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And the mechanical and thermal shocks it gets when it passes from the vacuum chamber to the atmosphere.

IMHO the centrifuge part is the easiest of their challenges.

That's what seems to me to be the biggest challenge too. Going from vacuum to 1 atm at 4000 mph has got to be quite a shock. Might as well just smash the thing into a wall.

And what is the inrush airspeed when you have that large of a vacuum?

Zero to Mach 5 or 6 just seems like an instantaneous disassembly manuever, both for the craft and the centrifuge itself. Did they find a way to suppress a sonic boom at the exit point?

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