Numerous start-ups are trying to make orbital launches cheaper and less polluting. Green Launch surprises us with one of the strangest proposals.
In the book From the Earth to the Moon, written in 1865 by that visionary genius named Jules Verne, Astronauts traveled to the moon fired from a large cannon. Today we find it funny, but it’s just the idea aerospace company Green Launch tapped into, though Replace astronauts with satellites.
If you’ve seen a SpaceX rocket launch, it’s spectacular, but also hugely polluting: Tens of thousands of liters of fuel are burned in a matter of seconds.
Green start aims to reduce the cost of putting satellites into orbit and specially much less pollutingwith the help of a hydrogen gun that doesn’t pollute. Last December he ran some tests of what he calls upright start, Launch of a test satellite into the stratosphere at a speed of 3,675 km/h. You can see it in this video:
Green Launch used for this test a 16.5 meter long hydrogen-filled cannon, plus a mixture of oxygen and helium. When the cannon is fired, the gases expand so rapidly that can fire a projectile at match 3 speed.
They’re all clean gases, so the only thing launching the satellite produces is a big explosion and water vapor. In addition, the costs are reduced by a tenth.
Of course, the satellite still needs a small rocket with fuel to reach the correct orbit in space. But it’s infinitely smaller than a booster rocket.
With a hydrogen cannon over 100 meters long, The speed record for a projectile is Match 32.7 something like 46,000km/h. Green Launch appreciates that You only have to reach Match 17.5, about 21,000 km/hto put a satellite in low orbit between 300 and 1000 km altitude.
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The cannon’s range is fixed, so there’s just one more problem: the force of the explosion is so great that The satellite is ejected with a force of 30,000 Gthat is, 30,000 times stronger than Earth’s gravity.
this violence could destroy the electronic components of satellites. But Green Launch has tested mini-satellites that are robust at 3,200G, and in computer simulations they found the parts can withstand 10 times more force.
As already mentioned, the first test launch launched a projectile into the stratosphere between 15 and 50 km high. At the end of the year they will conduct a new test with a longer barrel and hope to reach the Kármán line. 100 kilometers highwhich represents the beginning of space.
The disadvantage of this system is that You have to launch the satellites one by one, compared to the hundreds SpaceX can carry in a rocket at one time. But Green Launch takes care of that can put a satellite into orbit every 60 minutes, and although it takes longer, this is offset by the reduction in costs and less pollution.
An interesting initiative that reminds us of SpinLaunch, which uses a spinning slingshot system to launch satellites into orbit without fuel.