"Oh, yeah, we were being dumb" Truer words have never been spoken by authentic innovators. I worry when I don't hear some variant of that phrase frequently and fervently.
Haha yeah I fell in love with this company as soon as he said he was setting off car alarms and moving the storage container haha...and the fact he looks like Brains from Thunderbirds. Love this.
Now you showed your mailbox, everyone who wrote you will now think it's better to send the message at least twice to get a chance to be read by you lol Thx a lot for your taste of sharing your knowledge Scott !
Twice?? Nope. Send 400,000 and then there is a good chance it will be read. You will need to add random elements to prevent algorithmic filtering. There can be a whole project for "How To Contact Scott Manley". HTCSM.
Actually love this, it's not a bunch of silicon valley bros with big fancy facilities trying to do this to get venture capital to come in. It's literal garage inventors just for the love of space and engineering!
@@jeffreywoodhead2682 There's probably some still at the Highwater Test Range in Quebec/Vermont, too, but I wasn't able to find a definitive answer on whether they've been scrapped after Space Research Corporation went under. There are relatively recent photos of the gun in Barbados on the internet.
As a ballistics guy, its common to see 3x speed of sound (556nato, 762nato, 50bmg, etc) then there are some like Win Short Mag that can do more than 3x. With sabots it can go 4-5x speed of sound (tanks etc).
Sounds a lot like the German V3 weapon from WW2. One long barrel with multiple chambers off of the main barrel with additional charges. As the projectile traveled down the barrel additional charges were fired behind it. This kept the pressure up so that you could get a very high velocity at the muzzle. One of the main problems they had was timing (1940's tech), and the projectiles tended to fly apart after they left the barrel, due to the extreme velocity. In contrast with the V2, the V3 never worked, to my knowledge. But it was an interesting idea.
as far as i know the V3 facility got hit by an air raid and destroyed it early in development (brits didnt even knew it existed, only after the US captured the facility).
It did work in combat, but only a half-size version (160 meters long) built in Germany and aimed at Luxembourg City, about 40 miles away. The Germans fired at least 183 shells from two Hochdruckpumpe guns. About 40 shells landed within the city, with several landing near General Patton's 3rd Amry HQ. Patton was convinced it was an assassination attempt, at least that is what he wrote to his wife. As it transpired the whole thing wasn't as effective as a medium-sized air raid by Ju-88 bombers.
Hi Scott, the concept for this launchsystem is actually based on the V3 cannon, one of the german WWII vengance weapons. Instead of gaspressure, they used explosive charges to excellerate the projectile.
Yes. You idiot. A small group of people with a small amount of money did a huge amount of work - and they have produced a company that could be worth many millions.
He literally brought you to the drawing board. This group of guys are passionate and knowledgeable and I’d probably have a 2 hour convo with them at a house party lol. I’m so excited that new space startups are starting to get the funding to get some proof of concepts, etc.
Being passionate and knowledgeable doesn't turn a bad idea into a good one. Seriously, this is the hyperloop of the space launch business. It's a terrible idea.
@@blinking_dodoSpinlaunch is doing the spinning in a vacuum and don't have to be doing all this burst-disk timing malarkey, so it's much simpler. That said, Mach 25 at the Karman line means a much higher muzzle velocity. Not realistic, IMHO.
Not at all what I expected from this. I figured they'd have a pie in the sky idea and plan, not a reasonable idea to test and good profit along the way. Cool stuff.
It's common for modern 'varmint rifles' to run 3000-4000 fps with 20"-24" barrels. The problem isn't getting to that speed. The problem is that anything that fast wears out the barrels very fast
@@Superkuh2You could use drastically smaller rockets if they only needed to circularize their orbit. On the moon (or anywhere else with minimal atmosphere) it's an extremely valid option. Launching from Earth is a bit more of a question mark.
18:50 Yep. This is a much better idea than SpinLaunch. I would venture to say that SpinLaunch is just about the worst way I can think of launching a projectile from Earth. You have a projectile that has to withstand > 10,000 Gs of acceleration for an extended period of time vs 100s of Gs for a tiny fraction of the time. This also doesn't require a huge vacuum chamber, etc.,
Yeah like this is what tech allows us to do. Not cutting edge - by making practical simple ideas we simply couldn't implement in the past Information texhnology... too bad we let the commies take over the free world Guess that's the cost of free trade - the free world and China producing 300ppm co2 in less than 20yrs
No the worst way is to tie a rocket to a helium balloon, then once it reached its final height go to the space elevator and bring it up to LEO (the counterweight of the space elevator is beyond GEO), then ignite the rocket to speed it up to orbital velocity while it is falling back to earth, then use a couple of skyhooks to save propellant. Now that we got the rocket into orbit but forgot the payload we accelerate the payload using a rocketsled bolted on the back of a large aircraft and hook it onto the orbital mass driver, detach and use steam powered thrusters to attach it to the rocket we shot into space earlier. From then on we use the rockets built-in fusion explosion motor to reach the target orbit.
There's no need for valves or burst disks. All they have to do is to open the gas pipeline simultaneously, but make the pipework connected to the intermediate feed points slightly longer, so the gas reaches the injection ports right after the projectile has passed. Their design would look like a thick barrel surrounded by several pipes running along its length, with each runner connecting to their own injection port along the way. The timing would be defined by the pressure and losses in the parallel pipework, which can be estimated, and then tested and fine tuned.
All they have to do is to open the gas pipeline simultaneously. The valves would not open fast enough. Parallel? pipework. You know the gas only travels at its speed of sound so its slower than the projectile. > There's no need for valves or burst disks. Maybe if they build a railgun and propel the projectile electromagnetically. I don't know whether you can build capacitors that can hold that much power and discharge that quickly though. (Now its your turn to find the obvious flaws in my design :-))
Sounds like you are going to beat them to it, but you'll have to use an incompressible, nearly frictionless medium. Having the compressed gas right at the point of need means there is virtually no opportunity for the gas to expand before it is put to use. If a long, frictionless tube was used, the supplied energy would be too diffuse to be useful due to expansion (the tube must start at near vacuum). The pressure losses you claim as a timing feature would eat up the vast majority of the available energy, even on the shortest runs.
