• ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      This is completely different from what Branson is doing which is tourism for rich people. The proposal here is to launch large planes to the edge of atmosphere for rapid transportation.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          8 months ago

          If you bother reading the article you’ll see that the motivation here is to save fuel. It’s a lot cheaper to use an electromagnetic launcher to launch the plane.

              • heluecht@pirati.ca
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                6
                ·
                8 months ago

                @yogthos @goatsarah Thing is: This idea is not new. People have thought about it for a long time. And in the end they all came to the same conclusion: it isn’t worth it.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Thing is that the west stopped making any ambitious engineering projects. The idea isn’t new, but the will to put these kinds of things in practice doesn’t exist outside of China.

                  • heluecht@pirati.ca
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    4
                    arrow-down
                    5
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    @yogthos Physics is the same all over the world. Your goal is to reach orbital velocity, otherwise you don’t stay in the orbit. You cannot achieve this on the ground level, since the air resistance would melt your device. Also the drag would slow the system down massively. This means that you would had to carry fuel with you, to be able to accelerate, once you reached the upper atmospheres.

                    Also the article claims that people should be carried with that device as well. This limits the acceleration to around 4g.

                    I recommend to watch the following video, where someone calculated all the values: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQCTTvkh7gw

                  • heluecht@pirati.ca
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    4
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    @goatsarah BTW: This sounds like a super sized “Spinlaunch” in my ears - which also has got a lot of technical difficulties.

          • heluecht@pirati.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            8 months ago

            @yogthos @goatsarah You would had to enter hypersonic regime at ground level to even have got the possibility to reach the edge of space. Just imagine the sonic boom from that … Also think about the thermal protection that would be needed for your device to withstand the air friction.