Launching Without Using Rocket Engines Sometimes you can’t just ignore what is happening in NASA. Sometimes for bad reasons but also sometimes for good ones. Since science fiction has been around, alternate methods of launching a spacecraft have been discussed. When I say alternate, I am talking about methods other than rockets. Jules Verne wrote about using a powerful cannon to send a ship to the moon. Others mentioned anti-gravity and warping space. NASA is about to conduct a test with a company named SpinLaunch. They say they have a suborbital accelerator which will fling a small spacecraft into orbit. I wondered why they call it suborbital until I checked further. The device only sends a craft part of the way and then it has to fire its rockets to reach orbit. Basically, the device is like a slingshot. It will however, if it works, save on expensive fuel because most of the fuel in a spacecraft is used for launching. Not only that, it could be used on places with less gravity than the earth, like the moon and might be able to sling a rocket all the way into orbit. When the shuttle was launched the solid fuel used was said to cost over $1,380,000. That was now a long time ago. On the other hand, it is said the cost to fuel a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is only $200,000. SpinLaunch will have maximum weight requirements and you won’t see them launching the SLS system or SpaceX’s Starship. It is said it can launch satellites into space which weigh as much as 200 kilograms. That means it could launch a satellite weighing up to 440 pounds. What I have been reading about the system which might clear up everything is there are two accelerators. The second one is almost three times the size of the first and will be able to launch at five times the speed or 5,000 miles per hour. I have to assume it will have a higher weight capacity. NASA is saying it will cut down the cost of fuel and launching by 70 percent. SpinLaunch is said to have performed a successful test in 2021. There has been an idea about using a giant railgun to launch satellites. A railgun uses powerful magnets to shoot projectiles. The railgun would be suitable for small payloads such as 1 kilogram. That is only 2.3 pounds and it wouldn’t have made any sense a few years ago, but this has changed with the advent of cubesats. Tiny satellites containing small electronics. Cubesats are sometimes as small as 1 kilogram. Tests in 2010 of the power exerted by the railgun proved it had more than enough power to send 1 kilogram into low orbit, without a rocket assist. This makes it five times more efficient than a rocket. One of the problems which must be overcome is the muzzle velocity required would melt the satellite. Perhaps this will be able to be overcome by new materials or coatings. Also, the power should be able to be increased by new more powerful magnets. Sometimes when we talk about exotic solutions, in this case for launching satellites, we forget about the simplest ones. We already have the ability to use balloons to take experiments to the stratosphere. The balloons typically reach as high as 23 miles in altitude. There has also been talk about using balloons to launch rockets. The idea would be to use a balloon to carry a rocket to a high altitude and when that altitude is reached, the rocket would fire and go the rest of the way on its own. The concept is know as Rockoons. A successful test was conducted. The company is named Leo Aerospace, Inc., and is affiliated with Purdue University. The balloon platform is reusable saving further on launching costs. The satellites are microsatellites, and it seems there is a huge backload of them waiting to be launched. Leo Aerospace may have found a niche no one has thought about. The company wants to be able to launch satellites weighing up to 55 pounds, expanding its market. The specifics are the balloon will take the rocket up 11 miles and then it will launch. They believe customers will get the biggest bang for their buck using the balloon method. There is yet a theory another method could be used to launch a rocket without fuel. It is the theory of Quantized Inertia. In order for it to work, Unruh radiation would have to be converted into thrust. I realize almost none of us even know what this radiation is, including me. It is radiation near a black hole. This is certainly out of our reach right now and may always be, but if we could figure out how to create it, and even if we could, we would still have to figure out how to convert it. Scientists think Unruh radiation exists, but are not 100 percent sure. Let’s not forget an idea which has been around for many years. It calls for the construction of a space elevator. Cables would be connected to a satellite which is in geosynchronous orbit, meaning it never moves from its position relative to the earth. The cable would be attached on the earth and a device like an elevator would ride the cable up and down traveling at thousands of kilometers an hour. It could be used to even place satellites into orbit. Once built, it should be relatively cheap to send things into space. Another idea is to build a giant space gun to launch satellites. It would not be suitable for launching humans into space, they would die from the acceleration. It would have to be able to exert tremendous force. An inventor proposed a gun which would be 3,600 feet long and named it QuickLauncher. A 425 foot version was tested. The work on the gun began in 1992. The gun was supposed to be placed in the sea with only the tip of the barrel showing. The gun was never built. Lastly, there has been a movement to use special planes to fly a rocket high up in the atmosphere and then allow it to launch. If one remembers the rocket plane was carried aloft years ago by a bomber and then released and made its run from there. While the size and weight of some of our rockets preclude them from even being considered for airborne launch, some of the smaller ones might be good candidates if we could figure out how to accomplish this, because there are a lot of problems which would have to be solved first.
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