SpinLaunch Conducts Suborbital Test
From the SpinLaunch website: The Suborbital Accelerator is designed to operate from 800 to 5,000 mph and acts primarily as a test-bed for the Orbital Launch System. On October 22nd, 2021, our first launch successfully propelled a test vehicle at supersonic speeds and ended with the recovery of the reusable flight vehicle. Throughout 2022 the system will conduct regular test flights with a variety of vehicles and launch velocities. The Suborbital System offers testing capabilities to customers and provides long term value as a satellite qualification facility.
40 responses to “SpinLaunch Conducts Suborbital Test”
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Looks like an SA-10/S-300 launch tube.
If one ignores the huge squirrel cage blower-looking thing attached to it.
Great job! This type of research and development activity was suppose to be the core of the spaceport business model, not space tourism
Plenty of room for both it would seem.
I admit giggling when I heard about them last year, but if they can pull it off good on em!!
It’ll never work
Why?
Just joking — the idea seems ridiculous, but.. it looks like they can make it work.
I should have added a 😉 My bad
The physics are simple and solid, it is just the atmosphere, and its friction, that creates the problems for using it on Earth.
With Relativity’s giant 3-D metal printers and now Spin-Launch’s rotary ballista, we have two non-SpaceX industrial technologies that will find ready homes on the Moon. By the time Elon – and perhaps NASA – are ready to go there may well be others. The 2030s are shaping up to be exciting times on dear old Luna.
Don’t forget the containers that his brother Kimbal Musk is developing for Controlled Environment Agriculture. At the moment he is developing them as a way for organic supermarkets to grow fresh herbs and produce in their parking lots. But adapted to sealed solar powered modules the technology will feed the first settlers in space.
http://squarerootsgrow.com
Anyone have a good source of numbers? An article I read mentioned fling velocities of 11 km/sec and a 150m diameter flinger. But Soctt Manly mentions much more sane numbers like 2.3 km/sec and 100m in diameter. The difference is Between 1400 RPM, and 160000 g and 450 RPM and 11,000 g. The lower numbers make much more sense but a normal 2nd stage for for a normal launch vehicle that has to also survive slamming thru the entire atmosphere of Earth is required. The lower numbers have the flinger replace a first stage booster. Now because of the g forces and thermal and mechanical load of ascent, you have great difficulty and restricted propellant choices for stage 2 and 3(?). Not to mention a payload that can take these forces as well. If the first stage is recoverable and refurbable, I wonder if this flinger system will really save money.
On the moon. 2.3 km/sec is escape velocity. On Earth, 2.3 km/sec is Mach 7 at sea level. I’m willing to bet it’s worthless for Earth launch. Equally willing to bet is is valuable info for Lunar launch and asteroid mining.
The suborbital flinger is just that. Suborbital. The orbital version will be larger and the projectile will have a second stage to get it to orbit.
Here is a better article:
https://www.thedrive.com/th…
Thanks for the link. I’ve run a few numbers on various crazy things from time to time. From the tether stuff I’ve looked into and run numbers on, I’m willing to bet it won’t be useful for Earth launch.
Yes, this will be a key technology for the development of lunar industry. People and delicate cargo will launch be rocket, but industrial goods and commodities by external powered systems like SpinLaunch.
Yes in Lunar vacuum the slinger arm can be quite long for reduced gee load as well as just strong enough to do the job. The Lunar units also won’t be hitting massive deceleration and heating at release. Asteroid mining is even more attractive as the velocities could be constantly adjusted for TEI.
Also it could be used to change the orbit of the asteroid. I did a post on that idea some years ago.
The type of payloads that are able to handle the acceleration would be commodities like ore, fuel, and gases, the exact ones needed to be launched in large volumes cheaply to close space business models. Its use on Earth will be limited by the dense atmosphere but it will be a great technology for the Moon, Mars and Asteroids.
This is what firms like Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources should have been working on, along with mining robots, to be credible instead of the eye candy spacecraft they were selling.
