Unfortunately anyone who took grade eight science and basic physics knows this wouldn’t work but the video looks great, I’m sure they will find a bunch of suckers to dump cash into the project just off of the video alone.
Here is a basic one: How well does it work outside the world of CGI and in the world of real life physics? Potential follow up: What payload can even survive the procedure?
I was very sceptical until seeing everything you all are achieving. After the RE video I am able to conceive how it would work. Every one of my questions were answered. I'm rooting for y'all.
the idea is theoretically possible but with current materials and tech that "rocket" is turning to shrapnel inside the spinner before it hits a high enough velocity to break atmosphere
This will never work! At first it was supposed to launch a satellite directly, now they're launching a two-stage rocket, that is so dumb. It's not like there is something called atmosphere that render the whole thing ridiculous (it wouldn't even work on Mars). I wonder how they will have a complete vacuum in such a big place with a rotor in it, heating like crazy. Also the 10 to 20k gs during tens of minutes will be really great for satellites with moving parts... basically the manufacturers will have to do special satellites just for them (nope). CGI seem to be the only thing required to get investments nowadays, that's sad really. I remember their video of the "real thing" at a 1/3 scale; The plain object launched started to spin like crazy even before leaving the launcher. And it was a sub sonic launch!
@@I_hu85ghjo The DeltaV needed will remain close, but with an awful lot of instability, plus a perfect void (with 0 imperfection) on such an immense volume, plus the tens of thousand of g required, etc. Rocket acceleration does not exceed a few gs for a few minutes, and we can re use them.
Every now and then I have to come back and watch this because it’s just so dang cool, conceptually. I hope this venture works out, but just the pioneering engineering work alone y’all are doing on this feels like it’s great for humanity.
I think they can build a gyroscopic chair in the shuttle which makes the astronauts not to spin. The whole shuttle won't be spinning after it is launched so this chair would either spin in the opposite direction or in a wobbly direction. I need more time to think how to set up the chair...
Yes and they where way off in the REAL video say 30cm for the 300 cm missile! And its trajectory was about 1/10 off! Thats with a subsonic launch! I want to see it going seven times that speed and instantly heat up to over 1000degrees C when it hits the atmosphere! LOL
Halliburton Fracking pumps use electrognetic motor to spin shaft like a locomotive ...I think the catapult can nearly stop on a dime..in case of catastrophe.
What happens to the mechanism when the payload is released?.... it will become highly unstable as the remaining mass of the counterweight will tear it apart, explosively. A 500kg mass with 100 x side G, now effectively weighing 50 tonnes will suddenly pull outwards on the rotor and at very high RPMs...
From what I could gather from the footage of their first launch last week, they seem to simultaneously release a second mass at the opposite of the payload to counterweight the change in momentum. I must admit that the present video is confusing as it doesn't show anything like that and raises your point.
@@pforce9 the best and most obvious solution for the ejected counterweight would be an identical shaped object (same drag coefficient) with exactly the same mass that is released in the opposite direction, downwards into a deep pool of water... So it can be retrieved later.
@@LuchtLeiderNederland Lets catch up in a year or two and see if this takes off or not. I am 100% sure it won't, as it is the stupidest idea since musk and his tunnels . Maybe even more stupid. I bet your also a musk fanboi right?
Exactly, that was my first thought. Just after it has flown one radius away from the centrifuge it'll be 90 degrees out of line with the flight direction. Unless it is a sphere it will be destroyed by aerodynamic forces, and if it is a sphere it'll create a huge supersonic shock wave will will quickly return it to Earth, probably in pieces. They seem to have overlooked this simple point.
This sort of system has been around as a concept for ages, It is great to see someone finally build these kinds of systems for real, nice one SpinLaunch! 😀
@@jorisbonson386 Wanna bet on it? The more fancy CGI animations and celebration/ad content there is in relation to actual footage, the more bullshit it is. Same for hyperloop, waterseer, theranos and all the other vaporware.
@@jorisbonson386 mate it's a total scam. Yes they have built it, but it does zero of what they claim. When you need to fluff your launch test with crappy annimations & not show any actual footage of the launch other than a few cherry picked frames, then it's a big red flag. This thing wouldn't even reach the top of the empire state building.