Wouldn't that need redoing for every combination of drag, friction, and mass of the projectile? You might be able to tune it for a fixed projectile, but for an empty shell with satellites in it I worry you might not be able to tune the gun (and ballast the capsule) precisely enough. The tuning might also change with temperature?
In order to "open the pipeline" you still need some kind of valve (or burst disk). And then the pressure front coming out of that single valve will flatten out over time. To make an analogy, you're going from the "getting a bucket of water thrown at you" effect that you're after more and more to a "getting sprayed with a hose" effect the longer the piping is. Which may or may not work for the "pushing from the back" section that gets you to two times the speed of sound (and where they have like 4 burst disks), but definitely won't work for the "sailing the pressure wave" stage. The branching piping idea _would_ be feasible if you included "delay valves" that open at a certain pressure right before they enter the barrel (you know, like burst disks). You'd keep these valves at 90% or 50% or whatever of their trigger pressure, and then use the pressure front from opening a central valve to get them above 100%. Which is basically the same system they have now, except that you couldn't adjust the burst disk timing on the fly.
Yeah this is getting to a point where you need to open valve at many sonic speed. I was thinking they should just use rail gun, or at least use some sort of super heated gas. not only that, sealing a piston that travels km/s sounds like it is going to hurt barrel, though i don't know if that close contact is actually do any damage to barrel
This is competing against current rocket technology that throws literal tons of hardware away with every launch and where reusable hardware exists theres weeks or months worth of refurbishing required AFTER recovering the parts which may be strewn across a hemisphere. The burst disc's and their related servicing are peanuts.
Rail erosion is killer, with millions of Amps and several 1000m/s. That phase velocity/wave surfing design here is actually quite smart, if it works And does not necessarily require burst discs, small powder charges might work just as well, might require longer tail, however.
@@mrpicky1868 Yes, I'm aware but air resistance goes up with v^2 while rockets get more efficient as they increase in size so I'm just not convinced that it will ever make sense to fling things very quickly to get into space from the earth.
Reminds me of the German V3 project. They did it simpler, the secondary chambers had no valve and were just open to the barrel, when the shell passed the opening the flames behind the shell lit the extra propellant. No electronics needed. Of course the time it takes for the propellant to light gives it a delay, might be one of the reasons why they never got it to hit London like they wanted, but they still reached Mach 2.9
Maybe from the tallest mountain in the world. No matter how fast they can shoot it, the lower atmosphere will slow it down too much. Without any atmosphere, yes they could do it.
Aside from the challenge of the very precise timing of the burst disks, I'd say the synchronization of the two burst disks on either side of the projectile is an issue. If one bursts and the other doesn't you are putting a lot of force on one side of the tail of the projectile and potentially causing it to dig into your barrel. This might result in the destruction of at least a portion of the barrel. You'll also have many burst disks involved which increases your probability of failure. In other words, the burst disks have to be extremely reliable.
I was hoping he'd ask about what speed and variables are they assuming to actually get something to orbit. What is the curve of how much mach they lose due to air resistance.
@@jnawk83 The volume of the projectile is so small that any rocket they develop that could fit and actually raise the perigee above the atmosphere would be better than any rocket that has ever been made by orders of magnitude. If they are capable of building the best rocket engine in the world in an impossibly tiny volume (no vacuum bell nozzle) then they should use that rocket technology to just launch from the ground.
I never get to a point where I think "ah yes, I can see this being possible or practical", after many failed projects in the past you kinda get this smell of one. :)
As a retired engineer who spent a good deal of time in defense, I have seen lots of fruity ideas. DoD is often mesmerized by what could be possible no matter how improbable. Longshot sounds like a kooky idea that might have some ultimate application on the Moon or asteroid mining. Like Spin Launch, accelerating technological things runs into the delicate nature of such objects. Your construction has to be rather robust to withstand acceleration that can reach hundreds of thousands of g's. It can be done. Smart artillery ammunition typically experiences acceleration forces of around 10,000 to 15,000 g's during firing. A railgun can accelerate projectiles to speeds between Mach 6 to Mach 8. The acceleration itself can reach hundreds of thousands to millions of g's. If you are sending raw material off the Moon, delicacy is not a major factor, However, telling a microsat manufacturer to ensure their satellite withstand a 10,000 to 15,000 g's acceleration might be a stretch.
Yes, but many artillery projectiles have programmable smart fuses that withstand the acceleration every day. Even the first smart fuse (WWII proximity fuse) managed with vacuum tubes.
The spinlaunch guys seem convinced that a lot of components and materials are already suitable just untested because there hasn't been a reason to validate crazy Gs
@@john_in_phoenix Indeed. How they do that puts significant restraints on what can be accomplished. The electronics and sensors inside smart munitions are built with reinforced components that can endure high acceleration. These include hardened circuit boards and shock-resistant materials that can absorb and dissipate energy from the intense forces. Sensitive electronics are typically encapsulated in shock-absorbing materials, such as rubber-like compounds or special polymers, which cushion them from the high acceleration forces. Moreover, smart munitions are designed with redundant systems. If one sensor or circuit fails due to stress, others can take over, ensuring the munition still functions as intended. There are many other design constraints used in smart munitions beyond the scope of this reply. As I said, it can be done for a single use / purpose munition but it puts huge constraints on a more complex satellite.
Man, pneumatics are so much more dangerous than basically every other propulsion source. Between that, the fact that burst discs are analog, the jerk subjected to the payload, and the payload mass limitations and need for a kick stage, this is a really complicated endeavor.
