@@harrywang3098 well, valve hasn't been coming up Aperture Science vids for a VERY FKING LONG TIME. Its better to be an inspiration for others so that others can enjoy. It's not he's stealing all previous asset, just the feel and humor of Aperture Science. I get pissed when someone else just steals people's content but not this.
@@hunde2430 it doesn't matter how long something has been out. if they did nothing to add to the style which they haven't, they only used it to repackage their thing, and it's not a parody, then they didn't do anything in that realm, so it's just copying
I was here to say that. There is no material that can withstand that temperatures at ground level. This is just fantasy. He think he could stop his raiil rocket by cutting electricity.
@@Aqzaqa Even at top of Mt. Everest with only 33% of the air density, a capsule moving at that speed will cause avalanches and bring the whole structure down
This is interesting, I've been thinking in similar lines for a while now, but not at sea level or in Florida. If you start with a mountain, say in Colorado or Wyoming, 12,000ft tall or better, then you have a built in upward angle and a reduced atmosphere at the top. Have banks of solar panels and supercapacitors lining it to power the launch, and have the tube evacuated to the point that the pressure the vehicle experiences at the end of the tube is the same as the pressure it will see upon exit, so no sudden slamming into the atmosphere. Make it cargo only, so 10+G, and by the time it exits it will be going pretty fast. A 5000 meter track (about 3miles) will give a final velocity in the ballpark of 1000m/second, or around 2200mph. Light the "second stage" rocket, and you're easily hitting orbital velocity.
As nice as this sounds, 1000 m/s really isn't that much in orbital terms. From sea level, you need around 10 km/s of acceleration to get into low Earth orbit. Railguns are still a perfectly viable near-future means of getting material into orbit, it's just that it'd probably only work for very light payloads, or on other bodies with lower gravity.
@@mwhito3o292 The real benefit is in not having to carry the fuel to get that first 1000m/s of acceleration. This is just napkin math anyway, if people actually sat down and figured this out for real, I'm sure the system could be tuned to be much faster.
INSANELY gorgeous visuals, as per usual, and simply incredible work all around! This is seriously top notch stuff and my ears and eyeballs love it all. Also, love the added comical portion "Rage Against the Braces"! 😂
The whole video is inaccurate even the most basic calculation is not correct... 6:00 5100 m/s speed goal. 9G = 9*9.81 = 88.29 m/s2 Time to accel to 5100 ms = 5100/88,29 = 57.76 sec and not 44 sec. Also it is not clear that how you wish to reach the speed at very high alt because a horizontal velocity vector does not help, at all at sea level. Because rockets are slow under 10-20 km alt THEN they start really accelerate. How you wish to build a 10-20 km high sloped magnetic accel? LOL
@@molnibalage83 I thought of this idea over a decade ago. Way before I heard of Musk or Hyperloop. Vacuum tunnel in Mt. Everest! Released at 6 miles in to thin atmosphere with a reusable 2nd stage push it the rest of way. I don't remember all the calcs, but I thought it was possible. I even remember telling my roommate and he rolled his eyes. So close to starting SpaceX & Boring. :D
Ive wondered if this would work since the first time I found out about railguns watching sci fi growing up and seeing spaceships launching on rail systems. Sure the cost of building it would be higher but its reusable and would be better in the long term
There's a game from several years ago called Soma. It had something like this that was built under the ocean. I never thought much about it then, but now I see that it was due to the length of track needed to make it work.
this is an idea i toyed with back in 2009 when i was 17. i gave up on it because of the g force issue as well as seeing the possibility of a space elevator. i have honestly been waiting for the space elevator after i seen the creation of synthetic spider silk 2 years ago, i believe that kind of material would be perfect for a space elevator.
Space elevators don’t really work on earth because the cost is far greater than what it’s worth, especially because if it fell it would wrap around the earth and kill everyone
The SR-71 top speed in meters per second is 980 and that’s at 85000 feet. It’s hull temperature can reach 900 F. Now imagine 9 times that speed at sea level. I could be wrong but I don’t think tungsten could even handle those temps and pressures. Hypersonic forge to space anyone?
Probably true which is why rail run tech was abandoned. Funny you mention the SR71 though. As I believe they are working on the SR72 as we speak. But it sounds like it is heavy in prototype faze & supposedly supposed to travel Mach 6 which seems unrealistic. As again it could run into the same problems the last one did with heat. You bring up some good points here though. :)
This. This is why nobody really uses railguns other than the lack of a reliable and practical power source. You'd have to repair/rebuild the rail gun everytime you fire it because it probably melted the rails. Now imagine something like that running the length of Florida
You merging m/s, feet, and fahrenheit in a single comment bugs me for whatever reason. (as does the spelling of "fahrenheit" since I can never get it right the first time).
It would travel in a vacuum. It's essentially an ever-accelerating Hyperloop mechanism, from what I can see. Once it left the tube, it would only be traveling through the atmosphere for a short time before reaching the near vacuum of LEO. The US has successfully flown and controlled Hypersonic aircraft at speeds of >Mach 25. These craft utilize scramjet propulsion technology, which could be employed in this type of an application.
"10.2 billions dollars, which equate to 157 regular launches" Or 1/70 of USA yearly military budget... Also, there are at least 100 people that could pay it out of their pocket
There are exactly zero people who can pay that out of pocket. People like Musk and Bezos, their wealth is 'on paper', and is tied up in assets (real estate, intellectual property, shares in a company, etc). They likely only have $5-10mil in the bank in cash, or less, because why would you need that much money, and especially when you factor in that having that much cash sitting in a bank acrues interest, which is considered income and can be taxed, so they don't keep it in a bank. Most, if not all wealthy people make purchases with credit cards and only keep enough money in the bank to pay the fees those cards acrue.
Great presentation, one major issue though: Atmospheric friction resistance. Even if the tube is vacuum sealed, the rocket being launched will eventually have to travel through the atmosphere, and to do that at those speeds would literally burn up everything before it could ever reach orbit (more so, it would impact explode upon exiting the railgun tube). I think the solution is better found in a way to efficiently carry such a rocket into high atmosphere via a slow long-distance carrier, like a glider of some sort. Instead of thinking of ways to leave the orbit as quickly as possible, I think we should look at dragging out the launch itself as much as we can. Let our atmosphere be our runway, and have a glider circle around the world several times over the course of days, slowly taking the rocket into a high enough altitude where it can take over on its own, and doesn't have to combat surface level factors. This would also mean that the rocket engine nozzles can be tuned much more efficiently for outer space use where positive pressure doesn't have to be combatted, and you can get a much leaner fuel burn and thus save both weight and cost dramatically. This is essentially what SpaceX are doing with their two-stage reusable rockets - except they still focus on "get to space as quickly as possible", rather than taking efficiency into consideration. And it's understandable, if you can do launches quickly, you can do more of them over the span of a week. But it will never be an efficient way to tackle orbital launches, especially when said launches have to take extra loads and pricing becomes a factor too (for future commercial viability).
Go look up the temperture rocket engines burn at. The same way rocket engines survive is how a craft can survive at those tempertures especially since it will be a much shorter amount of time.
@@calebfielding6352 The rocket engine nozzles made of unique composite materials and specifically coated to withstand these temperatures, but it would be a major compromise to build the entire spacecraft like that, in terms of weight, cost, and complexity. The actual key point with rockets, though, is that they have a gradual acceleration and a relatively slow ascend. If you wanted to launch a spaceship into orbit from the ground via a railgun system, the speed necessary to reach orbit while battling air resistance would be so high that you would have to vastly exceed the speeds at which a normal rocket ascends through the atmosphere. So again we are back at the core issue, that the speeds necessary to launch a spaceship from ground into orbit would be so high that air friction would burn up the outer hull before you could ever exit the atmosphere. On top of this, the impact of going from vacuum-tube into atmospheric air resistance, would be like hitting a literal brick wall. So not only would the spaceship have to be extremely heat resistant and durable, it would also have to be built like a tank. The main compromise is extreme weight, which is exactly what you want NOT to increase for spaceflight operations.
