192
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

What if the interior of the railgun accelerator was all a vacuum and the exit point was really really really really tall? So that impact with atmosphere at the exit of the gun was lower.

[-] Hexbear2@hexbear.net 4 points 8 months ago

This is what StarTram is, the launch system maintains a vacuum. The system won't work without that feature.

[-] MoreAmphibians@hexbear.net 3 points 8 months ago

The problem is that you still need an additional acceleration in order to get into an real orbit. In any theoretical orbit (without an acceleration) you'll always go around in a circular motion until you reach your starting point, if your starting point is in the atmosphere then you'll go around your orbit until you hit your starting point in the atmosphere again. This will obviously cause your orbit to decay. There are a few solutions.

  1. Just use a rocket engine. This is the simplest and most practical solution. Vacuum engines are very efficient and you don't need that much fuel.
  2. Use a skyhook. This is a giant spinning thing in orbit. Your spaceship "grabs on" to an end of a line and takes momentum from the already orbiting skyhook station in order to get in orbit yourself.
  3. You might be able to do something weird with the Moon's gravity in order to change your orbit. This would take a while and you would need a huge velocity from the railgun and your orbit would be very high and probably no circular, but there's no physics reasons it wouldn't work (I think).
[-] WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

I love the idea of combining the rail launch with a skyhook. Skyhooks always sounded like they would fail due to atmospheric concerns which this would alleviate.

this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
192 points (100.0% liked)

news

23568 readers
602 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS