[imagesource: Spinlaunch]
Spoiler: it’s incredibly dizzying.
Be glad I’ve prepared you and your tummy because it does not look like a fun time to be flung 7 620 metres into the atmosphere at 1 600 kilometres per hour.
You’ll also be relieved to know that they are not actually hurtling humans into space, but rather a camera-strapped three-metre long projectile.
Californian start-up SpinLaunch just did this on the eighth demonstration of its impressive suborbital mass accelerator, providing an unmatched view of such a high-altitude launch.
Behold, SpinLaunch’s A-33 suborbital mass accelerator:
On Friday, April 22, in the New Mexico desert, the newly implemented “optical payload” was connected to the flight vehicle, reported Gizmodo.
It was then projected into space at the aforementioned height and speed.
The flight lasted for 82 seconds, and not a second longer, because there’s only so much spinning that can be endured:
Watching the video, you can see the launch facility quickly receding from view as the projectile ascends rapidly. The spinning—enough to make you feel queasy—is part of the design.
The fins on the test vehicle “are slightly angled to induce a spin and provide additional stability during flight,” [David Wrenn, vice president of technology at SpinLaunch] explained, saying it’s much like a bullet when fired out of a rifle.
Brace yourself:
That’s cool, but actually, the company has much bigger plans for the accelerator, which is only operating “at a fraction of its maximum capacity”:
…the facility is a one-third scale version of what SpinLaunch is intending to build: an orbital accelerator capable of shooting objects to the edge of space.
The full-scale version is expected to propel objects to the upper atmosphere at speeds reaching 5,000 mph (8,000 km/h), at which point a propulsion stage will kick in to finish the job, sending small payloads to low Earth orbit.
The start-up hopes to eventually launch objects as heavy as 200 kilograms into space, like small satellites, on-orbit scientific experiments, and building materials, among other things.
Looking forward to living vicariously through whatever else the company flings into space.
[source:gizmodo]