To bring this back into the video game realm, reminds me of the orbital launcher from space marine 2. But with compressed gas instead of electromagnetic rails
As a UW Ram Accelerator alum, a co-PhD student of Andrew Higgins and having worked on other similar concepts for other start-ups I can say these guys have their work set out for them. Sure you can get a slug of something up to high speeds, BUT there are a lot of practical limitations (i.e., engineering challenges). Like scaling up in size (area vs. volume), aero heating, barrel wear/drag, g-hardening of a payload, needing a kick-stage for LEO injection, etc. all of which cut-away at the useful payload. Anyone need a consultant on this - drop me a note . . .
It seems like you could use magnetic valves in the form of small plungers (many per boost chamber). They wouldn't need to be replaced, but would certainly cost more to initially put in place than simple burst disks.
My concern isn't getting the projectile/payload up to Mach25 or so... it's what happens when it leaves the barrel. The nose heating due to friction will be insane, along with Max Q forces sort of like hitting a brick wall. Another downside is, unless you can aim this thing somehow, you have a single orbital plane that you can launch into. That being said, a cool bunch of guys doing some really good stuff on a budget, literally in a garage. Bill and Dave (Hewlett & Packard) would be proud of them.
I know. Let's COMBINE the approaches of Longshot and Spinlaunch. Build an even bigger centrifuge and put a cold gas gun on it, oriented tangent to its circumference. Then at the right time fire the gun, getting the boost from the gun and the rotation of the centrifuge. I'm sure, "cold gas gun on a gigantic centrifuge" won't be an engineering nightmare to build!
I give props to the cameraman who must be a fairy since they able to float around and get into those tight spaces for shots. they are really good at their job.
So, it's a giant potato gun? I was hoping we would see the Gerard Oneal/ Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle electric rail gun first stage. But that dream depended on breeder reactors for the cheap power required to make rail guns viable.
WWII Germans built several fixed barrels several hundred feet long with multiple explosive charges fired as the projectile passed. I don't think the system got to full battery. Wiki 'Vengeance Weapon 3') was a German World War II large-caliber gun working on the multi-charge principle whereby secondary propellant charges are fired to add velocity to a projectile. It was built in tunnels and was permanently aimed at London, The disassembled gun tubes, spare parts, and remaining ammunition were later captured by the US Army and shipped to the United States where they were tested and evaluated at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, and scrapped there in 1948
As I've commented on your channel before, the *civilian* road to space is paved by military applications. It was true for the Romans two millennia ago and it's still true for us today.
I love that a real aerospace company's tactics include "moar boosters!" Also, a non-magnetic space gun idea is awesome. Sending a payload into LEO using hydrogen and recyclable burst discs is a game changer for trying to put humans into near-Earth space on a long-term basis. We'll need nice, gentle rocket and spaceplane systems for the foreseeable future to put people in the sky. But, there's just no chance in hell we're going to successfully build fully closed-loop life support for the folks up there. Sending gasses and incompressible fluids into space on a rocket is dumb. Spaceborne science, manufacturing, and construction will need something more price-efficient than even reusable rocket systems. If it's not these guys and it's not Spinlaunch, I don't know if we'll really be able to do much up there. In-situ resource harvesting using asteroids or whatever is a cool idea, but the idea of sending up the resources to establish that base industry is galling. Also, if a high-gee terrestrial lift system ends up working, someone WILL develop launch-tolerant solar power and data relay systems.
Assuming they can work out the details such that a multi-chamber gun can launch a useful payload into LEO, how flexible could it be? The German V-3 was built inside a slanted underground shaft near Mimoyecques, France and oriented toward London. The guns (there were to be four built inside parallel shafts side-by-side) could not be aimed. They were built on a fixed bearing. The Germans could roughly control the range by varying the propellant in the firing chambers, but the bearing was always the same. Longshot's gun must be much larger than the V-3, so it will also be essentially fixed into one bearing and one elevation. The shots will enter the same orbital profile time after time.
Even if it doesn't turn into a space gun, they probably create a lot of new understanding into the physics of all this, for science or other applications (Dod ...)
On November 18, 1966, Project HARP fired an 84kg payload well into 'space' (179km) using a 16" battleship gun with another 16" gun barrel welded to the end of it. ☮
There’s a huge difference between reaching space and reaching orbit - the energy differences are big. An 84kg object raised vertically to 179km has about 147MJ of gravitational potential energy. To reach LEO at that altitude, not only do you have to raise it to that altitude (i.e do the same amount of work in raising it as the fired-straight-up case) but you also have to propel it horizontally to about 7800 m/s. The object has 2.5GJ of kinetic energy at that point. Added to the gravitational potential energy, the difference is about a factor of 18. And none of that includes losses by having to fire it through the atmosphere at those sorts of speeds. By definition, the vehicle would have to leave the barrel of a gun launcher at far higher than orbital speeds as it’ll lose a bunch of it to drag before it leaves the atmosphere.
I work for an aerospace company that specializes in energetics. We can probably open reusable valves in 100 microseconds. Our initiation timing would be much more precise as well. We also have FOD free energetic designs. Don't get me wrong, an electronically actuated burst disc is extremely fast, but you cannot beat high velocity explosive. It really comes down to how much is precision and reliability worth?
Although not ideal for flow rate, potentially ideal for gas speed and opening speed, they might want to have a look at poppet valves. Valves opening in mere milliseconds under high pressure has been a solved problem in the automotive sector for quite a long time.
Fascinating! And especially great to have next to all of my hunches validated with an alternative design I've been poking at to eliminate the need of burst disks. Been a massive pain trying to mill about google's continued decent into trash search results to find info on systems and concepts others have drawn up.
Looks like a gas powered linear accelerator. I guess once you're past Mach 1 it becomes the mass of the nearly stationary air molecules slamming into your projectile? The integral volume of your trajectory by altitude? Even if they don't end up launching anything they'll probably have invented some kind of long range ballistic missile, which Scott was clearly alluding to at the end.