@@Real_MisterSir 1. And I think this is the most important point. The purpose of a rail lancher/mag lev/or other wise space gun is to put extreme weight into space. Being able to put dramatically cheaper products into space should be the goal. For instance water is a wonderful radiation shield, but at the current cost of putting stuff into space its more economical to send far more expensive radiation shields into space because they are far lighter. 2. rail launchers are not guns. Their is without a doubt a gradual increase of speed. Granted that increase is far faaster than a rocket engine. 3. Dont launch at sea level. lots of mountains in the U.S. that would dramatically reduce the air pressure at the launch sight. Currently the tallest tower is 2800 feet tall. Wheeler peek in nevada is at 13000 feet above sea level, add 3000 foot tall tower and you have half the air pressure. 4. Whatever you launch needs to be able to move in space so it will have to have a rocket anyway, so in reality any rail launcher launch system will technically be assisting a rocket into space. 5. I dont think vaccuum tube is the way to go, the naval rail gun seemed to have a piece that sacrificed itself during acceleration so that the real projectile could go, so I suspect a far better method than vacuum would be to have some sort of projectile in front of the space ship to create a vortex to make the air current much less problematic. Not sure how to describe it. Simular to the boost a racecar can get in a race when they closely follow another race car, or simular to a car in the highway riding very close to a semi truck 6. Rocket engines work because they are pumping exremely cold materials into them while the rockets burn. Same method can be used on the spaceship. Have extreemly cold liqued pumped into the skin of the ship just before launch, we know from rockets that 3500 celsius can be survived by this method. Heck even make it a one way trip, and use the skin of the ship in whatever project you are building in space. 7. At the end of the day any rail launcher or magneticly propelled system will be unmanned. So the g forces are not the biggest limit to it. We have electronics that can survive 20,000 gs when fired from artillary, so the purpose of this system is to put heavy robust things in space, not to put people into space.
@millionmanification vacuum (autocorrect) - actually, it turns out, that sustaining a huge volume of vacuum is really expensive, especially since you need to eventually open it at the end, and not slam into the air too hard enough, etc. - it's an interesting idea, but probably not happening any time soon - I personally expect something cheaper to be possible, before this. - mass drivers are great for moon and mars, though - On moon you don't need a tube at all, and it will work extremely well for moving lots of mass, like mined resources, to orbit
Build a launch tunnel on the mountains in Colorado and bury the track when it gets horizontal. Put a rocket on it, but have it ignite as it leaves the track so it's still accelerating in the air (and you still have control of it that way). If you start the track on another mountain, you can take advantage of gravity to aid in acceleration of the payload. Make sure to evacuate the air from the tube as you launch, not before, to avoid backflow. And blow air towards the rocket exhaust as it leaves the tunnel to increase the Reynolds number of the air and reduce drag on the rocket. You should probably use a Reuleaux triangle as the body profile instead of a circle, easier to keep it stable on the electromagnet rails. Maybe fade into a deltoid curve towards the front.
i've thought about this before, i think using a vacuum sealed superconductor loop underground to initiate the speed and a railgun like track that would be much shorter as the launcher
i saw the intro, and thumbnail, and was like: "Oh nice, another aperture science like channel", then saw the video, and was not dissapointed, you are much better
What about a series of concentric rings to eliminate the amount of EM track? That way you can reuse the same track while ramping up to speed, then merge to a larger-diameter ring as G-forces get higher and repeat the process as much as is feasible. You could merge to a straight track after the outer-most ring.
Yahhhh they have another company doing something similar with a big circular arm that YEETS projectiles into space from inside a vacuum with close to zero friction!
I like how casual you're getting with these. Your wit and presentation will make you not just another science TH-camr, but will most likely make you stand out, boosting your channel
Dude, this was probably one of your best (funniest) videos, and also a pretty interesting breakdown of the theoretical. BUT, you're forgetting one key point, especially launching from Earth. There's this thing called the atmosphere. If you were going anywhere near orbital velocity within any part of the atmosphere that isn't "basically space", your trip would come to a very abrupt end. All that work to limit humans (or rockets) to less than 100's of G's? Out the window as soon as you exit that rail gun's vacuum tube and hit the atmosphere. Your rocket turns to liquid and you're "not doing well" after you rip your belts (or the seat itself) straight off the frame of the rocket. Now, can we do this on the Moon? Yeah, maybe. But not in Earth's atmosphere. Plus you have to raise your periapsis (lowest point of your orbit) so some amount of rocket is still required once you get into space. Not a big deal, but keep it in mind.
You're right. The linear accelerator is the best launch system from the moon and it can double as a landing strip. It doesn't have to be a railgun. A maglev type would be perfect.
@@Skankhunt-mv4vd No they aren't. The maglev doesn't require the capsule to be in contact with the rails. The capsule generates its own magnetic field from either an internal powerplant or getting power from a low friction connection to an external source. The railgun was developed for the military for it's simplicity. The round is a simple piece of metal and doesn't cost much. It can tolerate extreme heat from friction with the rails. You don't want that for a capsule.
I think some G-forces can be alleviated trough special chairs, suits and how the acceleration is being done. Which can help improve passenger comfort and survivability. Add in that you use a shorter Launch to get past the initial mass inertia issue Just to save the launch fuel we could get some decent space travel going pretty soon. The Engineering will be a nightmare though and the quality of the build for modularity, maintenance and oversight has to be top tier from start to finish. As for hardware launch this could be a good brutforce way to launch the heavier equipment for starting a space industry and manufacture in space cheaper than the rocket at least.
@NeoCatfrost Its not removing G-forces it helps aleviate the more deadly effects allowing the human body to survive longer under extreme conditions. The flight suits pilots use help with such things by regulating bloodflow trough pressure as an example.
I remember doing the math on this one and you could use the tallest mountain in the world, plus the atmosphere would be much thinner at the exit point. Do a giant laser assisted launch next! As in, how big would a laser have to be to lift 4 people into space, and how much power would it need?
First time I've seen one of your videos. Clearly Aperture Science inspired, but that's not a bad thing! The content is engaging, the presentation is fantastic, and I've subscribed! Well done!
If I remember correctly it takes some 50% of a rocket's fuel to get the first 1/10th of the speed going. What you want isn't a super-high-speed train/railgun going across a state. What you want is an ultra-high capacity but short-distance rail gun pointed straight up. Like you said, you don't need to get rid of the rocket, you just need to substantially reduce fuel costs to make space travel easier, greener, and cheaper. If you can achieve even a marginal chunk of the required speed, then you can use a much smaller rocket, and if you use a smaller rocket with less fuel, then you can either increase payload significantly, or reduce fuel costs even more because less fuel is being used to lift fuel. Now there are of course some major issues here; 1) Not that many people need or really want to go to space. And when they go to space, they are fulfilling some 1980s dream of jumping on a big 'ol rocket and getting propelled into space, not an oversized rail gun. Plus, it limits what the tech is really good at, which is extremely high velocity over a very short distance. Just focus on putting stuff into space, that is the reall killer app for this tech. Put stuff in orbit at 1/10th the price musk can do it in and you will be launching more stuff then you will know what to do with. 2) Air is a pesky problem, and you really want to do this without air getting in the way. Ideally, you don't want to shoot something across a big flat swamp of a state. You want the side of a mountain to climb up, get a near vacuume, and launch as fast as possible. Doing this over miles of land and track is going to introduce sutpid amounts of losses due to friction. 3) the hybrid car problem. Nobody likes hybrid cars. The up-front expense never pays for the fuel savings unless the manufacturer eats those costs. And when there is a problem then you don't have a simple engine repair, or an even simpler electric motor repair. Instead of the best of both worlds, most hybrid situations lands you with the worst of both worlds. Instead of reducing complexity, you are building in additional points of failure. If you can't do it without a rocket, then don't bother
You could build it up the slope of Mauna Loa or Mauna Kea. Also: for returning material from moon, it's a no brainer: moon doesn't have the pesky air problem.
On track length: make the track a large circle with an exit tangent and loop the capsule around the track. Saves on space and you can accelerate as slowly as you desire. Or would this be worse due to centripetal acceleration? A spiral shape takes even less space but ofc would experience higher acceleration.
The circular track idea would actually be a better design because you have a track of "infinite length" in a very small area. Acceleration in any respect is a problem, but the centrifugal (moving away from the centre) force only becomes an issue if it's sustained. Humans are able to sustain a higher G rating vertically than any other direction, so technically we could sustain a 5G environment for a slightly longer period of time as long as "down" is "outward" (i.e. everyone's heads are pointing toward the centre of the loop) The issue is shunting the sled from the loop into a launch track. The sudden change in direction would be felt by everyone on board, and might be pretty rough on them. Add to that you want to accelerate everyone at a slightly higher rate for the short last phase up into the air, and it would definitely not be the most pleasant way to get into space.
