Talk:SpinLaunch

This page should not be speedy deleted because...

This page should not be speedily deleted because... this company meets WP:GNG. It's simply a new space tech company, has been operating for several years, and has recently come out of stealth. Citations in multiple secondary source media support. Cheers. --N2e (talk) 04:53, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Moreover, with respect to the specific claim " does not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject. See CSD A7" That is just incorrect. The article prose explicitly does explicate that this type of technology can enable space launches at much reduced cost, and using much less energy. So I don't think it correct to say that it does not credibly indicate significance.

With respect to the claim that the article "would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic. ... See CSD G11." I guess you'd have to show me where. It's just a pretty standard article on a new space startup company that is explicated in the standard way I've done for many other company articles in the space industry. The company exists, for this purpose, what distinguishes its objective or approach, when the company came to be, and when major new stuff happened, and a high-level description of it technological approach. That's all I wrote in the brief prose for this company. Pretty standard approach, really. Definitely not advert stuff. Just an explication, in the encyclopedia of all human knowledge, that this company exists, for what purpose, and what their tech is intending to do.

It's certainly not a deletable offense for an article to be short, or a stub. But what's there meets Wikipedia standards. Cheers. N2e (talk) 05:06, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Agree, keep the article!!! Danski14^(talk) 15:39, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

What issues do you see?

User:SamHolt6 -- Another editor reviewed your speedy deletion nomination, and has removed the template based on the above.

I'm curious, what other bits of the article do you feel might be a little too close to "advert" territory, rather than mere encyclopedic explication of a new startup company, recently out of stealth. looking to develop some risky and uncertain technology? My personal view is that what this company is doing is both risky and uncertain, just like many startups; but that is no reason not to have an article covering this in Wikipedia. Cheers. N2e (talk) 01:16, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

What about this scheme being potentially physically impossible, which would reduce this enterprise to yet another scam? There are allegations that this proposal relies on unobtanium to survive the physical stresses (and that the proponents confuse linear stress with radial, suggesting examples that can survive the former when the latter is the problem). Also, to place something in orbit requires thrust upon reaching orbital altitude to circularize the orbit; if all of their thrust is imparted while in the catapult on the ground, with no delta-v afterward (other than a slight loss while punching through the atmosphere), then the payload can not achieve orbit.Winged Cat (talk) 22:24, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

If you have a reliable source for any statement you think ought to be made to explicate this company and their scheme in the prose, please write it, and add a citation to the source.

This article merely indicates this company exists, is endeavoring to develop some new product, and is raising capital for the venture. I think all of those statements are supported by the secondary sources provided. N2e (talk) 02:56, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

With supersonic technology being in active development throughout the world, it's rather to be expected to explore this concept. Acceleration is nowhere "unobtainable". Systems are feasible with already 50g. To replace the first stage of up-to-day rockets, the upper stage would have to leave lower atmosphere with about 2 km/s, which means leaving the launch site with at least about 2.5 km/s (assuming low resistant aerodynamics borrowed from supersonic technologies). Meaning 5s acceleration over 6.25 km launch track. Which will be easier to build into a mountain range. But what the company is about to achieve at their current test site is not a complete functioning system but rather trying technology concepts on the way to this goal. Even men are able to survive those accelerations, as long as they last for only a very short moment and forces are equally distributed around the body, leading to equilibrium of forces. See for example Darren Taylor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0I-ARRm1Lc 31.16.95.30 (talk) 13:48, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Recent funding round

cnn, bloomberg - they got $40 million for R&D. --mfb (talk) 08:59, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Does the Thunderf00t video contribute anything?