I never believed that spinlaunch would get anywhere because those forces are bascially a much bigger engineering problem than 1 meter valves that open as fast as Longshot would need. What this also reminds me off is Werner v Brauns first designs of an STO ramp. And I do think that Longshot could work in theory, essentially it has and advantage in that it doesn't have to carry its engines and the fuel up with the payload. But then again when rockets were used in war they proved to be much more convenient, especially when you compare huge artillery guns with rockets. But I think this kind of spacelaunch system does cross every spacenerds mind at some point in time wondering if it is possible. And with that I commend them. On another point someone will probably make a gun out of it at some point, probably for ships. Those always seem to be the first special weapons are used on, be it laser or railgun. Still the whole thing and the problems associated are very interesting.
If you want to become a really bad neighbor really fast just discharge a ballistic projectile at 8000 km/sec at sea level. The logic that comes to mind is hypersonic explosive aerodynamics. Air would ignite (Air is not infinitely compressible and the thermalization of oxygen at 8000 m/s is just going to happen) While the shock wave is not going to be as bad as traveling at Mach one, the air explosion itself will create a Mach boom as it slows down. BTW Scott, you can thank me for not having sent you an E-mail. 🤣
This has the potential to lower launch cost sufficiently to colonize the moon and build space-based geoengineering that could save humanity without risk. I want to live to see the system built that can deliver payloads into space, the megastructure will be a sight to behold.
If either Longshot and/or Spin Launch have figured out how to deal with atmospheric heating of their projectiles, going several km/sec and ground level, I have not heard it.
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Scott Manley, the only person who can forget about an aerospace company inviting them for a personal tour and still getting to do it years later
I mean with that inbox he sure can be excused for missing that one
I bet there are multiple emails from NASA too
They don't seem to have progressed much over 2 years. I don't think he missed much.
Bet theres one or two from SpaceX in there...😅
I just love how brutally honest these guys are about the problems faced and odds of success.....
But even if it doesn't work out it seems like a very worthwhile project to work on for a few years!
Honesty is a very rare thing in tech sadly
Garners a lot of trust when people are actually open and honest though
Very refreshing!
"Oh, yeah, we were being dumb" Truer words have never been spoken by authentic innovators. I worry when I don't hear some variant of that phrase frequently and fervently.
The world is not changed by words like Eureka. It is changed by words like 'oh, im an idiot!'
Think that fella who ran OceanGate said something similar...
Yeah like the cyber truck... I mean srsly how can you claim to know anything about manufacturing
@@Space_Parrot I mean he didn't and always thought he was right which is why he's fish poop now
yup, been there. done that. anyone who has ever had to really try to get something working, especially quickly, is going to know that phrase well.
"You can't do it in Kerbal Space Program"
Not with that attitude
It's been done in Satisfactory
Mass drivers can actually fill a similar role
Yeah, you need an positive attitude, ie +0 degrees over the horizon to launch something like that.
@@benn454hypertube canon's ftw. 😊
The cargo container. The chicken wire. The long lean-to shack. I love these guys.
Haha yeah I fell in love with this company as soon as he said he was setting off car alarms and moving the storage container haha...and the fact he looks like Brains from Thunderbirds. Love this.
Yeah, they might as well build a sub lol
Now you showed your mailbox, everyone who wrote you will now think it's better to send the message at least twice to get a chance to be read by you lol
Thx a lot for your taste of sharing your knowledge Scott !
Scott needs a secretary 😂
Twice?? Nope. Send 400,000 and then there is a good chance it will be read. You will need to add random elements to prevent algorithmic filtering. There can be a whole project for "How To Contact Scott Manley". HTCSM.
@@MrWhite2222 An intern is better...
Actually love this, it's not a bunch of silicon valley bros with big fancy facilities trying to do this to get venture capital to come in. It's literal garage inventors just for the love of space and engineering!
Died 1990.
Born 2024.
Welcome back Gerald Bull!
Just learned about the G Bull last week. What a fascinating life. Love his vision I'm 100pcnt with him.
Those 16" Naval gun barrels are probably still somewhere in the Barbados jungle if anyone fancies resurrecting the HARP gun... 😊
saddam hussein smiling upon san fransisco from up high
You can still spot the other Harp gun at the Yuma test range, it’s not as big but the barrels where next to it last time I looked
@@jeffreywoodhead2682 There's probably some still at the Highwater Test Range in Quebec/Vermont, too, but I wasn't able to find a definitive answer on whether they've been scrapped after Space Research Corporation went under. There are relatively recent photos of the gun in Barbados on the internet.
As a ballistics guy, its common to see 3x speed of sound (556nato, 762nato, 50bmg, etc) then there are some like Win Short Mag that can do more than 3x. With sabots it can go 4-5x speed of sound (tanks etc).
Sounds a lot like the German V3 weapon from WW2. One long barrel with multiple chambers off of the main barrel with additional charges. As the projectile traveled down the barrel additional charges were fired behind it. This kept the pressure up so that you could get a very high velocity at the muzzle. One of the main problems they had was timing (1940's tech), and the projectiles tended to fly apart after they left the barrel, due to the extreme velocity.
In contrast with the V2, the V3 never worked, to my knowledge. But it was an interesting idea.
The Tallboy bombs collapsing the chamber probably had something to do with it not working :)
as far as i know the V3 facility got hit by an air raid and destroyed it early in development (brits didnt even knew it existed, only after the US captured the facility).
It did work in combat, but only a half-size version (160 meters long) built in Germany and aimed at Luxembourg City, about 40 miles away. The Germans fired at least 183 shells from two Hochdruckpumpe guns. About 40 shells landed within the city, with several landing near General Patton's 3rd Amry HQ. Patton was convinced it was an assassination attempt, at least that is what he wrote to his wife. As it transpired the whole thing wasn't as effective as a medium-sized air raid by Ju-88 bombers.
Hi Scott, the concept for this launchsystem is actually based on the V3 cannon, one of the german WWII vengance weapons. Instead of gaspressure, they used explosive charges to excellerate the projectile.
I was surprised he didn't mention KrautenGun V3
Basically, it's a gas canon. What do you think explosive charges are in thr end?
