Launch Sequence

Launch Loop vehicle rates will be very high, perhaps more often than one 5 tonne vehicle per minute. The very low cost of launch (and the very high infrastructure costs) require high throughput handling with many automated inspection stages. It also means that missions will typically be assembled from many combined low-cost payloads in a construction orbit.


Cargo

The vast majority of launches will be cargo: critical repair parts, supplies, and construction materials. Humans are launched after temporary accommodations are assembled by robots and thoroughly tested


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Repair Parts

Repair parts will be often be unplanned, urgent and survival-critical, and must be sent fast, anywhere, anytime. The quickest method to near-Earth destinations will be redundant multistage high performance liquid fuel rockets lofted at maximum loop velocity (11.5 km/s?), perhaps further accelerated into a fast hyperbolic with an additional boost stage to perhaps 14 km/s while in the deep gravity well, then decelerated fast near arrival.

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Cargo Inspection

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Acceleration Run

For most of the acceleration run, the iron launch loop rotor is temporarily magnetized by coupling through the track windings to rhe field of the exciter magnets on the front of the launch sled, the first sled magnets encountered by the retrograde rotor as it passes under the vehicle. The velocity and acceleration profile is the same for every sled (with minor exceptions) and designed into the relative pitch of the rotor windings to the sled coupling windings. The winding pitch ratio is proportional to the velocity ratio:

\large { { rotor~pitch } \over { sled~pitch } ~=~ \large { { sled~velocity ~+~ rotor~velocity } \over { sled~velocity } }

Initial Acceleration, Bypassing the Transformer Track Process

Since the sled pitch (WAG 10 cm} and the rotor velocity {14 km/s} are fixed, the rotor pitch must be very long, longer than the sled, when the sled velocity is small near the start of the launch run. Also, the first test of the acceleration and the vehicle will verify that it can tolerate 30 m/s2 acceleration, and the end of that acceleration at vehicle release.