[spicybright]

Oh wow, I was wondering why bother building housing around it. That seems incredibly expensive to build and maintain.

Your comment is very on point. If they slowly even out the atmosphere, they loose the speed. So they'll need to coordinate the door opening at exactly the right moment. And if it doesn't the whole instillation goes boom.

I feel like it would be better just to use the money to buy more rocket fuel at this point. This is so much alike to "game changing ideas" like the hyperloop, solar roadways, and other "disruptive" tech that make a cool headline, but break down the second you think about the real world logistics and cost.

I hope they prove me wrong if they can get it to work though, cheaper space flights could help the world in so many ways.

[blhack]

Here's a video of the CEO at some ground breaking they did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmO0k7Nv30g&feature=emb_titl...

Maybe it's a minor thing, but it's a big tell to me. He says: "My team and I", in the possessive, and to me that always betrays something in founders that I don't like.

The best founders I know usually focus more on the team than on themselves. It's subtle, but I think it's meaningful.

[sneak]

> And if it doesn't the whole instillation goes boom.

The projectile is going to go boom when it hits the thick lower atmosphere going many times the speed of sound when it exits the vacuum chamber regardless.

[themgt]

Reaching max q at T+0.0001 seconds while 1 inch away from the launch site's massive expensive centrifuge. It's a bold strategy, Cotton.

[greypowerOz]

I hear you :) but IIRC the US "rail guns" are generating muzzle velocities in this speed range (?)

I've seen very spectacular footage of these rounds tearing a hole in the atmosphere ... so maybe our shared intuition isn't reliable...

or maybe once you get a cross section bigger than a playing card, things become.... interesting at these speeds at sea level;)

[mlindner]

No they're definitely going to fail. The founders don't seem to understand how difficult this is. If you're going to build an accelerator you want it to accelerate over a very long distance and have it exit the vacuum well into the stratosphere if you can.

[mrfusion]

Pack it up, boys. Mlindner on hacker news says said you’re going to fail.

[avs733]

I mean, the general consensus seems to be that this is the juicero of space launch systems...not 'impossible' just not realistic or useful

I have heard them say repeatedly that the physics work. Physics are 'easier' than manufacturing/building something...lab scale/bench scale are exponentially easier than full scale...full scale is exponentially easier than building something consistently. Ask Tesla.

I have yet to hear them talk about how they are manufacturing parts for the full size centrifuge. When I hear them mention forging or the heavy press program or similar I'll take them slightly more seriously. I'm trying to conceptualize what the arm would look like and the force it would have to withstand and honestly can't.

Right now, they have been stuck for years on 'trust us this doesn't violate the laws of physics' which is not comforting when I only ever hear that from cooks.