Chemical reaction based gas pressure
17:22 "Small business, couple hundred million dollar market cap" 😂
Yes. You idiot.
A small group of people with a small amount of money did a huge amount of work - and they have produced a company that could be worth many millions.
It almost sounds like he said "couple hundred billion dollar"..
He literally brought you to the drawing board. This group of guys are passionate and knowledgeable and I’d probably have a 2 hour convo with them at a house party lol. I’m so excited that new space startups are starting to get the funding to get some proof of concepts, etc.
Being passionate and knowledgeable doesn't turn a bad idea into a good one. Seriously, this is the hyperloop of the space launch business. It's a terrible idea.
@@Skank_and_Gutterboy Can you explain why?
I think this one is better than the spinlaunch one to be honest.
@@blinking_dodoSpinlaunch is doing the spinning in a vacuum and don't have to be doing all this burst-disk timing malarkey, so it's much simpler. That said, Mach 25 at the Karman line means a much higher muzzle velocity. Not realistic, IMHO.
Not at all what I expected from this. I figured they'd have a pie in the sky idea and plan, not a reasonable idea to test and good profit along the way. Cool stuff.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein. Railguns firing moon rocks.
If Scott Manley came to my office, I would act like I had too much caffeine too.
Yeah, if that's every day him, I'd have to ban coffee from the lab.
Not caffeine, but getting called out on video. (Gently...)
ACME Spud-Gun Launch-O-Matic. Wylie Coyote would be proud!
Okay but hear me out; Tater-inator by Doof(enshmirtz) Evil Inc.
50K of those e-mails are probably related to his car’s extended warranty.
Or some sort of, um, enhancement pills.
I’m pretty sure his rocket is in good condition considering his entire channel is about them
It's common for modern 'varmint rifles' to run 3000-4000 fps with 20"-24" barrels. The problem isn't getting to that speed. The problem is that anything that fast wears out the barrels very fast
Your invisible selfie stick makes it look like you're about to punch him 🤣
I am glad these guys still exist; I thought the entire world was going dumb....
After a V2 kicked off the space age they are using the V3?
Yes!
Backyard ballistics did a great video on the thermodynamic limit of gun velocities and propellants.
You could try to make something like a railgun.
That inbox screenshot lol. Thanks for being a cool science TH-camr Mr. Manley.
Without watching the video, I dearly hope the answer is "Yes"
But we all know the answer is no.
@@calloutman Well of course a potato wouldn't survive
It is no because there is no means or orbit circularization or raising perigee above the ground to achieve a real orbit.
@@Superkuh2You could use drastically smaller rockets if they only needed to circularize their orbit.
On the moon (or anywhere else with minimal atmosphere) it's an extremely valid option.
Launching from Earth is a bit more of a question mark.
If it shoots hard enough, yes!
Hypersonic research tool? Definitely. Space launch platform? Doubtful.
This is a real “Geek-Meet-Nerding-Fest” 🤓😎 Absolutely love it!
18:50 Yep. This is a much better idea than SpinLaunch. I would venture to say that SpinLaunch is just about the worst way I can think of launching a projectile from Earth. You have a projectile that has to withstand > 10,000 Gs of acceleration for an extended period of time vs 100s of Gs for a tiny fraction of the time. This also doesn't require a huge vacuum chamber, etc.,
Yeah like this is what tech allows us to do. Not cutting edge - by making practical simple ideas we simply couldn't implement in the past
Information texhnology... too bad we let the commies take over the free world
Guess that's the cost of free trade - the free world and China producing 300ppm co2 in less than 20yrs
No the worst way is to tie a rocket to a helium balloon, then once it reached its final height go to the space elevator and bring it up to LEO (the counterweight of the space elevator is beyond GEO), then ignite the rocket to speed it up to orbital velocity while it is falling back to earth, then use a couple of skyhooks to save propellant. Now that we got the rocket into orbit but forgot the payload we accelerate the payload using a rocketsled bolted on the back of a large aircraft and hook it onto the orbital mass driver, detach and use steam powered thrusters to attach it to the rocket we shot into space earlier. From then on we use the rockets built-in fusion explosion motor to reach the target orbit.
There's no need for valves or burst disks. All they have to do is to open the gas pipeline simultaneously, but make the pipework connected to the intermediate feed points slightly longer, so the gas reaches the injection ports right after the projectile has passed. Their design would look like a thick barrel surrounded by several pipes running along its length, with each runner connecting to their own injection port along the way. The timing would be defined by the pressure and losses in the parallel pipework, which can be estimated, and then tested and fine tuned.
All they have to do is to open the gas pipeline simultaneously. The valves would not open fast enough. Parallel? pipework. You know the gas only travels at its speed of sound so its slower than the projectile.
> There's no need for valves or burst disks.
Maybe if they build a railgun and propel the projectile electromagnetically. I don't know whether you can build capacitors that can hold that much power and discharge that quickly though. (Now its your turn to find the obvious flaws in my design :-))
Sounds like you are going to beat them to it, but you'll have to use an incompressible, nearly frictionless medium.
Having the compressed gas right at the point of need means there is virtually no opportunity for the gas to expand before it is put to use. If a long, frictionless tube was used, the supplied energy would be too diffuse to be useful due to expansion (the tube must start at near vacuum). The pressure losses you claim as a timing feature would eat up the vast majority of the available energy, even on the shortest runs.
Wouldn't that need redoing for every combination of drag, friction, and mass of the projectile? You might be able to tune it for a fixed projectile, but for an empty shell with satellites in it I worry you might not be able to tune the gun (and ballast the capsule) precisely enough. The tuning might also change with temperature?
In order to "open the pipeline" you still need some kind of valve (or burst disk). And then the pressure front coming out of that single valve will flatten out over time.
To make an analogy, you're going from the "getting a bucket of water thrown at you" effect that you're after more and more to a "getting sprayed with a hose" effect the longer the piping is. Which may or may not work for the "pushing from the back" section that gets you to two times the speed of sound (and where they have like 4 burst disks), but definitely won't work for the "sailing the pressure wave" stage.
