Time to Think ‘Horizontal’ for Future Space Launches

On Sep 21, 12:46*pm, Doug Freyburger wrote:

It's just like the mountain based rail launcher on the old puppet show
Fireball XL-5! *I liked that show just as much as All Thunderbrids Are
Go.

Of course, this concept has been around for quite a while.

There was the rocket launched from a rail in the movie "When Worlds
Collide" as one example. I think that back in the 1930s, it was taken
for granted that a rocket to be launched into space would need to be
launched from a very long rail.

Burroughs' Venus novels had the premise of a wealthy American building
such a launch rail privately in Mexico or somewhere in Latin America.
The German propaganda film from 1937, Weltraumschiff 1 Startet, also
involved a launch rail. As did the covers of several science-fiction
magazines from the 1930s, if I'm not mistaken.

John Savard

On Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:49:59 -0700 (PDT), I wrote, in part:

There was the rocket launched from a rail in the movie "When Worlds
Collide" as one example.

I see these posts made it to USENET, although for some reason they were
not visible on Google Groups.

Previously, on this forum, I noted that even if an electromagnetic
launch from a rail is not currently feasible on Earth, it is vastly
easier to attain a method of cheap access to space of that kind than it
would be to build a "space elevator".

Well, in searching for information on the history of the old idea of
using a launch rail, I found this site:

http://www.g2mil.com/skyramp.htm

which notes that while electromagnetic launches are not now practical,
the use of a rocket sled or pneumatic launches are a good idea.

John Savard
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html

On 9/22/2010 3:05 PM, John Savard wrote:

Previously, on this forum, I noted that even if an electromagnetic
launch from a rail is not currently feasible on Earth, it is vastly
easier to attain a method of cheap access to space of that kind than it
would be to build a "space elevator".

Well, in searching for information on the history of the old idea of
using a launch rail, I found this site:

http://www.g2mil.com/skyramp.htm

which notes that while electromagnetic launches are not now practical,
the use of a rocket sled or pneumatic launches are a good idea.

The Air Force looked into this under SDI (even made a CGI video of a
launch of a Scramjet TAV zooming along a desert rail launcher that they
used for recruiting) but decided it was a non-starter.
One interesting aspect of this could be related to something that Sandia
Laboratories came up with as SDI was winding down, called the SERAPHIM
maglev rail system:
http://www.monorails.org/webpix%202/Seraphim101401.pdf
That's a very interesting choice of names, as the U-2's classified name
was "Angel" and the A-12's was "Archangel"...Seraphim are the next rank
up from Archangels; so maybe this was related to the launch rail for a
scramjet powered successor for strategic reconnaissance/strike?
Since the scramjet might be fueled by liquid hydrogen, you could
submerge the magnetic drive coil system in the LH2 tank and make it
superconducting.

Pat