This would not work because we can't build something strong enough to sustain the centrifugal force that would be experienced by a several ton craft moving at 10 times the speed of sound. Even if you could build something strong enough to tether the craft, you'd need nanosecond precise timing to release the tether at exactly the moment when the velocity of the craft is aligned with the tangent exit track. If you were off by even a fraction of a second the craft would crash into the structure obliterating the entire thing and sending several tons of debris hurtling outward at 10 times the speed of sound.
@@Swiggityswagger You're right about that, I saw that thunderfoot video recently. It would take less precise timing than spinlauch (still obscenely dangerous), as you no longer need a release trigger just a track switch like a train. But then there's problems with stopping the supersonic sled the craft is moving on ... just problems all around with this idea.
Astounding for the current amount of support, it's qualitively on par with research channels that have huge funding backers. I think the only aspect that may need improvement is the choice of thumbnails but especially titles, Veritasium made a good explanation on that subject in my eyes.
I was being a nerd thinking about this a while ago. It seriously makes sense for a moonbase. You could have a 50km track to launch and land people at 1g taking 100 seconds. The landing would have to be precise and the rail would proberbly need to be made out of sections that would elevate to match the path of an orbit. Plus with it being on the moon you have no atmosphere problems. You could proberbly build a bfg 10k from doom eternal for transport of minerals mined on the surface. Makes sense to put it on the poles of the moon for access to the most amounts of useful orbits.
Minerals minded on the moon could be launched back to earth to be sold for an extremely cheap cost. Commercialising the moon could be possible because of this technology.
What if your launcher worked like a particle accelerator: accelerating up to speed at 1+ gee on a circular track before release along a short, straight section in the right direction?
My Hypothesis would be, that there would be very big structural challenge in keeping a Rocket sized Craft on that track at Mach 33. You would need a very strong structure to keep that Craft on the Track. Though there also would be the problem with getting anything through the atmosphere after launch without burning up. I suppose launching somthing in that fashion could provide some velocity, but not a significant amount.
Using a circular accelerator with the track on the outer wall would eliminate the centrifugal force from trying to pull the vessel off the track. As for the atmospheric pressure, well ALL railgun concepts would have to overcome that problem. Unless you built the open end of the railgun up the side of Mount Everest where the atmosphere is thinner. You would also have to create a vacuum within the entire length of the accelerator or the projectile would burn up once it was moving fast enough.
i just plugged some numbers into a spin gravity calculator.. and once youre up to speed, even a ring with a radius of 100km would have almost 53 g's of centrifugal acceleration squishing you against your seat 😭 1000 km, 5.3 g's. but if you built it around the equator, it'd be a very comfy .83 g's, opposite the earth's gravity so youd'd experience .17 g :)
Could you initially have a circular track (im talking a large radius to avoid g-force effects from centripetal acceleration) then a switch junction that arcs into a straight line?
First thing that came to my mind was that you could perhaps get around the killing humans part by dividing the launch into series of extreme high G pulses. If humans can tolerate 38 Gs for 0.5 seconds for example you could make a track that makes multiple 0.5 second accelerations and freerolls for a brief time after each acceleration. If the recovery periods were short enough and it helped to deal with the dying part the average acceleration of the launch could be higher than humans normally could endure and thus enable the use of shorter launch track.
This was so much better than I was expecting - I'm so used to exceptionally ignorant pop science takes that propose fanciful futures with zero self-awareness... or just hilariously factually wrong takes based on inference. This was not that - it was real good. No surprise that your meme game is on point too. Subbityscribbled.
A railgun attached to a bomb sounds like a concept of when theres an alien invasion the main character uses the space ship as a bomb to enter the alien mothership then blow up
7800 m/S speed is needed ONLY if you stop accelerating after that. AKA: "Bang to orbit" By using continual thrust to achieve orbit, all you would need is 1G, or less, all the way up. In short, just fly like an airplane to orbit. You just need lateral speed to maintain orbit.
I always wanted to construct such a thing on a Track from the Pacific to the Top of the Andes (for a perfect equatorial launch). Drawback: launch path is over the amazonas, resuling in higher potential damage on a failed launch. Upnote: the andes are quite high and air drag is lower at that altitude.
Trouble is we can't get our EMAILS to work which is launching of AirForce plaines from new carriers, they do work but only for about 200 launches which is inadequate for combat, the whole idea is to use it for combat. Besides,you need the track to be pointed skywards, not horizontal, do one on NTP nuclear rockets .
You need to launch to the East, to take advantage of the velocity of the Earth's surface (~460 m/s at the equator) as it spins on its axis. By going West you need to add 2x this speed to "escape velocity" to reach orbit.
As of 7:00 you've overlooked a teeny tiny problem which the miliary is struggling with for using railguns as weapons. That being the fact that the damn guns tear themselves apart. Each launch strips material from the launch rails and as such need to be frequently replaced. If this issue cannot be solved then the Idea of a railgun assisted launcher is a non-starter.
I got here when the channel had 301K subscribers. I'm predicting it to grow as big as the channel Isaac Arthur, or maybe even bigger, in a year or two at most.
When leaving a vacuüm tube with mach 23 the atmosphere will kick you in the face like a Airliner is hitting the water fullspeed nose down. Instead of getting wet it will burn you down due to friction in seconds. Even if you can slove the heating problem you will never reach orbit like a bullet can't travel through water. But i like the idea :)
This concept was in my head since they introduced railguns and hyperloops. I was thinking hmm why not to use for launching satellites etc... Since anyone already described the issue of rocket/capsule hitting air at 10km/s or more. This could be used just to propel them at speed little under MaxQ.
In the book series The Long Winter, they used a magnetic launcher to get to low Earth Orbit, and robotic in space to take them the rest of the way to the ship they were building! They use cryogenic sleep to get pass the high g load!
9:16 how much energy tho, we are gonna need at least a square kilometer of solar panels to power that assuming it uses something like 500mW, which is not exactly little.
500mW is tiny - half-watt rail-guns? *yes please!* now 500MW is a lot of power, but considering that as pulse-power, you can charge up over 100 seconds with 5MVA of sourced current... Long story short, a rail-gun on earth would take an hour's break between 'shots' - on the moon however, a launch of ores can happen every five minutes because of the lower gravity; and abundant solar radiation...
Shouldn't we be looking to decrease the amount of G's that astronauts recieve during such a launch? Maybe special compartments within the record that counteract the amount of G's that the rocket travels at.
When you come out of the end of the tube at anywhere near an orbital velocity in the Earth's atmosphere (or even Mars's greatly diminished atmosphere), that is going to be a very lot of friction you encounter.
Totally missed the point of using a railgun to launch an "MOOV" or MMMS. Railgun would be used to launch a massive multi mission spacecraft. You don't put people on during the launch. You sent the people up to the massive spacecraft after its in orbit. Call it an massive orbit to orbit vehicle.
@@schemesof40k You wouldn't launch the planet. But you'd use a Planet Launcher™ to launch MMMS vehicles because it has more overhead. You need some wiggle room in there when operating on such tight margins. And Planet Launcher™ has the capability to launch any size MMMS vehicle made, and in some cases can launch multiple missions at once! IMHO, always go with a Planet Launcher™ (plus, they have a great rebate program, too!)
Not gonna lie, sitting in a railgun on the moon and being shot from the ground up to orbital velocity sounds actually rather interesting. As long as it's only 3G max that is xD
Earlier in the video you said the trajectory has to be tangential to the earths surface. Shooting a -projectile- payload out of a track on the surface would require a secondary impulse when the payload gets to its highest point (apogee). Also consider that launching the payload through a tube filled with air would incur massive drag losses and produce a crap ton of heat, so if the G forces don’t kill the -subjects- astronauts, they’ll be cooked inside the pod. One solution to this is to make the tube a vacuum (not necessary on the moon and not fully required on mars, thankfully), but as soon as the payload leaves the end of a barrel, all of a sudden hitting the atmosphere at the launch speed would literally be like hitting a cinder block wall. You COULD angle the tube upwards enough to get the end of it to a thinner section of atmosphere, but holding it together/supporting it would be a logistical nightmare. I don’t know if I explained it right because I felt like I was just rambling, so just look up “Project HARP” if you need more details.
