newscientistspace.com — A new study by the US Air Force has suggested a cheaper method of sending satellites (possibly missile weapons) into orbit. A ring of superconducting magnets would contain and propel a payload, accelerating it over a period of hours, before suddenly powering down the magnets and flinging the satellite into space at 23 times the speed of sound.
Oct 3, 2006 View in Crawl 4
baltoaaronOct 3, 2006
I think centripetal force might kill/destroy anything spinning around at 23 times the speed of sounds. Didn't read TFA.
trelOct 3, 2006
Sounds like a giant Gauss Rifle.I like.
weprinOct 3, 2006
FTA: "Anything launched in this way would have to be able to survive enormous accelerations – more than 2000 times the acceleration due to gravity (2000g). This would seem to be an obstacle for launching things like communications satellites, but Fiske points out that the US military uses electronics in laser-guided artillery, which survive being fired out of guns at up to 20,000g."Yeah, but those laser-guided artillery are much less complicated than, say, the navigational sensors, electronics, and imaging components of a satellite. Also, the 20,000g forces last for milliseconds, not "hours" as is the case in the proposed system.
travoOct 3, 2006
Why don't they try 100,000 mentos and special top secret highly carbonated diet coke under intense high pressure, with all Teflon coated parts of course, diet coke is quite sticky.
mrhenOct 3, 2006
"Aside from microsatellites, the launch ring would be ideal for delivering supplies to support human spaceflight, such as food and water, which are not sensitive to such high accelerations."In other news, scientists have discovered a new way to make apple sauce.(How is that for an obscure, old movie reference?)And if anyone makes a pun suggesting iMacs I will slap them.
branbrownOct 4, 2006
think of the benefits for flinging our garbage into the sun.. or somewhere else i think its great to at least develop this technology I'm sure they could invent disposable capsules capable of withstanding the G force..like if u maybe filled the object with liquid or maybe highly compressed gas ...
leadhyenaOct 4, 2006
directly inporportional???So, you're saying that the acceleration is totally unreleated by the way of porpoises to the radius... interesting.Most people, especially mathematicians, would say inversely proportional. Especially those people with a stick up their ass like you seem to have. Furthermore, 10g??? Fighter pilots can't take over 9g. Most people can't take over 4.5g. They design roller coasters so that people don't experience 3g which is what I was evaluating for.Finally, "hell lets round it up for easier maths to 100m/s^2" You have a COMPUTER in front of you! How much effort does it take to open calc? Every system has one, even linux. Someone who bloviates about "really doing the maths" should not be rounding.In short, people like you really piss me off.
lordcromOct 4, 2006
Floppy disks for miles around will suddenly get erased....
kurtu5Oct 4, 2006
I have the stick up my ass? I continued your work and showed the steps so others could play with the numbers themselves. No where did I say you were wrong or anything.Oh my god I round a number up to do the math in my head. How dare I do such a thing. I mean 98 is soooo different than 100. And calc is really hard to get going, 'bc -l' is more my style.Oh and I can pick at your words to. What the hell is "unreleated", is this something related to pleated? "inproportional" is equivalent to "inversely proportional" BTW.In, short people like you really don't piss me off. You're simply an assh**e.
armchairqbOct 20, 2006
Anybody thinking that Maybe-- the magnets would make the electronics. well, NOT WORK?