I watched the video and felt like it added more heat than light. It compares SpinLaunch to Hyperloop and Theranos, which is ad hominem. It points out imperfections in the first test without discussing either their significance (other than an unsupported assertion that the test came close to destroying the apparatus) or the difficulty of correcting them. The discussion of compression heating was interesting, but seems to depend on a false dichotomy between atmospheric pressure and hard vacuum; there was no indication of the heating rate for the "soft" vacuum the chamber would presumably maintain. Cphoenix (talk) 08:34, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I find his videos often dismiss things more from his misunderstanding rather than actual faults. I noticed that while his narration was about SpinLaunch, the first couple of minutes alternated every few seconds between SpinLaunch video and Hyperloop video without once explaining why Hyperloop was being mentioned at all. Note: he has other videos about Hyperloop that a savvy viewer can rip to shreds. The only part that might actually be useful is where he points out that the vehicle is launched with a tumbling motion. I can dismiss that as early days for the technology that the company is (hopefully) working to correct. It is nice that somebody points out that the technology still needs more development but Thunderf00t tends to tell people that things like this are fundamental road blocks rather than engineering problems to be worked out. All in all, I would leave it in so that we have at least some critical view rather than just gushing reports with little detail.  Stepho  talk  10:18, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Acceleration

I believe that the laws of physics indicate that the proposed launch method has little or no merit.

Spinlaunch proposes to bring a projectile up to 8000 m/s while it is moving in a circle of 100 m diameter. The equation for centripetal acceleration is V^2/D. Therefore Spinlaunch proposes to place its projectile under centripetal acceleration of 640000 m/s^2 prior to launch.

It is possible to accelerate a payload for 100 meters and reach a velocity of 8000 m/s at an acceleration of half that, or 320000 m/s^2. Doing so would take 1/40 of a second rather than several hours. It is hard to see any advantage in the method Spinlaunch has proposed.

Accelerating payloads to such velocity requires staggering amounts of energy - orders of magnitude more than their 'test launch' demonstrates. Zrebbesh (talk) 07:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Your comment was not in the correct place or in the correct format. It should be a fresh topic at the bottom of the page or just after the comment that you are directly responding to. The signature should be at the end of your comment. I took the liberty of shifting it down here and shifting the signature to the end.

The main difference is not the total acceleration but the time in which the velocity is built up. To accelerate to 8000 m/s in a fraction of a second would require huge amounts of power released all at once. Linear accelerators are just not powerful enough yet and we certainly don't have a power supply big enough, nor wire that wouldn't melt. Whereas the spin method allows power to be feed in at a gradual rate that existing motors, power supplies and wires can handle. Your suggested method may be more efficient but it is not doable with current technology.  Stepho  talk  09:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for failing format conventions; I have seldom and very rarely written to Wikipedia. I had not been planning to talk about the "time over which energy is built up" as an issue because I don't know of sources directly comparing that issue across different non-rocket launch technologies. Functioning launchers capable of 8 km/s or more (light gas guns are well tested) have not experienced a problem with needing to build up energy over time because they have used fuel (explosives) rather than electricity (capacitors, electromagnets etc) to release energy very quickly. Explosives seems to be a technology much better adapted for the storage and rapid delivery of energy. In the absence of any problem releasing sufficient energy rapidly, I don't know of any research they've done to try to solve the problem; it leaves nothing I know to cite. It is not clear to me how and whether the different projectile size proposed justifies moving to a less effective technology for releasing energy. Zrebbesh (talk) 23:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

No problem about the formatting issues.

Explosions happen very quickly and usually result in the vehicle breaking into little bits - not good. Project Orion proposed explosives and was considered extremely efficient but the side effects on the base station were a bit drastic. Normal rockets burn over a duration of a few minutes to get to orbit. In order to do that they have to carry their own fuel. But that means they have to be bigger to carry their own fuel in addition to the actual payload. The mighty Saturn V was about 3000 tons to get a maximum of 50 tons to orbit. It's an exponential equation for how much more fuel you need to launch each addition kg - ie doubling the mass of the payload means far more than doubling the fuel.

SpinLaunch are attempting to launch vehicles with about half the required velocity. The other half comes via the traditional way of burning fuel after launch - which needs to carried like before. Which means the vehicle can be way smaller than a traditional launch.