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The target launch speed is 7700 m/s Lets suppose the spacecraft has about 10m^2 frontal area, for supersonic velocities it is hard to go lower than Cd = 0.1, so let's use that value Mass density of the air at sea level is 1.225kg/m^3 This gets us about 30 to 40 MN (Mega Newton) An average spacecraft second stage is about 100 000kg fully loaded. This gives us 300m/s^2 declaration after the moment of leaving the barrel. This is about 30g, that is not very good. The spacecraft will spend significant distance in the dense atmosphere because of the low launch angle, but due to the high velocity it will be only a few seconds, so there will be about 300-600m/s loss of deltaV, that can be given back by the rocket engines anyway. The other problem is that air heating will dissipate 300GJ of energy in form of plasma. This happens in a very short time, but the temperatures would be really bad, fortunately an ablative heat shield can take very extreme heat for a short time. The very uncomfortable 30g for a few seconds is survivable, or we need a heavier spacecraft to compensate for that. Or slower launch speed which was mentioned. These all seems to be somewhat solvable on Earth, but in the end you get a hypersonic projectile in dense air, which is definitely not safer than rocket technology, especially because it should also have a rocket engine which it can use later to put it into orbit (because we need to lower the starting velocity anyway, plus orbital insertion). You cannot abort after is was launched, which is very much possible for rockets. On Earth this can only feasibly used for launching cargo. But the advantages quickly evaporate. What makes me completely doubt the seriousness of the whole project (aside from the marginal numbers), is that they mention fuel costs for the rockets, which is widely known to be negligible part of the launch costs. The real cost of the rocket launch is the rocket itself which is thrown away after the launch, and the launch infrastructure. This accelerator would significantly blow up the the launch infrastructure costs, and the launched "second" stage would be still thrown away because it would experience extreme forces upon the launch (and the heatshield would degrade too, "second" stage reentry might even not be possible, or marginal). So this seems to have no advantage over the reusable fist stage Falcon 9. (and disadvantages compared to Starship, if we are comparing paper rockets, you should compare to Starship) Other possible advantage could have been, that it can theoretically launch much much bigger payloads, because the work of the first stage has been taken care of. But in reality, for a bigger payload, you would need a more powerful accelerator, which is much more expensive. This is unlikely to work out.
Like it is in the video it would most likely not work. But with some adjustments this seems viable. Possible points: - launching from a mountain instead so that the end point would be at half the atmospheric density of sea level at > 18,000 feet. - not using vacuum, instead using a hybrid pressure and magnet rail system so that you're not slamming into a wall. Higher weight capacity allows - heavier and stronger reinforcement - better heat shielding - an air pocket media separation system - Heavier reinforcement allows for more reusability It would definitely have to have a rocket because it has to land back on earth. This is an expensive addition to spacex launch model leading to greater capacity, efficiency, and monetary gain in the long run.
My father, electrical/electronic engineer and physicist, first taught me about 'rocket science' when I was 3 and some months watching Neil Armstrong take that first step and on as my curiosity grew especially towards electromagnetic and gravitational forces so that by the time I was 13, Spec and Gen Rel were second nature spheres of thought and play. When I first heard about Maglev trains - 1974/5 when both West Germany and Japan had begun to seriously invest in exploratory technologies - my brain went into overdrive: combine rails and electromagnetic propulsion on an inclined plane. The dimensions were unfeasible with then current technology but not anymore. Get to it then.
some back of the napkin math suggests you could build an underground tunnel to do this, a chord that connects two points on the earth's surface right through the crust. It would be 3km deep at its deepest point (deepest tunnel so far is Gotthard tunnel at 2300m), but you'd be protected from damaging things like traffic, UV, extreme temperature change, and for the first half of the launch you'd have a very slight gravity assist.
Hahaaa.... you had me at " 'Murica", which is how I usually refer to the place when addressing the denser sections of the populace. This starts with some incredibly dry wit and dark humour. I wish more video makers were capable of that level of near-deep sarcasm while maintaining a faint hint of self-deprecatory fun. The one issue I wonder about is that if there were a rail gun (either horizontally oriented or vertically, embedded up to 2 or 3 km into the earth), a vehicle moving at escape velocity is going to have heat problems moving through the atmosphere. For the same reason meteorites burn up, and shuttles need heat shields on re-entry, a craft departing earth from the lower atmosphere is gonna have hellacious friction with the air if it's already going the required escape velocity of 11.2 km. Aside from insane streamlining and maybe some as-yet-undiscovered metallic/ceramic alloy shell that will be slick enough not to burn, this appears to be a moderately insoluble problem.
Wont work. The payload would just burn up when hitting the atmosphere. And getting it to angle upwards would require a gigantic tower several kilometers high.
gotta say I'm seriously digging the Aperture Science theme you've adopted, an inspired choice to convey near-future tech
Nice pfp lol
it's uninspired and might as well be lazy copying.
@@harrywang3098 well, valve hasn't been coming up Aperture Science vids for a VERY FKING LONG TIME. Its better to be an inspiration for others so that others can enjoy. It's not he's stealing all previous asset, just the feel and humor of Aperture Science. I get pissed when someone else just steals people's content but not this.
@@hunde2430 it doesn't matter how long something has been out. if they did nothing to add to the style which they haven't, they only used it to repackage their thing, and it's not a parody, then they didn't do anything in that realm, so it's just copying
@@harrywang3098 is only game, why everybody hef to be mad?
The intro is like an aperture commercial, from the game portal.
Your content is awesome.
Not to mention the ending.
"Subject Zero, we're done here."
9:09 "the cake is not a lie"
"I will burn down your house ... WITH THE LEMONS!"
Or The Lab 2016, game of Valve in Steam.
i think that's intentional
Imagine the atmospheric drag and heat when you've a capsule travelling at 11,000 m/s (Mach 32) close to the ground
I always thought that the atmosphere was the only problem but now I can see that the track length is another big issue.
Sounds like a fun ride. Maybe Disney will help sponsor it. I mean they already own Star Wars. It's not such a stretch
have the track spit you out at the top of Mt. Himilaya and you're through most of it.
I was here to say that. There is no material that can withstand that temperatures at ground level.
This is just fantasy. He think he could stop his raiil rocket by cutting electricity.
@@Aqzaqa Even at top of Mt. Everest with only 33% of the air density, a capsule moving at that speed will cause avalanches and bring the whole structure down
This is interesting, I've been thinking in similar lines for a while now, but not at sea level or in Florida. If you start with a mountain, say in Colorado or Wyoming, 12,000ft tall or better, then you have a built in upward angle and a reduced atmosphere at the top. Have banks of solar panels and supercapacitors lining it to power the launch, and have the tube evacuated to the point that the pressure the vehicle experiences at the end of the tube is the same as the pressure it will see upon exit, so no sudden slamming into the atmosphere. Make it cargo only, so 10+G, and by the time it exits it will be going pretty fast. A 5000 meter track (about 3miles) will give a final velocity in the ballpark of 1000m/second, or around 2200mph. Light the "second stage" rocket, and you're easily hitting orbital velocity.
That is exactly what Heinlein proposed in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"
As nice as this sounds, 1000 m/s really isn't that much in orbital terms.
From sea level, you need around 10 km/s of acceleration to get into low Earth orbit.
Railguns are still a perfectly viable near-future means of getting material into orbit, it's just that it'd probably only work for very light payloads, or on other bodies with lower gravity.
@@mwhito3o292 The real benefit is in not having to carry the fuel to get that first 1000m/s of acceleration. This is just napkin math anyway, if people actually sat down and figured this out for real, I'm sure the system could be tuned to be much faster.
There's a reason that launches are conducted next to the ocean. In the event of a failure...the launched vehicle doesn't fall on a populated area.
@@Sara-L It's a well known fact that nobody actually lives in Wyoming.
love the aperture style video, really great to see it put to life so well
INSANELY gorgeous visuals, as per usual, and simply incredible work all around! This is seriously top notch stuff and my ears and eyeballs love it all. Also, love the added comical portion "Rage Against the Braces"! 😂
I found the video a bit chaotic
The whole video is inaccurate even the most basic calculation is not correct...
6:00
5100 m/s speed goal.
9G = 9*9.81 = 88.29 m/s2
Time to accel to 5100 ms = 5100/88,29 = 57.76 sec and not 44 sec.
Also it is not clear that how you wish to reach the speed at very high alt because a horizontal velocity vector does not help, at all at sea level.
Because rockets are slow under 10-20 km alt THEN they start really accelerate.
How you wish to build a 10-20 km high sloped magnetic accel?
LOL
@@molnibalage83
I too noticed there was no mention of air resistance in this video.
