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by martey
2035 days ago
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The Wired article that this SyFy blurb is based on has more details (and more criticism) - https://www.wired.com/story/inside-spinlaunch-the-space-indu... > One former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to their nondisparagement and nondisclosure contracts, acknowledged the gulf between theory and reality. They described SpinLaunch’s prototype centrifuge as a relatively unsophisticated machine that “any average engineering team could put together.” The employee said that scaling up to a functional suborbital launcher is going to be “very challenging” with SpinLaunch’s resources. The employee also cited the inexperience of some of the leaders. “The foresight to predict many of the issues that are going to happen was definitely lacking,” they said. |
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Maybe they figured out some advanced materials science we don't know about, but that seems unlikely from this article.
> Over the next few years, the team ran hundreds of high-speed tests. Most of them were to study and improve the system, but some were to mollify skeptical investors and potential customers who didn’t believe a payload could withstand the extreme forces. The team sent solar cells, radio systems, telescope lenses, batteries, GPS modules, and control computers whirling at high speeds; they all survived with little to no damage. In one test, Yaney attached an iPhone to the tether and spun it up until it experienced forces 10,000 times stronger than gravity. Afterward, he used the phone to FaceTime a colleague. Each test was a step, however small, toward space.
Something tells me that an iPhone definitely cannot withstand forces of 10,000g.
Like someone below said, this either has mil implications or a way to separate investors from their money.
Juan Alonso, an aerospace engineer at Stanford who did due diligence for one of SpinLaunch’s investors, understood my reservations. “It's an exotic technology, and the first time you hear about it you think there's no way that could possibly work,” he says. But after checking out the math himself, Alonso gave the investment firm the green light.
So a Stanford guy is putting reputation on stake. Interesting.