This is how they'll be launching everyone in the Hyperloop! Because "Spinlaunch" and "Hyperloop" are both genius ideas that are for sure gonna happen. /s
TBF this isnt nearly as stupid, the yeetification of small objects in a vacuum isn't that big a challenge compared to hundreds of miles of near vacuum public transit
@@D347h54rg3n7 except the spinlaunch is intended for not-small-objects, and the physics behind throwing a rock with a slingshot versus throwing a rocket that's supposed to go many times the speed of sound are not quite the same, it turns out.
@@FackeYu the advertisement implies satalites which can be rather compact, but yeah them saying that massive test launcher is smaller than intended does make me curious how well they can continue to scale things
I think I see how they rebalance the arm so quickly after releasing the payload and vehicle. The trick is to get it to seek its own equilibrium where the forces are balanced and it seems it can do that by sliding in and out from the center of rotation along that slot down its center. Interesting to think about the problem a little more and figure out what all it would take to make it do that.
interesting idea. so after the launch, they could slide the arm to effectively lengthen the projectile arm. I don't think this could happen passively tho; would need motors to change the fulcrum point? how quickly could this be done? bigger issue though is having enough room to lengthen so the projectile end doesn't crash into the walls.
@@ronaldchong The RE video that just came out has such an interesting solution. Put a launch vehicle at both ends, and launch both in quick succession, one half rotation apart throwing them both in the same direction into space. At the RPMs of this system, only releasing something on the other side at the SAME time could be faster.
Ok, so keep in mind conservation of momentum. With the radius of the spinner as R, the projectile will travel 2pi*R distance from release in the same time as it takes the spinner to make one full rotation after release. Because of conservation of momentum, the projectile will keep rotating (tumbling in this case) at the same angular velocity as the spinner at release. That means that after traveling just pi*R/2 distance, the projectile will have rotated through 90 degrees to be completely sideways. And since it probably won’t have exited the vacuum chamber by then, it won’t have had any aerodynamic forces to help stabilize by then. Although this tumbling is a real problem, the demonstrator seemed to fly mostly straight, so I wonder if you have a secret method to cancel out the rotation on release.
_"the projectile will keep rotating (tumbling in this case) at the same angular velocity as the spinner at release."_ This is true only in the case when there are no forces acting on the projectile and changing its angular momentum during the release. But if the release mechanism is engineered to apply a torque which cancels the angular velocity of the projectile, then the rocket will not be tumbling anymore.
@@J7Handle Which would be a tremendous jolt in everyday life. But we are talking about a projectile under 10000g acceleration in a centrifuge. All it takes is to release the nose of the rocket before the tail is released. The delay is on the order of (length of the rocket)/(its velocity), times a coefficient on the order of unity, the exact value of which depends on the details of mass distribution of the projectile and on where the attachment points are. So, for a 5 meter long rocket going at 2 km/s, the nose will be released about 2 ms before the tail. The tether continuing to pull on the tail after the nose is released, in these 2 ms imparts the 450 rpm of angular velocity and zeros the angular velocity of the projectile.
@@cogoid That “apply a Torque” would completely obliterate the projectile. It’s impossible to cancel out 450 rpm in a fraction of a second without causing some damage. If what you’re saying is the case and it causes no damage to the rocket then I’m very eager to enlighten myself on the technology they’re using.
What a beautiful and elegant video. The thing seems so futuristic and modern but people have been using slingshots to launch stuff for literally thousands of years, its a really interesting and clever invention.
Man todays computers and eneneering is on another level, look at japanese bullet train, literally they are controling and compensating the strength of the electromagnets so the train is still the same hight above the rails. Check that out.
This makes yeeting rockets into space look so graceful! Seriously, the aesthetics... I was curious how a satellite would fit, but based on this and their website it looks like the payload would be customized. Pretty cool.
Not only the payload, the casing carries the actual rocket that will transfer from a suborbital trajectory to an orbital insertion. It takes only 10 % of orbital energy to reach "space" (Blue Origin). Then the ponies have to fire and add the real push out to orbital speeds (Space X).