@@molnibalage83 I thought of this idea over a decade ago. Way before I heard of Musk or Hyperloop. Vacuum tunnel in Mt. Everest! Released at 6 miles in to thin atmosphere with a reusable 2nd stage push it the rest of way. I don't remember all the calcs, but I thought it was possible. I even remember telling my roommate and he rolled his eyes. So close to starting SpaceX & Boring. :D
0:11 is that a purple stripper with a floaty tube ... hot
Absolutely beautiful. I’m gonna go build one of these in KSP. Track length: 100m
Remember to sell the resulting Jebediah Smoothie for extra funds 😋
Acceleration: 140G
@@sethdrake7551 who needs bones anyways?
Kerbals don't care about Gs
Dude this comment is godly. Send me the link when it's done.
You can really feel the portal influence in this one, nice work
So I wasn't the only one...
"This is subject zero, we're done here"
@@DxBlack lol
yeah the grids, and just the graphics scream those portal 2 adverts from cave johnson. Plus the ending lol.
was looking for this comment
How have I not discovered your channel until now??? The quality and humor is absolutely insane.
Ive wondered if this would work since the first time I found out about railguns watching sci fi growing up and seeing spaceships launching on rail systems. Sure the cost of building it would be higher but its reusable and would be better in the long term
It's not just a function of cost. It's a function of energy. That is the current bottleneck
Love the lighthearted tone of the animations, feels a lot like the little birds in the Kurzgesagt videos.
Same
Might want to check out the Aperture science videos from Portal, it's very close to those.
@@Stormcrow_1 solid point, forgot about them, definitely similar.
Nah, it's heavily portal 2 influence. The ending just proves it lol.
Reminds me of the Aperture Science videos from Portal 2.
“Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman’s terms, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.”
- GLaDOS
GLaDOS is awesome!
Thank you, I'm gonna go reinstall portal
There's a game from several years ago called Soma. It had something like this that was built under the ocean. I never thought much about it then, but now I see that it was due to the length of track needed to make it work.
Great game
I looooove how this is inspired by Aperture science but used for actually useful and informative stuff. Instant sub
this is an idea i toyed with back in 2009 when i was 17. i gave up on it because of the g force issue as well as seeing the possibility of a space elevator. i have honestly been waiting for the space elevator after i seen the creation of synthetic spider silk 2 years ago, i believe that kind of material would be perfect for a space elevator.
Space elevators don’t really work on earth because the cost is far greater than what it’s worth, especially because if it fell it would wrap around the earth and kill everyone
The SR-71 top speed in meters per second is 980 and that’s at 85000 feet. It’s hull temperature can reach 900 F. Now imagine 9 times that speed at sea level. I could be wrong but I don’t think tungsten could even handle those temps and pressures. Hypersonic forge to space anyone?
Sorry 8 times the speed not 9. And I hope Patreon proposal was a joke because I like this channel
Probably true which is why rail run tech was abandoned. Funny you mention the SR71 though. As I believe they are working on the SR72 as we speak.
But it sounds like it is heavy in prototype faze & supposedly supposed to travel Mach 6 which seems unrealistic.
As again it could run into the same problems the last one did with heat. You bring up some good points here though. :)
This. This is why nobody really uses railguns other than the lack of a reliable and practical power source. You'd have to repair/rebuild the rail gun everytime you fire it because it probably melted the rails. Now imagine something like that running the length of Florida
You merging m/s, feet, and fahrenheit in a single comment bugs me for whatever reason. (as does the spelling of "fahrenheit" since I can never get it right the first time).
It would travel in a vacuum. It's essentially an ever-accelerating Hyperloop mechanism, from what I can see. Once it left the tube, it would only be traveling through the atmosphere for a short time before reaching the near vacuum of LEO. The US has successfully flown and controlled Hypersonic aircraft at speeds of >Mach 25. These craft utilize scramjet propulsion technology, which could be employed in this type of an application.
"10.2 billions dollars, which equate to 157 regular launches"
Or 1/70 of USA yearly military budget... Also, there are at least 100 people that could pay it out of their pocket
yes cause billionaires keep billions of dollars in cash that can be spent at any time right
@@achillle Well not to stir the pot but Buffet does. Several sources claim that he keeps around 20bn ready in case he sees a profitable opportunity.
Said 100 people:
Nah lol
Capitalism baby!
There are exactly zero people who can pay that out of pocket. People like Musk and Bezos, their wealth is 'on paper', and is tied up in assets (real estate, intellectual property, shares in a company, etc). They likely only have $5-10mil in the bank in cash, or less, because why would you need that much money, and especially when you factor in that having that much cash sitting in a bank acrues interest, which is considered income and can be taxed, so they don't keep it in a bank.
Most, if not all wealthy people make purchases with credit cards and only keep enough money in the bank to pay the fees those cards acrue.
I love how the humor you inject into the video doesn't detract or prolong the information delivery.
Awesome concept!
Sweet-looking animation, love your style!
Was instinctively waiting for the iconic "Cave Johnson, we're done here"
And they delivered. 10/10 would not skip if it came up before a video
i would say "more of this style please, it's absolutely stunning" but you do you because what your doing is working.
Great presentation, one major issue though: Atmospheric friction resistance.
Even if the tube is vacuum sealed, the rocket being launched will eventually have to travel through the atmosphere, and to do that at those speeds would literally burn up everything before it could ever reach orbit (more so, it would impact explode upon exiting the railgun tube).
I think the solution is better found in a way to efficiently carry such a rocket into high atmosphere via a slow long-distance carrier, like a glider of some sort. Instead of thinking of ways to leave the orbit as quickly as possible, I think we should look at dragging out the launch itself as much as we can. Let our atmosphere be our runway, and have a glider circle around the world several times over the course of days, slowly taking the rocket into a high enough altitude where it can take over on its own, and doesn't have to combat surface level factors.
This would also mean that the rocket engine nozzles can be tuned much more efficiently for outer space use where positive pressure doesn't have to be combatted, and you can get a much leaner fuel burn and thus save both weight and cost dramatically.
This is essentially what SpaceX are doing with their two-stage reusable rockets - except they still focus on "get to space as quickly as possible", rather than taking efficiency into consideration. And it's understandable, if you can do launches quickly, you can do more of them over the span of a week. But it will never be an efficient way to tackle orbital launches, especially when said launches have to take extra loads and pricing becomes a factor too (for future commercial viability).
Silly man, haven't you paid attention in class? Air resistance can obviously be neglected.
Or, for it's ultimate stage of advancement, build an orbital ring
Go look up the temperture rocket engines burn at. The same way rocket engines survive is how a craft can survive at those tempertures especially since it will be a much shorter amount of time.
@@calebfielding6352 The rocket engine nozzles made of unique composite materials and specifically coated to withstand these temperatures, but it would be a major compromise to build the entire spacecraft like that, in terms of weight, cost, and complexity.
The actual key point with rockets, though, is that they have a gradual acceleration and a relatively slow ascend. If you wanted to launch a spaceship into orbit from the ground via a railgun system, the speed necessary to reach orbit while battling air resistance would be so high that you would have to vastly exceed the speeds at which a normal rocket ascends through the atmosphere.
So again we are back at the core issue, that the speeds necessary to launch a spaceship from ground into orbit would be so high that air friction would burn up the outer hull before you could ever exit the atmosphere.
On top of this, the impact of going from vacuum-tube into atmospheric air resistance, would be like hitting a literal brick wall. So not only would the spaceship have to be extremely heat resistant and durable, it would also have to be built like a tank. The main compromise is extreme weight, which is exactly what you want NOT to increase for spaceflight operations.
@@Real_MisterSir 1. And I think this is the most important point. The purpose of a rail lancher/mag lev/or other wise space gun is to put extreme weight into space. Being able to put dramatically cheaper products into space should be the goal. For instance water is a wonderful radiation shield, but at the current cost of putting stuff into space its more economical to send far more expensive radiation shields into space because they are far lighter.
2. rail launchers are not guns. Their is without a doubt a gradual increase of speed. Granted that increase is far faaster than a rocket engine.
3. Dont launch at sea level. lots of mountains in the U.S. that would dramatically reduce the air pressure at the launch sight. Currently the tallest tower is 2800 feet tall. Wheeler peek in nevada is at 13000 feet above sea level, add 3000 foot tall tower and you have half the air pressure.
4. Whatever you launch needs to be able to move in space so it will have to have a rocket anyway, so in reality any rail launcher launch system will technically be assisting a rocket into space.
