/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10743439
like this
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10202210B2/
Seems like they're only considering launch velocities up to 4 km/s. The spinning arm radius needs to be pretty big 50-100 m, so that the projectile acceleration manageable. In terms of making a spinning arm that can spin fast enough to it actually doesn't matter how big the radius is, it's purely dependent on the strength to weight ratio of the material. They propose to make the arm out of high tensile strength to weight ratio fibers. The problem is that while our arm is strong under tension, when it is not spinning gravity may cause it to droop down. Maybe they're gonna make some fucking crazy knit structure. Cause if they just have all these fibers aligned going toward the projectile it's not going to be very stiff for pretty much the same reason a rope isn't. I'm also curious how the hell they're going to separate the projectile reliably. A 2 ton projectile effectively weighs as much as a small cargo ship. How they are going to make a mechanism that holds and can release the projectile is beyond me. I think they could use something like big o' space shuttle explosive bolts or wrapping up the projectile in a net of fiber which they cut explosively.