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China is building a railgun that can hurl crewed spacecraft into orbit (newatlas.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Rockets being passé, China is working on using an electromagnetic railgun to launch crewed spacecraft the size of a Boeing 737, weighing 50 tonnes, into orbit. This remarkably ambitious project is even more ambitious than it seems at first glance.

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[–] MushuChupacabra 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

That initial acceleration is gonna be a bit shitty.

[–] NOT_RICK 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

And not get crushed by the G forces how exactly?

[–] nBodyProblem 2 points 3 months ago

The article states the company in question is only trying to achieve somewhere between Mach 1.6 and Mach 5. It will need a rail miles long, but more importantly the bulk of the velocity change needed to get to orbit will come from rockets.

It takes 9-10 km/s of delta-V in a real world scenario to get to low earth orbit. That’s about Mach 27 or so, a long ways away from Mach 1.6 or even Mach 5.

[–] Ptsf 1 points 3 months ago

Crew must be made up of Uyghurs

[–] TropicalDingdong 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

yeet

[–] lettruthout 4 points 3 months ago

Maybe even megayeet.

But I sure hope they can pull this off.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

humans can still function when insane G forces have turned them into jelly right?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

While railguns are known for rapidly accelerating projectiles to hypersonic speeds over the short length of a gun barrel, there's no limit on how slowly they can accelerate something or how long the "rail" part of the railgun can be. Accelerating "slowly" over a long distance is totally possible!

[–] Repelle 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but it’s gonna require one hell of a long rail…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Make it a circular rail with an off-ramp; like a particle accelerator. Still very ambitious.

[–] Kbobabob 3 points 3 months ago

They can call it the vomit comet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

That would put the g-forces back in play: the faster you go around the rail the stronger the centripetal force that keeps you going in a circle. If the rail is straight the force only depends on acceleration not speed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I hereby dub any crew member sent to space in this manner a Cannonaut.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

你们中有些人可能会死，但这是我愿意冒的风险

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Just to save you guys a click, this is a Google translate of, "some of you may die but that is a risk I'm willing to take"

[–] boatsnhos931 1 points 3 months ago

YOU BOYS LIKE MEXI-CO?!?!!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

If you want to reach LEO velocity and stay under 5g, you'd need a 860km long railgun...

This was posted in the correct community, because it's about as real as the hyperloop