5. I dont think vaccuum tube is the way to go, the naval rail gun seemed to have a piece that sacrificed itself during acceleration so that the real projectile could go, so I suspect a far better method than vacuum would be to have some sort of projectile in front of the space ship to create a vortex to make the air current much less problematic. Not sure how to describe it. Simular to the boost a racecar can get in a race when they closely follow another race car, or simular to a car in the highway riding very close to a semi truck
6. Rocket engines work because they are pumping exremely cold materials into them while the rockets burn. Same method can be used on the spaceship. Have extreemly cold liqued pumped into the skin of the ship just before launch, we know from rockets that 3500 celsius can be survived by this method. Heck even make it a one way trip, and use the skin of the ship in whatever project you are building in space.
7. At the end of the day any rail launcher or magneticly propelled system will be unmanned. So the g forces are not the biggest limit to it. We have electronics that can survive 20,000 gs when fired from artillary, so the purpose of this system is to put heavy robust things in space, not to put people into space.
I remember the atmosphere being a huge problem for this system
- You would want to build it very high, except that has it's own issues...
Lofstrom loop!
Turn the Everest into a space rollercoaster
myth busters can launch a ping pong ball very fast with a vacuum + rail gun = faster for less energy
@millionmanification vacuum (autocorrect)
- actually, it turns out, that sustaining a huge volume of vacuum is really expensive, especially since you need to eventually open it at the end, and not slam into the air too hard enough, etc.
- it's an interesting idea, but probably not happening any time soon
- I personally expect something cheaper to be possible, before this.
- mass drivers are great for moon and mars, though - On moon you don't need a tube at all, and it will work extremely well for moving lots of mass, like mined resources, to orbit
Build a launch tunnel on the mountains in Colorado and bury the track when it gets horizontal. Put a rocket on it, but have it ignite as it leaves the track so it's still accelerating in the air (and you still have control of it that way). If you start the track on another mountain, you can take advantage of gravity to aid in acceleration of the payload. Make sure to evacuate the air from the tube as you launch, not before, to avoid backflow. And blow air towards the rocket exhaust as it leaves the tunnel to increase the Reynolds number of the air and reduce drag on the rocket. You should probably use a Reuleaux triangle as the body profile instead of a circle, easier to keep it stable on the electromagnet rails. Maybe fade into a deltoid curve towards the front.
i've thought about this before, i think using a vacuum sealed superconductor loop underground to initiate the speed and a railgun like track that would be much shorter as the launcher
HUGE aperture science vibes from this, and then you toss in "THE CAKE IS NOT A LIE." at 9:09... finally some more aperture content
i saw the intro, and thumbnail, and was like: "Oh nice, another aperture science like channel", then saw the video, and was not dissapointed, you are much better
what other channels are there like this?
@@blyat7276 THIS. I MUST KNOW.
I love the "In Murica" followed by "the average distance between McDonald and Burger King" which also plays into "the Murica" joke.
"I was able to spot the extremely on-the-nose joke, Mom!"
@@cwtrain "I'm salty Mom! I better announce it to everyone MOM!"....
I’m loving the aperture science vibe, wonderful job here
What about a series of concentric rings to eliminate the amount of EM track? That way you can reuse the same track while ramping up to speed, then merge to a larger-diameter ring as G-forces get higher and repeat the process as much as is feasible. You could merge to a straight track after the outer-most ring.
Yahhhh they have another company doing something similar with a big circular arm that YEETS projectiles into space from inside a vacuum with close to zero friction!
1:39 - I hope one of your rooms really looks like that. I love everything about this room. Especially the Hal computer and the Locutus poster.
I like how casual you're getting with these. Your wit and presentation will make you not just another science TH-camr, but will most likely make you stand out, boosting your channel
Is it me or did you just took the animations, sound desing and script to the next level on this video? Everything was outstanding!!
“Just make those checks out to cash. Cave Johnson, we’re done here.”
"ready to invest? we accept all credit cards but better invest with cold hard cash and crypto"
"Subject Zero, we're done here"
god i love it
I think Ive just stumbled across one of the coolest channels on the platform
Really like how similar this is to the Aperture Science product and employee videos, awesome work.
Dude, this was probably one of your best (funniest) videos, and also a pretty interesting breakdown of the theoretical. BUT, you're forgetting one key point, especially launching from Earth. There's this thing called the atmosphere. If you were going anywhere near orbital velocity within any part of the atmosphere that isn't "basically space", your trip would come to a very abrupt end. All that work to limit humans (or rockets) to less than 100's of G's? Out the window as soon as you exit that rail gun's vacuum tube and hit the atmosphere. Your rocket turns to liquid and you're "not doing well" after you rip your belts (or the seat itself) straight off the frame of the rocket.
Now, can we do this on the Moon? Yeah, maybe. But not in Earth's atmosphere. Plus you have to raise your periapsis (lowest point of your orbit) so some amount of rocket is still required once you get into space. Not a big deal, but keep it in mind.
I was thinking about that caveat the whole way through...
You're right. The linear accelerator is the best launch system from the moon and it can double as a landing strip.
It doesn't have to be a railgun. A maglev type would be perfect.
@@halnineooo136 aren't those basically the same thing?
@@Skankhunt-mv4vd
No they aren't. The maglev doesn't require the capsule to be in contact with the rails. The capsule generates its own magnetic field from either an internal powerplant or getting power from a low friction connection to an external source.
The railgun was developed for the military for it's simplicity. The round is a simple piece of metal and doesn't cost much. It can tolerate extreme heat from friction with the rails. You don't want that for a capsule.
@@halnineooo136 you are very intelligent .
These visuals scratch that Aperture Science itch!
"Will we survive that?" "I dunno. Be a pretty cool way to die, though, huh?"
Subject Zero was apparently feeling a little sassy when making this video. I approve.
I think some G-forces can be alleviated trough special chairs, suits and how the acceleration is being done. Which can help improve passenger comfort and survivability.
Add in that you use a shorter Launch to get past the initial mass inertia issue Just to save the launch fuel we could get some decent space travel going pretty soon.
The Engineering will be a nightmare though and the quality of the build for modularity, maintenance and oversight has to be top tier from start to finish.
As for hardware launch this could be a good brutforce way to launch the heavier equipment for starting a space industry and manufacture in space cheaper than the rocket at least.
special anti-g chair is like saying special anti autism chair, you can't exactly fix it with a chair, its kinda about being human
@NeoCatfrost Its not removing G-forces it helps aleviate the more deadly effects allowing the human body to survive longer under extreme conditions. The flight suits pilots use help with such things by regulating bloodflow trough pressure as an example.
I remember doing the math on this one and you could use the tallest mountain in the world, plus the atmosphere would be much thinner at the exit point. Do a giant laser assisted launch next! As in, how big would a laser have to be to lift 4 people into space, and how much power would it need?
I absolutely love the Aperture Science vibes I'm getting from this info-video. Good job! I need more!
First time I've seen one of your videos. Clearly Aperture Science inspired, but that's not a bad thing! The content is engaging, the presentation is fantastic, and I've subscribed! Well done!
If I remember correctly it takes some 50% of a rocket's fuel to get the first 1/10th of the speed going.
What you want isn't a super-high-speed train/railgun going across a state. What you want is an ultra-high capacity but short-distance rail gun pointed straight up. Like you said, you don't need to get rid of the rocket, you just need to substantially reduce fuel costs to make space travel easier, greener, and cheaper. If you can achieve even a marginal chunk of the required speed, then you can use a much smaller rocket, and if you use a smaller rocket with less fuel, then you can either increase payload significantly, or reduce fuel costs even more because less fuel is being used to lift fuel.
Now there are of course some major issues here;
1) Not that many people need or really want to go to space. And when they go to space, they are fulfilling some 1980s dream of jumping on a big 'ol rocket and getting propelled into space, not an oversized rail gun. Plus, it limits what the tech is really good at, which is extremely high velocity over a very short distance. Just focus on putting stuff into space, that is the reall killer app for this tech. Put stuff in orbit at 1/10th the price musk can do it in and you will be launching more stuff then you will know what to do with.
2) Air is a pesky problem, and you really want to do this without air getting in the way. Ideally, you don't want to shoot something across a big flat swamp of a state. You want the side of a mountain to climb up, get a near vacuume, and launch as fast as possible. Doing this over miles of land and track is going to introduce sutpid amounts of losses due to friction.