It would be nice to keep the motor and fuel on the ground so that only the payload needs to move. Linear accelerators could do this but need to be many 100 km's long and are expensive. There are other technologies too but they all have problems. Personally, I think SpinLaunch's crushing G forces will kill this - although I hope I'm wrong. But it has the advantage over linear accelerators in being compact and allowing the energy to be fed in over time - ie can use cheaper wires and power supply.  Stepho  talk  09:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Explosions are not more violent or damaging than any other way of being exposed to 640000 m/s^2. It's exactly the same acceleration whether it's in the breech of a gun driven by an explosion, or spinning out at the end of that arm after being brought up to that crushing g-force over a period of hours. It requires exactly the same kind of mechanical engineering to endure. The only difference is how long the projectile has to endure it, and the explosives have a huge advantage there. Every 1/40 of a second hanging on the end of that arm at speed subjects the projectile to TWICE the acceleration of the 1/40 of a second in the barrel if launched in a straight line by explosives. There is nothing "gradual" about 640000 m/s^2, no matter how long it lasts. In fact for payload engineering you'd really rather it didn't last very long at all. Which brings us back to the point of how the problem with a railgun is the supercapacitors and bus bars you'd need to get the energy out of it and into the track fast enough. Thinking about the explosions and damage and lightning discharges that might result from the equipment failures, all in a fraction of a second? The energy we can't handle that way is exactly the force of the explosion required to blow all that equipment up, and we would need it all that fast for exactly the same reason battleship cannons use explosive charges. At 640000 m/s^2 we are talking about several times the acceleration that a shell undergoes in the barrel of a battleship cannon. Making it last longer does not make it gradual! It just makes every instant of a longer time inflict the same crushing force.Zrebbesh (talk) 22:19, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Just correcting some errors you made, so you can discuss this further based on the facts: the terminal velocity is 8,000km/h, not m/s. Maybe you are not used to the metric system? Anyway, that means 2,222m/s. With r=100m, centripetal acceleration is 49,383m/s², or about 5,000g, which is far less than conventional artillery shells undergoe (up to 35,000g). BR, Tobi -194.45.48.244 (talk) 08:56, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Doh! How did I miss that? Thank you for bringing it to our attention.  Stepho  talk  09:29, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

While I understand you two have come to a realization on mistaken units here, I believe the youtuber Tom Scott recently released a video on Spinlaunch that goes well into the details of G-force, both on the projectile and the arm that spins it. Informative watch, if you're interested.

192.77.12.11 (talk) 10:35, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Link please.  Stepho  talk  14:44, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I am unable to provide a link at the moment, but I was confused, it wasn't a Tom Scott video, rather one by a channel called Real Engineering, posted around 9 months ago. You should be able to find it on his channel. 192.77.12.11 (talk) 10:10, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Coordinates of launcher

Can someone please add the coordinates of the launcher in the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:DF:1F1F:A638:7526:8343:8CAB:F640 (talk) 23:20, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Here are the coordinates for the launcher: Coordinates

32°59′25″N 106°58′11″W

But, I'm not sure where this would go. Spinlaunch Headquarters is in Long Beach. They built the Launcher at SpacePort America in New Mexico. CarbShark (talk) 18:18, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Physics versus Engineering

Many of the comments about the Spinlaunch method make the unsupported claim that they violate the laws of physics.

If that's the case, then one should specify what law of physics is being violated and how, and the claim should be supported.

From my view, everything they are attempting is plausible and consistent with TLOP, but there are engineering challenges that may be insurmountable with current technology.

So far they have taken an incremental approach to development, moving forward one step at a time, proving one concept then going on to the next. Their last test flight answered the question of whether satellite components can with stand the g-forces involved in a launch, and they successfully showed that a variety of payloads will continue to function folling the stress of launch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:4DB0:AAC0:FD29:E8A:D80A:D722 (talk • contribs)

Agreed. We should report on the facts from reliable sources, rather than the opinions of armchair critics.  Stepho  talk  22:06, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Criticism

From the conversation above, it's clear that what is needed is a section, that's common in wikipedia pages, that covers criticism of the notion discussed. As it is, it appears to be an advertising, puff, piece about something that's never going to work with no balanced view of the physics and technology. Fustbariclation (talk) 06:23, 26 October 2022 (UTC)