BatChest I hecking love CGI, whenever I see CGI I pog out and don't immediately think "wait a second, this is exactly how all the other impossible vapor-ware, over-promised, vapidly hyped projects go." BatChest chills, bro. I can't wait to see this in action - THIS IS THE FUTURE, HECK YEA!!! Everyone who disagrees is just a hater! No, I'm not a super naive clown, you are! 🤡
I am curious how the spinning component handles the sudden imbalance when the payload is released? does the counter weight move? bar other questions I have....
I would think they'd need to have something tangent to the spin on the opposite side of the release point to catch the counterweight, which I have to assume they'd release at the same time.
@@natemoorman4562 Although not shown in this video, the actual machine has an appendix on the opposite side from the launch tube -- presumably the catch for the counterweight. One can briefly see it in the recent video of the test launch.
It is a very creative approach, to be sure. But rocket structures have to be as lightweight as possible, otherwise you cannot accelerate them to orbital velocity. Making a lightweight rocket structure that can *also* withstand 100000 tons of centrifugal force squishing it sideways is a very non-obvious thing. Plus, because this rocket is so small, to remain competitive, it can only cost a small fraction of the cost of a bigger conventional rocket. Taken together, these things are already super-hard to achieve, not even mentioning the challenge of constructing the 2 km/s slingshot itself. It will be pretty amazing to watch this project, no matter where it goes!
My reaction was the opposite. To get orbital speeds from a spinner would mean forces in excess of 10,000Gs which I figured was just unreasonable for delicate satellite and rocket motor components.
No doubt some of the smartest people in the world have worked on this project. Yet they have somehow overlooked checking youtube comments to see if this will even work.
Looks super cool! Good luck! What about satellite moving parts: lenses, gambles, manipulators etc - how do they handle thousands of Gs? Have you considered combining the spinlaunch with a long atmosphere reaching space tether (referencing Kurzgesagt)? It would be so dope :D
I've seen a rail gun canon where the projectile exits the muzzle as a fireball, as soon as it hits the open air, and still it's nowhere near a velocity to reach orbit. I can't imagine how fast this thing needs to exit the spinner as an initial velocity, but I bet it's some mindboggling speed. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near this thing when it launches. It's kinetic energy will be insane.
At 5000mph they basically are going to have a hypersonic vehicle traveling through surface air densities. I'm guessing the air friction will be orders of magnitude higher than any currently existing rocket/ aircraft, and much higher than any reentry vehicle since those start out at low densities when they start to experience air friction. This is the opposite.
To anyone wondering, it WILL work. We usually think of crazy stuff and think it's the future. But we are stuck on the 1980's minds, where these things were the future. To make things simple, the future is now, and we should support private companies such as SpinLaunch, because national agencies are still stuck in the 80's, and they can not afford to fail and develope revolutionary projects because of the super tight budgets that they get.
The hardest part will be making any payload survive the centrifugal force, to get a payload accelerated to Mach 6 using a 300ft diameter system will generate over 9000g (not grams) on the payload before the rocket accelerate to >Mach 23. The rocket that can withstand the most g force was the Sprint missile, at ~100g. Realistically the system will need to be build at the size of 2~5km to launch electronics. I do believe these systems will be extremely cost effective to transport material between planets in the future.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but making electronics to survive 10000 g's is probably the easiest part of this project. Even vacuum tube based proximity fuses built in 1940s could withstand such accelerations. It is a well-understood problem, and for small satellites it should not cause any issues. If designed for high accelerations from the beginning, they will be only slightly heavier and slightly more expensive. The rest of this plan is much, much more difficult to implement.
The moment I saw picture of it, wrote it off because of the centrifugal force, all other things aside. A 500kg satellite would weight 10,188 tons @ 853rpm. Force = m v^2 / r ... satellite mass: 500kg ... radius: 25m ... tangential velocity: 2235.2 m/s ... angular velocity = 853.8rpm ... force 99,922,381 newtons ... centrifugal acceleration: 199,845m/s^2 ... earth gravity is 9.807 m/s^2. So we got 20377x the gravity of earth exerted on the satellite. Meaning a 500kg satellite would weight 10,188 tons at the end of the arm/claw that will holding the satellite before release. How did these guys manage to build this thing, this far, without looking at the basics of math? How did every single one of them miss this?
