Rockets being passé, China is working on using an electromagnetic railgun to launch crewed spacecraft the size of a Boeing 737, weighing 50 tonnes, into orbit. This remarkably ambitious project is even more ambitious than it seems at first glance.
That initial acceleration is gonna be a bit shitty.
And not get crushed by the G forces how exactly?
The article states the company in question is only trying to achieve somewhere between Mach 1.6 and Mach 5. It will need a rail miles long, but more importantly the bulk of the velocity change needed to get to orbit will come from rockets.
It takes 9-10 km/s of delta-V in a real world scenario to get to low earth orbit. That’s about Mach 27 or so, a long ways away from Mach 1.6 or even Mach 5.
Crew must be made up of Uyghurs
yeet
Maybe even megayeet.
But I sure hope they can pull this off.
humans can still function when insane G forces have turned them into jelly right?
While railguns are known for rapidly accelerating projectiles to hypersonic speeds over the short length of a gun barrel, there’s no limit on how slowly they can accelerate something or how long the “rail” part of the railgun can be. Accelerating “slowly” over a long distance is totally possible!
Sure, but it’s gonna require one hell of a long rail…
Make it a circular rail with an off-ramp; like a particle accelerator. Still very ambitious.
They can call it the vomit comet.
That would put the g-forces back in play: the faster you go around the rail the stronger the centripetal force that keeps you going in a circle. If the rail is straight the force only depends on acceleration not speed.
I hereby dub any crew member sent to space in this manner a Cannonaut.
你们中有些人可能会死，但这是我愿意冒的风险
Just to save you guys a click, this is a Google translate of, “some of you may die but that is a risk I’m willing to take”
If you want to reach LEO velocity and stay under 5g, you’d need a 860km long railgun…
This was posted in the correct community, because it’s about as real as the hyperloop
YOU BOYS LIKE MEXI-CO?!?!!
