NASA will test SpinLaunch's ability to fling satellites into orbit

Re:NASA will test SpinLaunch's ability to fling satellites i... by robonerd on Thursday April 14, 2022 @10:41PM (#31036139)

The Sprint missile could hit mach 10 from sea level in 5 seconds. But I think by the time it got that fast it would already have considerable altitude.

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Re:NASA will test SpinLaunch's ability to fling satellites i... by pdoege on Saturday April 16, 2022 @02:35AM (#31050113)

Yeah, Spinlaunch is going to dump a lot of energy into the lower atmosphere, shed its glowing white hot shell, and then need get enough deltaV to put up a payload.

Anyway, the earliest patent I could find was a steam centripetal launcher in 1918. It never went anywhere and it has been followed by a number of improbable reinventions that all faded away.

NASA and the US Army tried again in 1982 and thought they could put a 60g projectile down range at 3 km/s. Mach 8. Guns and rockets could perform as well or better with simpler systems and the idea was shelved.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US1332992 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982ITM....18..209F/abstra...

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Re:NASA will test SpinLaunch's ability to fling satellites i... by sidewndr46 on Friday April 15, 2022 @12:07AM (#31036534)

I hadn't read much about that missile before now, but apparently it got so hot it required an ablative coating just to survive it's very short intercept mission.

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