The fabric that separates the vacuum from atmosphere (and rocket punches through) is pretty sci-fi too.. where sea floor atmo pressure is 10.3 tons/square meter and we got an circular opening of ~2.4 diameter that the fabric covers. So we got 4.52m^2 x 10.3 tons = That is some cool fabric that can handle 46 tones of pressure but the rocket still can punch through! Just sell the fabric, get super rich!
Have you guys considered a physical locking mechanism so you dont have to worry about timing the launch. I.e. a depressable hook or arm at the opening of the vacuum chamber that can be armed at any time during the launch to spring up and catch the payload release when the arm reaches the correct angle.
would the projectile not be under serious stress when being launched in a vacuum with multiple mach and then hitting normal airpressure after leaving the chamber? wouldnt that be like hitting a wall in a car at higher speeds? not to speak of the temperatures the projectile would have to withstand...but the mechanical stress would make it really difficult for the projectile not to be shattered.
Compared to a bullet being. Fired. From a Musket. The aerodynamics are better if the projectile is spinning and the fins set it to that stability but don't forget Hitler built a rail gun that fired a large projectile what....across the English channel...using sequential charges...in 1944?
With their claims of 8000Km/h with 100m dia, the acceleration would be 98,765 m/s^2(excuse the napkin math), and with that much Gs, a 2.8m long titanium bar would start crumbling upon itself like ketchup if held along the direction of acceleration for that long,... Maybe they should start with smaller numbers(500KMPH ranges). Otherwise, the marketing video looks cool! Also, the projectile would be spinning 2,666 rpm like a boomerang after it is released! they would need to guide it in a rail or something like a controlled release to make it not spin at that speed.
Engineering necessary to harden the payload is relatively straightforward -- moving parts need to be locked down for the launch, other parts need to be stiffened. Overall it is surprisingly not an issue -- military electronics and mechanics exist that function at several times higher accelerations (any electronics in the artillery shells, electronics in bombs designed to pierce many meters of concrete before exploding, etc.) Hardening for surviving high acceleration comes with a weight penalty, but not a huge one. The necessity of designing the entire rocket to withstand such g-forces is a different matter. Normally, the rocket structures are built as light as possible, with a very small safety factor over the actual loads that they will experience in flight. This is very necessary, because the velocity achievable by the rocket is proportional to the logarithm of the initial mass to the final mass -- unless the structure is very light, the velocity is too low for reaching the orbit. Designing the entire rocket for 10000g comes at a heavy cost to performance. The 10000g acceleration would produce pressures in the rocket tanks up to 1000 bar, requiring much heavier tanks. Spinlaunch claims that their rocket will be _"so simple it can be mass produced cheaply"_, but this would need to be demonstrated to be believable. For example, Rocket Lab launches up to 300 kg into the orbit using a 12 ton rocket launching from the ground. Spinlaunch will have to use a similar weight catapulted rocket to launch a similar payload. Considering that the rocket will have to be built to withstand huge acceleration and also the hypersonic flight through the lower atmosphere it is far from obvious that it can be made cheaper than the same size rocket that does not experience such harsh conditions in flight. And that is without even considering the cost of the centrifuge itself! It may be technically possible to launch rockets this way. But it is hard to see how this can be more economical than today's rockets. And if tomorrow fully reusable rockets bring the launch cost further down, the situation will become even more complicated.
