Short Intro
- Launch loops are assembled over and float the ocean for safety and security
- A good place is 8 degrees south, 120 degrees west, west of Ecuador and south of San Diego
- The "most boring weather in the world" according to one meteorologist
- A good place is 8 degrees south, 120 degrees west, west of Ecuador and south of San Diego
- Launch vehicles will travel on a magnetically levitated and coupled sled
- Aerodynamically shaped launch vehicles are 5000 kg, and ride above a 2000 kg magnet sled
Magnet sleds (perhaps 50 meters long) couple to the rotor through a velocity transformer track
- After payload release, sleds are decelerated, retested, repaired, and reused
- Launch loops must be very long
- at 30 m/s² (≈ 3 gees) payload acceleration to 11.1 km/s exit velocity:
- 370 seconds of acceleration, and a 2053 km launch path.
- at 150 m/s² (≈ 15 gees), the empty sled stops in 74 seconds over 411 km
- A 2500 km launch path means a 6000 km total rotor length
- at 30 m/s² (≈ 3 gees) payload acceleration to 11.1 km/s exit velocity:
- The launch loop rotor masses 3 kg/m, with a 4 cm hexagonal cross section
Each hexagonal is a row of iron-faced bolts, each perhaps 10 meters long.
- Launch loop launch altitude is 80 km
- Post-release payload drag and blunt nose heating will be significant but not extreme
- The tenuous atmosphere above 80 km will deorbit smaller (and hard to track) space debris
- Larger debris objects must be dodged or intercepted.