from a relatively low-tech gun
    • Fast enough to get things into orbit for under $1 per pound, around 1/10000th of current launch prices.
    • Successful prototypes were built, but never orbital ones.
    His personal story
    • He designed large guns in Canada.
    • They cut his funding and he went independent
    • People didn't take his stuff seriously.
    • He freelanced for unpopular nations (China, Iraq)
    • He did some work on scud missiles and somebody, probably mossad, killed him.

    What got built

    • In tests, a 36m gun reached 1/3 of escape velocity
    • The Iraqi "Supergun" was built by Bull and had a 1500 mile range if used for ground-to-ground, but only in one direction
    • It was actually intended as a prototype of a satalite launch system.
    • AARC most of the parts were made by companies who usually make oil well drilling equipment. It's low tech.
    Thoughts on the technology
    • Fuel-air or conventional propellents are much more efficient for vehicle launch than electicity, and don't let anybody tell you different without hard numbers to back them up.
    • For a space station, 90% of the mass you need could be thrown up into orbit out of a cannon and nobody would care. The peaches might bruised but that's about it.
    • It's not about manned space flight or astronomy, it's about engineering, so why would NASA care?
    If I was in the position of backing a launch technology for unmanned cargo launch, this would be it. Everything else is a poor second best, IMHO.