@@cogoid "Relatively straightforward", that's a stretch ! We currently build and test spacecraft sub-systems to withstand a quasi-static acceleration of around 20g. This launch concept can only work with small, ruggedized cube-sats and never with fully fledged medium to heavy telecommunication satellites (which are around 3 to 8 tons for sizes of 2 to 6 meters). And, of course, we already clamp down every deployable parts at multiple points. You compare it to artillery ammunitions, but those only need to survive huge shocks for mere milliseconds (not seconds or minutes), which can be mitigated with dampers/potting. The batteries are made of molten salt (thermal batteries) which resists to shocks but only provide power for minutes (duration of a typical ballistic trajectory flight) and can't be recharged. Those are two different worlds with totally different approach of engineering. Of course, there can be cross-seeding for some parts of the launcher itself as the requirements are usually different than for the payload (I used thermal batteries on the 1st stage of Ariane 6 as the duration is small and lithium-ion batteries cost an arm and a leg when made for such application).
@@corentinnaisse5350 You make good points. At sizes above a few meters (in the direction of acceleration) no material can support even its own weight at 10000g. Only relatively small assemblies are feasible. I think SpinLaunch hopes to be able to ruggedize small satellites rather larger than a cubesat. Their goal seems to be to create small communication satellites similar to those used by OneWeb, and small Earth observation satellites like SkySats. Judging from their publications, they are, for example, working on ruggedized reaction wheels for such applications.
Orbital forces, or centrifugal forces are generated whenever an object moves in a circular fashion at high speeds. Think of the wheels on the bus or your car, for example. The forward motion of the vehicle relies on the circular motion of the wheels. The faster the wheels turn, the faster the vehicle is propelled forward. It’s not rocket science. Or is it?
@@HH-xs2gm SpinLaunch overcame this shortcoming by a process called "ruggedization". Countless hours are spent designing, analyzing, and testing modifications to readily available components in order to safely withstand the g-forces of the orbital accelerator.
Thunderf00t already busted this spinning Hyperloop thing. Looks great at the first but has a lot of isues is you do the math and the physiks. A capsule returning from space had around mach 20 and reaches tempratures around 1700° in nearly vacuum. And they try to lounch a Rocket whit mach 7 at seelevel whit 100% atmosphere. This thing will melt down in the second it touches the air. Maybee it could be something for the Moon or MAYBEE Mars but nothing for a planet whit atmosphere on it. I would highly recoment to watch his video: @
You accomplished absolutely nothing and it is physically impossible to achieve what you're trying to achieve the way you're doing it. But I've only been an engineer for 28 years, I'm sure you've got some dreamers that figure they can defeat physics lol. It didn't even come out straight lol and you don't have a perfect vacuum, and good luck getting that thing spinning fast enough, the amount of energy required is astronomical. This is just a scam lol
But I'm sure people that believe the hyperloop is possible also think that you can make a super duper trebuchet to fling things into orbit, because feelings yo lol
this is a great idea but it need lot to work on if they deal with all the problems then definitely it is going to be our future there will be lot's application of this . so good luck 🤞 !!
Throwing things into space makes so much more sense. Storing the energy required into the vehicle kinetically, is orders of magnitude more efficient than doing it chemically. Be it this system or some other eventual mass driver that achieves it, I am sure the tech will happen one day.
On Earth, the movement to be more sustainable in all things is in full swing. We’ve seen the stratospheric rise of the electric car. We’ve started using renewable forms of energy to power everything from traffic lights to entire cities. In space, the same ideology holds true for SpinLaunch. The innovative design that SpinLaunch has developed drastically cuts the fuel demand needed to launch the rocket, and thereby the consumption of a non-renewable energy source.
You could probably use the spin launch to constantly ferry goods from the moon to Earth orbit. Hmm, a space station that has a spin launch while in orbit around the moon. Remember spin launch is used to create enough momentum to exit Earth with rocket thrust capabilities. on the moon, you could probably send payloads straight from its surface to Mars too. Food, water, entertainment. So now there is a space elevator to build on the moon to also carry resources from a lunar orbit from a geostationary orbit around the moon. The concept is quite stable because luckily the Earth's moon is what is called a tidally locked moon. It's about the moon's rotation around it's poles axis. you always see the same side of the moon from Earth.
@Fetrix так в том то и дело, что тема обсосана в доль и поперёк в книжках и журналах, радиус колеса должен быть 9000м (как гора Эверест) что бы нагрузка не превышала 1000g