The branching piping idea _would_ be feasible if you included "delay valves" that open at a certain pressure right before they enter the barrel (you know, like burst disks). You'd keep these valves at 90% or 50% or whatever of their trigger pressure, and then use the pressure front from opening a central valve to get them above 100%. Which is basically the same system they have now, except that you couldn't adjust the burst disk timing on the fly.
"Hey there, it's Josh. Welcome to Let's Game It Out!"
Litterally almost a million unread email, Scott Manley is a MANIAC
And I thought my inbox was bad...
I suppose he'd be even more or a maniac if he had read them
1.) Write a bot to send 2 million mails to yourself.
2.) Claim you are more famous than Scott Manley
3.) ????
4.) Profit
While a rail gun is certainly no simple thing to build I feel like rapidly replacing 10 000 burst disks every launch is no small expense.
Yeah this is getting to a point where you need to open valve at many sonic speed.
I was thinking they should just use rail gun, or at least use some sort of super heated gas.
not only that, sealing a piston that travels km/s sounds like it is going to hurt barrel, though i don't know if that close contact is actually do any damage to barrel
This is competing against current rocket technology that throws literal tons of hardware away with every launch and where reusable hardware exists theres weeks or months worth of refurbishing required AFTER recovering the parts which may be strewn across a hemisphere.
The burst disc's and their related servicing are peanuts.
Rail erosion is killer, with millions of Amps and several 1000m/s.
That phase velocity/wave surfing design here is actually quite smart, if it works
And does not necessarily require burst discs, small powder charges might work just as well, might require longer tail, however.
@@fakestory1753well if we can use a normal gun barel for shooting thousands of rounds weighing thousands of pounds.
burst disks are just sheet metal
So, the highest speed is again in the densest part of the atmosphere (with cubic energy losses from the speed), which is the opposite of rockets
As a non rocket guy who just watches for fun...
"yeah that'll never work..."
Hopefully we can, at least, launch potatoes. Even if they end up fries 😂
Based on the state of the place I think they're basically just having too much fun
This seems awesome but it feels more like something that is useful for missle defense than for getting to space.
🤫
Don’t tell the DoD (who is the primary funder)
They would be devastated
it's not for humans. it's for material
You want to aim a 15km gun?
Missile defense and getting into space have been the same thing ever since someone lit a tube pointed at the sky.
@@mrpicky1868 Yes, I'm aware but air resistance goes up with v^2 while rockets get more efficient as they increase in size so I'm just not convinced that it will ever make sense to fling things very quickly to get into space from the earth.
At least there are proper nerds working on this; gives me confidence. 👍
Reminds me of the German V3 project. They did it simpler, the secondary chambers had no valve and were just open to the barrel, when the shell passed the opening the flames behind the shell lit the extra propellant. No electronics needed.
Of course the time it takes for the propellant to light gives it a delay, might be one of the reasons why they never got it to hit London like they wanted, but they still reached Mach 2.9
Maybe from the tallest mountain in the world. No matter how fast they can shoot it, the lower atmosphere will slow it down too much. Without any atmosphere, yes they could do it.
this was solved during HARP. the projectile itself needs be a scramjet.
Aside from the challenge of the very precise timing of the burst disks, I'd say the synchronization of the two burst disks on either side of the projectile is an issue. If one bursts and the other doesn't you are putting a lot of force on one side of the tail of the projectile and potentially causing it to dig into your barrel. This might result in the destruction of at least a portion of the barrel. You'll also have many burst disks involved which increases your probability of failure. In other words, the burst disks have to be extremely reliable.
Scott always asking the right questions
He didn't ask how they intend to circularize the orbit so it actually orbits instead of just hitting the ground on first perigee.
@@Superkuh2small rocket on the back of the payload surely?
I was hoping he'd ask about what speed and variables are they assuming to actually get something to orbit. What is the curve of how much mach they lose due to air resistance.
@@jnawk83 The volume of the projectile is so small that any rocket they develop that could fit and actually raise the perigee above the atmosphere would be better than any rocket that has ever been made by orders of magnitude. If they are capable of building the best rocket engine in the world in an impossibly tiny volume (no vacuum bell nozzle) then they should use that rocket technology to just launch from the ground.
Space gun to skyhook combo sounds feasible but a rail gun or coil gun might be more cost effective.
I never get to a point where I think "ah yes, I can see this being possible or practical", after many failed projects in the past you kinda get this smell of one. :)
As a retired engineer who spent a good deal of time in defense, I have seen lots of fruity ideas. DoD is often mesmerized by what could be possible no matter how improbable. Longshot sounds like a kooky idea that might have some ultimate application on the Moon or asteroid mining. Like Spin Launch, accelerating technological things runs into the delicate nature of such objects. Your construction has to be rather robust to withstand acceleration that can reach hundreds of thousands of g's. It can be done. Smart artillery ammunition typically experiences acceleration forces of around 10,000 to 15,000 g's during firing. A railgun can accelerate projectiles to speeds between Mach 6 to Mach 8. The acceleration itself can reach hundreds of thousands to millions of g's. If you are sending raw material off the Moon, delicacy is not a major factor, However, telling a microsat manufacturer to ensure their satellite withstand a 10,000 to 15,000 g's acceleration might be a stretch.
Yes, but many artillery projectiles have programmable smart fuses that withstand the acceleration every day. Even the first smart fuse (WWII proximity fuse) managed with vacuum tubes.
The spinlaunch guys seem convinced that a lot of components and materials are already suitable just untested because there hasn't been a reason to validate crazy Gs
@@john_in_phoenix Indeed. How they do that puts significant restraints on what can be accomplished. The electronics and sensors inside smart munitions are built with reinforced components that can endure high acceleration. These include hardened circuit boards and shock-resistant materials that can absorb and dissipate energy from the intense forces. Sensitive electronics are typically encapsulated in shock-absorbing materials, such as rubber-like compounds or special polymers, which cushion them from the high acceleration forces. Moreover, smart munitions are designed with redundant systems. If one sensor or circuit fails due to stress, others can take over, ensuring the munition still functions as intended. There are many other design constraints used in smart munitions beyond the scope of this reply. As I said, it can be done for a single use / purpose munition but it puts huge constraints on a more complex satellite.
