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Comment by SonicScrub | Hacker News Reader

Pure vapourware nonsense designed to extract money from investors with all the right buzzwords. Good luck getting a chemical rocket second-stage to survive 1000+ lateral g's and the immense thermal challenges of flying Mach 5+ at sea-level conditions.

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Agreed. There is a bunch reasons we are still reliant on chemical rockets, and this silly thing does not solve for any of them. There are so many things that can go wrong here. The vacuum they need to pull in that HUGE chamber is not trivial. Even if they could... I want to see how they propose the exit. What are they planning to use that is strong enough to hold the vacuum, and yet can be punched through by the projectile? And even if they manage that... the aero forces around the exit will be insanely turbulent. Snake-oil. Again. A shit-load of money spent on not much more than a movie set.

I love the fact they can convince VC to spend $80mil to try this.

20 year ago, most of space experts probably laugh at SpaceX for even trying to reuse the rocket by landing it back on earth vertically.

This is not a "keep an open mind" and "work harder on it" problem.

Also that size vacuum chamber is challenging to say the least. edit: like how will the seal work?

re: the seal. It looks like it's just a big flat disk with a destructible seal over the exit tube for the projectile. I don't doubt that the bigness is a challenge, but the concept seems pretty simple.

great tech for Moon launches though.

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