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Comment by markb139 | Hacker News Reader

I think Newton is on the phone... Once the accelerating force is removed the object will go into an orbit that includes the point at which the force stops. This however is Earth

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It doesn't remove fuel entirely, they still need an engine to circularize their orbit.

> The velocity boost provided by the accelerator's electric drive results in a 4x reduction in the fuel required to reach orbit, a 10x reduction in cost, and the ability to launch multiple times per day.

https://www.spinlaunch.com/orbital

Their promotional video shows this at around the 20s mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGO4LtCctTk

I think it's a cool idea. What increase in G's are we talking about launching things this way?

SpinLaunch: ~10000G

Rocket: ~5G

So roughly 3 orders of magnitude.

Wow are there issues with making things like chips that can even survive that? I remember when I was a scientist and 10,000g was some very high speed centrifuging that you better make sure everything like even glass and plastic can handle.

> SpinLaunch: ~10000G

I admit I was surprised people were able to build hardware that survived that.

They plan on launching a small 1st stage with the satellite. You need some delta-V to circularize & fine tune the orbit after the spin launch.

Time to break out Kerbal Space Program and see how well it works...

I believe all the payloads will have a small rocket on them to boost the periapsis up outside the earth

With enough force applied, the Earth will no longer be there when it comes back to that point.

Unless it reaches escape velocity (ie its never coming back) then it will always comeback to where it started from. The object is under the same gravitaional influences as the Earth

As others have pointed out, there is a rocket motor to put the payload into an orbit.

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