I wonder if this is a more economical for bulk propellants etc than a large launch vehicle? That should be a trade that can be bounded to get an idea. My gut tells me the large launch vehicle would win.
Depends on which Celestial Body. On Earth I would expect the large launcher to win. But on the Moon it would be nice to have a method that would use electricity rather than fuel. On Mars it could go either way.
From Earth’s surface, you betcha. 200 kg. is 1/500th of a Starship tanker propellant load of 100 tonnes. But that 100 tonnes would be net mass. For Spin-Launch, the 10,000G-capable tank would be a non-trivial fraction of each 200 kg. payload. So if Elon puts three more RaptorVacs on his tankers and runs all nine engines at full chat all the way to orbit, the Starship tanker payload could be a lot more than 100 net tonnes to LEO and the effective multiplier for Spin-Launch would be more like 1,000 than 500. Where Spin-Launch could really shine is on the Moon.
I don’t think fuel to orbit is anything SpinLaunch is contemplating. More like fast launch of smallsats. I too doubt it will work, but we’ll see.
When the studies for the spaceport was done a number of orbital launch corridors were identified. The high altitude and dry air will also make it easier. Since the atmospheric part of the launch would be over WSMR there wouldn’t be any mitigation needed for the sonic booms.
AIUI, they only plan tests from WSMR. Orbital ops are planned for much larger coastal flingers.
They will take a good size performance hit from the dense and humid air.
The economics are really the make-or-break issue. If Astra succeeds in building their rockets at the cost points it is targeting, I suspect that will prove more break than make for Spin-Launch here on Earth. The technology would be ideal for launching commodities from the Moon, though. Absent a need for a shell around the centrifuge, a lunar version of this tech could easily be engineered to be shippable to Luna via Starship.
On the Moon I can see this. Then the question is between Spin Launch and mass driver.
The advantage Spin Launch is it would require less mass from Earth than a mass driver, which makes it useful for early applications.
I can definitely see that. Yes, I assume a mass driver will be made from local materials.
Yes, but that wouldn’t be until you establish the ability to process ores into the components needed. By contrast this system could be compact enough a Starship or two could deliver it.
Of course.
The most economical linear magnetic mass driver would be one made mostly from locally-sourced materials. But that would require a lunar mining and smelting industry as prerequisite. A linear magnetic mass driver would also require a much larger surface footprint and more sophisticated power storage equipment. The Spin-Launch tech, if deployed on the Moon, would also be a mass driver, just not the sort envisioned by the late Dr. O’Neill. But it could be set up and in operation far faster. The Spin-Launch tech also scales far more easily.
To me, this is what 99.9% of people disregard when talking about space settlement. They blithely throw around ideas of million person Mars colonies without explaining how the infrastructure, from sewers to chip fabs, to support such a large modern population on a human hostile planet, is going to get built. Hell, SX can’t seem to make a working toilet for 4 people 🙂
Yes, it is why the Moon is the necessary first step. It is close enough to Earth to allow supply runs and use telebotics systems while the technology for space industrialization is developed. The idea would be to slide down the mass needed from Earth curve starting with regolith for shielding, metal for fabrication and locally produced food as part of a recycling system.
That is why it is going to be where the first sustainable 1G settlements will be built before the settlement and development of the rest of the Solar System, including settlements in high Earth orbit.
And there are some others that can’t seem to get an operational spacecraft for their functional* toilet.
*maybe, hasn’t been tested. :-).
I wonder if this is a fake staged video like that of ARCA. It doesn’t look legit.
Watch Scott Manley’s Spin-Launch video and see if you still think so.
SpinLaunch hired a videographer to produce video.
https://www.google.com/sear…
Based on this video and the footage Scott Manley had access to for his own just-released video on the subject it would seem said videographer earned his money.
They tested approx. at 1000 km/h, but they need aapprox. 7000 km/h. This is almost 50 times more energetic. They are far from their goals.