this site has two programmers

 

dorky femme droid

eggbug enthusiast

important eggbug lore

 


 

if you use the phrase "be normal" as if it's something to aspire to, kindly take a long walk off a short plank. or block me. whichever is easier for you.

 


 

child of the 80s

 


 

i escaped a cult.
all of the content warnings.
all of them.
tag: exerian's tragic backstory

 


 

                                 
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lupi
@lupi
exerian
@exerian asked:

do you think my crazy ass launch system could actually work?

the basic idea is to use a vacuum tube to reduce the required launch fuel to almost nothing.

build a tube, it's been a while since i did the calculations and i was like 12 at the time but iirc it's like 5 miles long and goes up the side of a mountain to improve the launch trajectory. each time you launch you vacuum all of the air out. the launch vehicle is something like a shuttle that clips into a maglev train car with something like a suction cup on one end. when you let air into the tube behind the suction cup the air filling the vacuum pushes the car forward. this is effectively the first stage of the launch and it is a zero friction stage. you're not even fighting gravity because the car is horizontal. by the time you hit the end of the tube you should be going fast enough that you can kick on a scramjet as a second stage to clear the atmosphere. then you do the usual final stage rocket engines.

have you heard of SpinLaunch?


exerian
@exerian

no. no, i haven't. i guess it's off to duckduckgo for me...

well, shit. that's way better but also basically the same idea.


lupi
@lupi

spinlaunch rules and i hope it works out for them

its the most ballsy of the space startups and i love them
they get the most points for being the most fucky and like "well TECHNICALLY this would work, but how are you going to make it practical"


exerian
@exerian

yeah. the major thing that i ran into with my system is that you're really going to have to work at it to figure out how to make the car not go so fast that it splatters the brains of anyone in the shuttle it launches. lol


Anschel
@Anschel

It doesn't necessarily have to. Living humans are a pretty small fraction of the mass we want to send into orbit, especially if we're talking about setting up a permanently staffed moonbase or some such



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in reply to @exerian's post:

yeah, SpinLaunch is never gonna carry meat. None of those systems could.
electronics though, those are fine. hell, even in their subscale centrifuge they've proven that commercial off the shelf electronics can handle it a lot of the time.

any system like yours would prove out the same way, good for solid state stuff, bad for wet meat stuff