Man, pneumatics are so much more dangerous than basically every other propulsion source. Between that, the fact that burst discs are analog, the jerk subjected to the payload, and the payload mass limitations and need for a kick stage, this is a really complicated endeavor.
With that shipping container gun range, i love how high tech the gun is and how low tech the shot catch is
To bring this back into the video game realm, reminds me of the orbital launcher from space marine 2. But with compressed gas instead of electromagnetic rails
12:00 Rogue frame. You're welcome x
Who is it? I can't quite grab it
@@diditbreak I think it's the fellow that explained everything to Scott but it's a distorted image
Navy once had an air cannon to launch sticks of dynamite.
Launch a solid rocket second stage?
Reminds one of Gerald bull and the V3. Clever idea, be interesting to see how fast it can go.
This is the kinda team that I would be head over heels excited to work with/for.
As a UW Ram Accelerator alum, a co-PhD student of Andrew Higgins and having worked on other similar concepts for other start-ups I can say these guys have their work set out for them. Sure you can get a slug of something up to high speeds, BUT there are a lot of practical limitations (i.e., engineering challenges). Like scaling up in size (area vs. volume), aero heating, barrel wear/drag, g-hardening of a payload, needing a kick-stage for LEO injection, etc. all of which cut-away at the useful payload. Anyone need a consultant on this - drop me a note . . .
Oh, the what's old is new again technology - replaceable burst discs, side charges, projectiles on internal barrel rails, etc., etc.
What is "UW" and "alum" please.
I got "Ram Accelerator", those are the easy bits😊
@@dougaltolan3017I'm taking a guess at "University of Wisconsin former student" (alum is a shortening of alumnum/alumna).
@@dougaltolan3017 University of Washington alumni... I would put in the website, but YT tends to censor links.
@@Shelleloch You missed the paper that he showed was from a researcher at University of Washington.
Rocket-propelled grenade, may I introduce you to propelled rocket-bullet.
Those already exist
This is a fun out of the garage company. Hopefully they are able to make a usable/sellable product.
I love it. Space exploration in a second-hand container. Hopefully they succeed.
Scott, you have some great titles. Keep them coming.
It seems like you could use magnetic valves in the form of small plungers (many per boost chamber). They wouldn't need to be replaced, but would certainly cost more to initially put in place than simple burst disks.
My concern isn't getting the projectile/payload up to Mach25 or so... it's what happens when it leaves the barrel. The nose heating due to friction will be insane, along with Max Q forces sort of like hitting a brick wall. Another downside is, unless you can aim this thing somehow, you have a single orbital plane that you can launch into. That being said, a cool bunch of guys doing some really good stuff on a budget, literally in a garage. Bill and Dave (Hewlett & Packard) would be proud of them.
I know. Let's COMBINE the approaches of Longshot and Spinlaunch. Build an even bigger centrifuge and put a cold gas gun on it, oriented tangent to its circumference. Then at the right time fire the gun, getting the boost from the gun and the rotation of the centrifuge. I'm sure, "cold gas gun on a gigantic centrifuge" won't be an engineering nightmare to build!
I hope this video brings more big brain attention to what these amazing people are doing.
I like the guy that showed you around, he seems to be realistic... Often the places have people doing marketing BS talking to external people....
Boy, this sounds like fun! I love start-ups like this.
This is like the hypertube canons people make in Satisfactory.
That is a very cool potato gun.
I hope to see spuds in orbit some day!
I give props to the cameraman who must be a fairy since they able to float around and get into those tight spaces for shots. they are really good at their job.
Its a 360 camera that Scott has edited to look like a standard camera, Scott has talked about it before on livestream iirc
So, it's a giant potato gun?
I was hoping we would see the Gerard Oneal/ Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle electric rail gun first stage. But that dream depended on breeder reactors for the cheap power required to make rail guns viable.
It'll be especially effective if they want to put potatoes in space
823000 unread emails.....?
Man why ?
@@TheOneAndOnlySatanwhy not
@@tedarcher9120 we will have this conversation when you get here in '28
How many of those are ads for male enhancement products?
@@TheOneAndOnlySatan sadly I'm on meager 16000 for now
WWII Germans built several fixed barrels several hundred feet long with multiple explosive charges fired as the projectile passed. I don't think the system got to full battery. Wiki 'Vengeance Weapon 3') was a German World War II large-caliber gun working on the multi-charge principle whereby secondary propellant charges are fired to add velocity to a projectile. It was built in tunnels and was permanently aimed at London, The disassembled gun tubes, spare parts, and remaining ammunition were later captured by the US Army and shipped to the United States where they were tested and evaluated at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, and scrapped there in 1948
As I've commented on your channel before, the *civilian* road to space is paved by military applications.
It was true for the Romans two millennia ago and it's still true for us today.
I love that a real aerospace company's tactics include "moar boosters!" Also, a non-magnetic space gun idea is awesome. Sending a payload into LEO using hydrogen and recyclable burst discs is a game changer for trying to put humans into near-Earth space on a long-term basis.
We'll need nice, gentle rocket and spaceplane systems for the foreseeable future to put people in the sky. But, there's just no chance in hell we're going to successfully build fully closed-loop life support for the folks up there. Sending gasses and incompressible fluids into space on a rocket is dumb. Spaceborne science, manufacturing, and construction will need something more price-efficient than even reusable rocket systems.
If it's not these guys and it's not Spinlaunch, I don't know if we'll really be able to do much up there. In-situ resource harvesting using asteroids or whatever is a cool idea, but the idea of sending up the resources to establish that base industry is galling. Also, if a high-gee terrestrial lift system ends up working, someone WILL develop launch-tolerant solar power and data relay systems.