3) the hybrid car problem. Nobody likes hybrid cars. The up-front expense never pays for the fuel savings unless the manufacturer eats those costs. And when there is a problem then you don't have a simple engine repair, or an even simpler electric motor repair. Instead of the best of both worlds, most hybrid situations lands you with the worst of both worlds. Instead of reducing complexity, you are building in additional points of failure. If you can't do it without a rocket, then don't bother
Cargo and fuel to orbit should have its own solution; separate from how humans get to orbit.
You could build it up the slope of Mauna Loa or Mauna Kea. Also: for returning material from moon, it's a no brainer: moon doesn't have the pesky air problem.
On track length: make the track a large circle with an exit tangent and loop the capsule around the track. Saves on space and you can accelerate as slowly as you desire.
Or would this be worse due to centripetal acceleration?
A spiral shape takes even less space but ofc would experience higher acceleration.
The circular track idea would actually be a better design because you have a track of "infinite length" in a very small area. Acceleration in any respect is a problem, but the centrifugal (moving away from the centre) force only becomes an issue if it's sustained. Humans are able to sustain a higher G rating vertically than any other direction, so technically we could sustain a 5G environment for a slightly longer period of time as long as "down" is "outward" (i.e. everyone's heads are pointing toward the centre of the loop)
The issue is shunting the sled from the loop into a launch track. The sudden change in direction would be felt by everyone on board, and might be pretty rough on them. Add to that you want to accelerate everyone at a slightly higher rate for the short last phase up into the air, and it would definitely not be the most pleasant way to get into space.
This would not work because we can't build something strong enough to sustain the centrifugal force that would be experienced by a several ton craft moving at 10 times the speed of sound. Even if you could build something strong enough to tether the craft, you'd need nanosecond precise timing to release the tether at exactly the moment when the velocity of the craft is aligned with the tangent exit track. If you were off by even a fraction of a second the craft would crash into the structure obliterating the entire thing and sending several tons of debris hurtling outward at 10 times the speed of sound.
@@Swiggityswagger You're right about that, I saw that thunderfoot video recently. It would take less precise timing than spinlauch (still obscenely dangerous), as you no longer need a release trigger just a track switch like a train.
But then there's problems with stopping the supersonic sled the craft is moving on ... just problems all around with this idea.
I love science. And Subject Zero knows science and how to explain it. Great work!
It feels like valve straight up made this for portal 2. Amazing work
Astounding for the current amount of support, it's qualitively on par with research channels that have huge funding backers. I think the only aspect that may need improvement is the choice of thumbnails but especially titles, Veritasium made a good explanation on that subject in my eyes.
K think it would be best to accelerate it above escape velocity and use rockets to keep it going which shouldnt take as much energy and fuel
Amazing! The way you used some tongue in cheek language was amazing!
A track that makes you black out would be great so you can just wake up in space haha
I was being a nerd thinking about this a while ago. It seriously makes sense for a moonbase. You could have a 50km track to launch and land people at 1g taking 100 seconds. The landing would have to be precise and the rail would proberbly need to be made out of sections that would elevate to match the path of an orbit. Plus with it being on the moon you have no atmosphere problems.
You could proberbly build a bfg 10k from doom eternal for transport of minerals mined on the surface. Makes sense to put it on the poles of the moon for access to the most amounts of useful orbits.
Minerals minded on the moon could be launched back to earth to be sold for an extremely cheap cost. Commercialising the moon could be possible because of this technology.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein explores this idea quite a bit (It's also a damn fine book).
What if your launcher worked like a particle accelerator: accelerating up to speed at 1+ gee on a circular track before release along a short, straight section in the right direction?
My Hypothesis would be, that there would be very big structural challenge in keeping a Rocket sized Craft on that track at Mach 33. You would need a very strong structure to keep that Craft on the Track. Though there also would be the problem with getting anything through the atmosphere after launch without burning up. I suppose launching somthing in that fashion could provide some velocity, but not a significant amount.
@@muetzenclown3255 What if the payload is smaller and there's some kind of catcher in orbit. Might be good to send some stuff astronouts needed
not possible, the faster you go the more G's it takes to turn (because you are changing direction)
Using a circular accelerator with the track on the outer wall would eliminate the centrifugal force from trying to pull the vessel off the track. As for the atmospheric pressure, well ALL railgun concepts would have to overcome that problem. Unless you built the open end of the railgun up the side of Mount Everest where the atmosphere is thinner. You would also have to create a vacuum within the entire length of the accelerator or the projectile would burn up once it was moving fast enough.
i just plugged some numbers into a spin gravity calculator.. and once youre up to speed, even a ring with a radius of 100km would have almost 53 g's of centrifugal acceleration squishing you against your seat 😭 1000 km, 5.3 g's. but if you built it around the equator, it'd be a very comfy .83 g's, opposite the earth's gravity so youd'd experience .17 g :)
Cave Johnson, now with 60% more sanity
Fascinating and super entertaining delivery of a lot of information!
Could you initially have a circular track (im talking a large radius to avoid g-force effects from centripetal acceleration) then a switch junction that arcs into a straight line?
Blender Eevee : "What is my purpose?"
SZS: "This."
Blender: "Oh. Oh God. 😭"
So this is basically just a spicy rollercoaster that gets you places? Sign me up.
Love the different, more joking style used here. Still gets the info across, but a lot more fun
I do like dat
First thing that came to my mind was that you could perhaps get around the killing humans part by dividing the launch into series of extreme high G pulses.
If humans can tolerate 38 Gs for 0.5 seconds for example you could make a track that makes multiple 0.5 second accelerations and freerolls for a brief time after each acceleration. If the recovery periods were short enough and it helped to deal with the dying part the average acceleration of the launch could be higher than humans normally could endure and thus enable the use of shorter launch track.
I kept watching even though I was throughly lost in the first segment. good stuff 👍
Yeap this videos getting a like. The portal references here are perfection!
This was so much better than I was expecting - I'm so used to exceptionally ignorant pop science takes that propose fanciful futures with zero self-awareness... or just hilariously factually wrong takes based on inference.
This was not that - it was real good. No surprise that your meme game is on point too. Subbityscribbled.
It hasn't worked correctly and probably never will because of the almost unstoppable tumbling of the projectile rocket on exit of the vacuum.
A railgun attached to a bomb sounds like a concept of when theres an alien invasion the main character uses the space ship as a bomb to enter the alien mothership then blow up
I mean Master Chief kinda did that in Halo 2
The graphic design of these videos is outstanding
7800 m/S speed is needed ONLY if you stop accelerating after that.
AKA: "Bang to orbit"
By using continual thrust to achieve orbit, all you would need is 1G, or less, all the way up.
In short, just fly like an airplane to orbit.
You just need lateral speed to maintain orbit.
Honestly one of the most interesting videos I've seen!!
It's been one minute.
@@SykotiLiver 3 minutes*
@@mekbok cool
I always wanted to construct such a thing on a Track from the Pacific to the Top of the Andes (for a perfect equatorial launch). Drawback: launch path is over the amazonas, resuling in higher potential damage on a failed launch. Upnote: the andes are quite high and air drag is lower at that altitude.
Trouble is we can't get our EMAILS to work which is launching of AirForce plaines from new carriers, they do work but only for about 200 launches which is inadequate for combat, the whole idea is to use it for combat. Besides,you need the track to be pointed skywards, not horizontal, do one on NTP nuclear rockets .
You need to launch to the East, to take advantage of the velocity of the Earth's surface (~460 m/s at the equator) as it spins on its axis. By going West you need to add 2x this speed to "escape velocity" to reach orbit.
As of 7:00 you've overlooked a teeny tiny problem which the miliary is struggling with for using railguns as weapons. That being the fact that the damn guns tear themselves apart. Each launch strips material from the launch rails and as such need to be frequently replaced.
If this issue cannot be solved then the Idea of a railgun assisted launcher is a non-starter.
I got here when the channel had 301K subscribers. I'm predicting it to grow as big as the channel Isaac Arthur, or maybe even bigger, in a year or two at most.
When leaving a vacuüm tube with mach 23 the atmosphere will kick you in the face like a Airliner is hitting the water fullspeed nose down. Instead of getting wet it will burn you down due to friction in seconds. Even if you can slove the heating problem you will never reach orbit like a bullet can't travel through water. But i like the idea :)
This concept was in my head since they introduced railguns and hyperloops. I was thinking hmm why not to use for launching satellites etc... Since anyone already described the issue of rocket/capsule hitting air at 10km/s or more. This could be used just to propel them at speed little under MaxQ.
