SpinLaunch - new way to launch satellites into orbit?
« on: April 18, 2022, 04:48:09 PM »
A quick search of "SpinLaunch" showed nothing in any of the forums, and thought this would be of interest to some as a private company - https://www.spinlaunch.com/ - has apparently created a new centrifugal launch platform to get satellites into orbit. It doesn't use rocket fuel. Instead it uses a gigantic spinning wheel to flip the payload at several times the speed of sound(!)

Here's a video purporting to show a test launch:


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Offline JSS

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Re: SpinLaunch - new way to launch satellites into orbit?
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2022, 05:28:33 PM »
It's a pretty cool idea, but the jury is still out if this can be scaled up large enough to launch useful payloads into orbit.

I personally don't think it's going to ever work for anything large and no way in hell will you ever put a human on this thing, but if they can get micro-satellites up there that would still be very useful.  Their current results are impressive but from the videos I saw the test launch avoided total disaster by a hair and wasn't as much as of success as they claimed. The payload looked out of control to me.

Still, props to them for actually building this thing and trying it.  Even if it eventually fails we will still learn plenty.