Assuming they can work out the details such that a multi-chamber gun can launch a useful payload into LEO, how flexible could it be? The German V-3 was built inside a slanted underground shaft near Mimoyecques, France and oriented toward London. The guns (there were to be four built inside parallel shafts side-by-side) could not be aimed. They were built on a fixed bearing. The Germans could roughly control the range by varying the propellant in the firing chambers, but the bearing was always the same. Longshot's gun must be much larger than the V-3, so it will also be essentially fixed into one bearing and one elevation. The shots will enter the same orbital profile time after time.
Oh, and great questions Scott!
“Like” is the new science adjective I wasn’t aware of. If it gets the point across is what matters:)
Even if it doesn't turn into a space gun, they probably create a lot of new understanding into the physics of all this, for science or other applications (Dod ...)
This is an old idea we sent a manhole cover into space years ago with a big gun. Just add nukes
Orion??
I think this time they want to do it intentionally 😂😂
Interesting thing about an orbital gun is it doesn't actually have to move. You could have a miles long gun underground
Finally a use case for a hyperloop
At that point, your unread emails counter should just say "don't bother"
Cool, they want to build a V3. Is Dr Bull in the house?
These impulse base launch systems would seem to require a +10k ft elevation launch pad considering their highest velocity is at the lowest elevation.
On November 18, 1966, Project HARP fired an 84kg payload well into 'space' (179km) using a 16" battleship gun with another 16" gun barrel welded to the end of it.
☮
I wish ib had my archives. It's search for this. Stuff like this used to be all over the internet before 2003
There’s a huge difference between reaching space and reaching orbit - the energy differences are big.
An 84kg object raised vertically to 179km has about 147MJ of gravitational potential energy. To reach LEO at that altitude, not only do you have to raise it to that altitude (i.e do the same amount of work in raising it as the fired-straight-up case) but you also have to propel it horizontally to about 7800 m/s. The object has 2.5GJ of kinetic energy at that point. Added to the gravitational potential energy, the difference is about a factor of 18.
And none of that includes losses by having to fire it through the atmosphere at those sorts of speeds. By definition, the vehicle would have to leave the barrel of a gun launcher at far higher than orbital speeds as it’ll lose a bunch of it to drag before it leaves the atmosphere.
No projectile fired from a gun has yet to achieve orbit.
I get the impression that electrically triggered nitrocellulose gas generators would be more consistent with timing.
I work for an aerospace company that specializes in energetics. We can probably open reusable valves in 100 microseconds. Our initiation timing would be much more precise as well. We also have FOD free energetic designs. Don't get me wrong, an electronically actuated burst disc is extremely fast, but you cannot beat high velocity explosive. It really comes down to how much is precision and reliability worth?
Scott, check out the book "bullseye". It's about a gun project that was built a while ago...with lots of intrigue...
This is just Vergeltungswaffe 3 "Englandkanone" (Revenge Weapon 3 "England Cannon")
Although not ideal for flow rate, potentially ideal for gas speed and opening speed, they might want to have a look at poppet valves. Valves opening in mere milliseconds under high pressure has been a solved problem in the automotive sector for quite a long time.
Fascinating! And especially great to have next to all of my hunches validated with an alternative design I've been poking at to eliminate the need of burst disks. Been a massive pain trying to mill about google's continued decent into trash search results to find info on systems and concepts others have drawn up.
"and to think I started life as a lowly container, and here i am as a LAB space..."
dude explains that so well
Looks like a gas powered linear accelerator. I guess once you're past Mach 1 it becomes the mass of the nearly stationary air molecules slamming into your projectile? The integral volume of your trajectory by altitude?
Even if they don't end up launching anything they'll probably have invented some kind of long range ballistic missile, which Scott was clearly alluding to at the end.
I never believed that spinlaunch would get anywhere because those forces are bascially a much bigger engineering problem than 1 meter valves that open as fast as Longshot would need. What this also reminds me off is Werner v Brauns first designs of an STO ramp.
And I do think that Longshot could work in theory, essentially it has and advantage in that it doesn't have to carry its engines and the fuel up with the payload.
But then again when rockets were used in war they proved to be much more convenient, especially when you compare huge artillery guns with rockets.
But I think this kind of spacelaunch system does cross every spacenerds mind at some point in time wondering if it is possible. And with that I commend them.
On another point someone will probably make a gun out of it at some point, probably for ships. Those always seem to be the first special weapons are used on, be it laser or railgun.
Still the whole thing and the problems associated are very interesting.
How long does it take to go through 1 million unread emails? 😂
I think an electromagnetic solution like a giant emals is the best bet.
8:48 - that is actually a raspberry pi pico that I also have at home.
couldn't be prouder
If you want to become a really bad neighbor really fast just discharge a ballistic projectile at 8000 km/sec at sea level. The logic that comes to mind is hypersonic explosive aerodynamics.
Air would ignite (Air is not infinitely compressible and the thermalization of oxygen at 8000 m/s is just going to happen)
While the shock wave is not going to be as bad as traveling at Mach one, the air explosion itself will create a Mach boom as it slows down.
BTW Scott, you can thank me for not having sent you an E-mail. 🤣
This has the potential to lower launch cost sufficiently to colonize the moon and build space-based geoengineering that could save humanity without risk. I want to live to see the system built that can deliver payloads into space, the megastructure will be a sight to behold.
Hey Scott, what do you think of Tennents beer? Drunk a lot all over the world but that Glasgow beer just hits the spot
Tennents is scottish for Budweiser, I'll have a pint when in Scotland, but there's so many other things to try.
Stage Zero. 9 meter diameter cannon to accelerate starship to 500 mph. 8 gravity acceleration for 1800 feet gives starship a starting velocity = 960 ft/sec.
If either Longshot and/or Spin Launch have figured out how to deal with atmospheric heating of their projectiles, going several km/sec and ground level, I have not heard it.