In the book series The Long Winter, they used a magnetic launcher to get to low Earth Orbit, and robotic in space to take them the rest of the way to the ship they were building! They use cryogenic sleep to get pass the high g load!
9:16 how much energy tho, we are gonna need at least a square kilometer of solar panels to power that assuming it uses something like 500mW, which is not exactly little.
500mW is tiny - half-watt rail-guns? *yes please!*
now 500MW is a lot of power, but considering that as pulse-power, you can charge up over 100 seconds with 5MVA of sourced current...
Long story short, a rail-gun on earth would take an hour's break between 'shots' - on the moon however, a launch of ores can happen every five minutes because of the lower gravity; and abundant solar radiation...
Shouldn't we be looking to decrease the amount of G's that astronauts recieve during such a launch? Maybe special compartments within the record that counteract the amount of G's that the rocket travels at.
first time watcher, sub'd, Loved the jokes in the titles! loved the info. good job man!
When you come out of the end of the tube at anywhere near an orbital velocity in the Earth's atmosphere (or even Mars's greatly diminished atmosphere), that is going to be a very lot of friction you encounter.
Totally missed the point of using a railgun to launch an "MOOV" or MMMS. Railgun would be used to launch a massive multi mission spacecraft. You don't put people on during the launch. You sent the people up to the massive spacecraft after its in orbit. Call it an massive orbit to orbit vehicle.
No, because you would just use a Planet Launcher for that. It's the only practical space launch solution for MMMS applications.
@@SteveKasian Why wood you launch the whole planet?
@@schemesof40k You wouldn't launch the planet. But you'd use a Planet Launcher™ to launch MMMS vehicles because it has more overhead. You need some wiggle room in there when operating on such tight margins. And Planet Launcher™ has the capability to launch any size MMMS vehicle made, and in some cases can launch multiple missions at once! IMHO, always go with a Planet Launcher™ (plus, they have a great rebate program, too!)
Not gonna lie, sitting in a railgun on the moon and being shot from the ground up to orbital velocity sounds actually rather interesting.
As long as it's only 3G max that is xD
First 8 seconds of this vid got me subscribed to the channel. Awesome animations are awesome.
I read Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", years ago, and this sounds like an amplification of that story. Well done.
Finally, an expanse themed technology explained.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. An excellent read.
“We need to look past construction issues.” lol. Head in the sand like a model idealist.
Earlier in the video you said the trajectory has to be tangential to the earths surface. Shooting a -projectile- payload out of a track on the surface would require a secondary impulse when the payload gets to its highest point (apogee). Also consider that launching the payload through a tube filled with air would incur massive drag losses and produce a crap ton of heat, so if the G forces don’t kill the -subjects- astronauts, they’ll be cooked inside the pod. One solution to this is to make the tube a vacuum (not necessary on the moon and not fully required on mars, thankfully), but as soon as the payload leaves the end of a barrel, all of a sudden hitting the atmosphere at the launch speed would literally be like hitting a cinder block wall. You COULD angle the tube upwards enough to get the end of it to a thinner section of atmosphere, but holding it together/supporting it would be a logistical nightmare.
I don’t know if I explained it right because I felt like I was just rambling, so just look up “Project HARP” if you need more details.
This video is incredibly well made! Well done, sir, I'm glad i've found your channel
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kekw 1:12
yes
"kekw" 😬
this is the most entertaining video ive seen xD i loved your method of presentation
To be honest my favorite part of your videos are the visuals those look amazing
I absolutely enjoyed this video. You got a new sub!
The target launch speed is 7700 m/s
Lets suppose the spacecraft has about 10m^2 frontal area,
for supersonic velocities it is hard to go lower than Cd = 0.1, so let's use that value
Mass density of the air at sea level is 1.225kg/m^3
This gets us about 30 to 40 MN (Mega Newton)
An average spacecraft second stage is about 100 000kg fully loaded.
This gives us 300m/s^2 declaration after the moment of leaving the barrel. This is about 30g, that is not very good.
The spacecraft will spend significant distance in the dense atmosphere because of the low launch angle, but due to the high velocity it will be only a few seconds, so there will be about 300-600m/s loss of deltaV, that can be given back by the rocket engines anyway.
The other problem is that air heating will dissipate 300GJ of energy in form of plasma. This happens in a very short time, but the temperatures would be really bad, fortunately an ablative heat shield can take very extreme heat for a short time.
The very uncomfortable 30g for a few seconds is survivable, or we need a heavier spacecraft to compensate for that. Or slower launch speed which was mentioned.
These all seems to be somewhat solvable on Earth, but in the end you get a hypersonic projectile in dense air, which is definitely not safer than rocket technology, especially because it should also have a rocket engine which it can use later to put it into orbit (because we need to lower the starting velocity anyway, plus orbital insertion). You cannot abort after is was launched, which is very much possible for rockets.
On Earth this can only feasibly used for launching cargo. But the advantages quickly evaporate.
What makes me completely doubt the seriousness of the whole project (aside from the marginal numbers), is that they mention fuel costs for the rockets, which is widely known to be negligible part of the launch costs. The real cost of the rocket launch is the rocket itself which is thrown away after the launch, and the launch infrastructure.
This accelerator would significantly blow up the the launch infrastructure costs, and the launched "second" stage would be still thrown away because it would experience extreme forces upon the launch (and the heatshield would degrade too, "second" stage reentry might even not be possible, or marginal). So this seems to have no advantage over the reusable fist stage Falcon 9. (and disadvantages compared to Starship, if we are comparing paper rockets, you should compare to Starship)
Other possible advantage could have been, that it can theoretically launch much much bigger payloads, because the work of the first stage has been taken care of. But in reality, for a bigger payload, you would need a more powerful accelerator, which is much more expensive. This is unlikely to work out.
Like it is in the video it would most likely not work. But with some adjustments this seems viable. Possible points:
- launching from a mountain instead so that the end point would be at half the atmospheric density of sea level at > 18,000 feet.
- not using vacuum, instead using a hybrid pressure and magnet rail system so that you're not slamming into a wall.
Higher weight capacity allows
- heavier and stronger reinforcement
- better heat shielding
- an air pocket media separation system
- Heavier reinforcement allows for more reusability
It would definitely have to have a rocket because it has to land back on earth. This is an expensive addition to spacex launch model leading to greater capacity, efficiency, and monetary gain in the long run.
My father, electrical/electronic engineer and physicist, first taught me about 'rocket science' when I was 3 and some months watching Neil Armstrong take that first step and on as my curiosity grew especially towards electromagnetic and gravitational forces so that by the time I was 13, Spec and Gen Rel were second nature spheres of thought and play. When I first heard about Maglev trains - 1974/5 when both West Germany and Japan had begun to seriously invest in exploratory technologies - my brain went into overdrive: combine rails and electromagnetic propulsion on an inclined plane. The dimensions were unfeasible with then current technology but not anymore. Get to it then.
Nice Video! I love the Aperture Science style
i actually thought of this before this vid came out. Wow, u can read minds! Great video!
some back of the napkin math suggests you could build an underground tunnel to do this, a chord that connects two points on the earth's surface right through the crust. It would be 3km deep at its deepest point (deepest tunnel so far is Gotthard tunnel at 2300m), but you'd be protected from damaging things like traffic, UV, extreme temperature change, and for the first half of the launch you'd have a very slight gravity assist.
The main problem with railguns is every time you shoot something out of it, you ruin the "rails". Love your content btw, very creative and humorous.
I have this same concept drawn out about 5 years ago! Bravo!
Hahaaa.... you had me at " 'Murica", which is how I usually refer to the place when addressing the denser sections of the populace.
This starts with some incredibly dry wit and dark humour. I wish more video makers were capable of that level of near-deep sarcasm while maintaining a faint hint of self-deprecatory fun.
The one issue I wonder about is that if there were a rail gun (either horizontally oriented or vertically, embedded up to 2 or 3 km into the earth), a vehicle moving at escape velocity is going to have heat problems moving through the atmosphere. For the same reason meteorites burn up, and shuttles need heat shields on re-entry, a craft departing earth from the lower atmosphere is gonna have hellacious friction with the air if it's already going the required escape velocity of 11.2 km. Aside from insane streamlining and maybe some as-yet-undiscovered metallic/ceramic alloy shell that will be slick enough not to burn, this appears to be a moderately insoluble problem.
I've actually wondered about this idea myself on many occasions and had this EXACT IDEA
Wont work. The payload would just burn up when hitting the atmosphere. And getting it to angle upwards would require a gigantic tower several kilometers high.