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Old January 31st 20, 02:30 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Alain Fournier[_3_]
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Posts: 548
Default Inside SpinLaunch, the Space Industry’s Best Kept Secret

On Jan/30/2020 Ã* 17:02, wrote :
"Last summer, a secretive space company took up residence in a massive warehouse
in the sun-soaked industrial neighborhood that surrounds Long Beach Airport.
Reflections of turboprop planes flit across the building’s mirrored panes. Across
the street a retro McDonnell Douglas sign perches above the aerospace giant’s
former factory, and just around the corner Virgin Orbit is developing air-launched
rockets.

It’s a fitting headquarters for SpinLaunch, a company breathing new life into the
decades-old idea of using giant mechanical slings to hurl rockets into orbit. The
man behind this audacious plan is the serial entrepreneur Jonathan Yaney. For
years he ran SpinLaunch out of a former microprocessor plant in Silicon Valley,
down the road from Google. Now the company is ready to open a proper rocket
factory, where it will churn out launch vehicles and, if all goes well, take its
first steps into the cosmos."

See:

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-s...t-kept-secret/


How practical is this idea compared to conventional rocketry?


Totally impractical. Try travelling at a speed near orbital velocity low
in the atmosphere. It is hard enough to do so at 50 km altitude, doing
it low in the atmosphere is quite unlikely. If you launch at an altitude
of 7.5 km (that would be in Asia, you can't find such a mountain outside
Asia) the atmospheric pressure would be about 150 times higher than at
50 km.

My opinion is that this is a scam.


Alain Fournier