First, you're making a giant spinning thing that contains a ridiculous amount of energy. If the release of the projectile is off by a millisecond, instead of flying through the outlet it's instead flying into the wall of the launcher where it will deliver all of its kinetic energy in the form of an explosion with the energy of about a half ton of TNT, which sounds bad but really isn't compared to the arm its exploding next to that would release the energy of a small nuke if it gets damaged. This isn't a failure mode that can be monitored and avoided; eventually you're going to have a component fail or a software glitch and before the system can even register that something is wrong the launcher will be a crater.
You're launching bulk material into orbit where no one cares if the occasional launch fails so long as it's cheap, and you're wasting that on a launch system where the most minor failure results in not just the loss of the launch vehicle but the entire infrastructure for launching.
But even if everything works exactly as intended there are still issues. Your giant centrifuge spins up in a vacuum because at those speeds air resistance would be extremely damaging. Unfortunately, after you release the payload, it breaches the seal on the outlet and now you have a giant inrush of air into your vacuum chamber. Unfortunately, the giant arm is still spinning at 8000 kph. The surface of the arm is going to ablate as it moves through sea level air at hypersonic speeds, and its going to generate massive shock waves which are going to reverberate in the chamber. All those precision components for releasing your payload with extreme precision are going to be exposed to these hellish conditions. You're going to need extensive repairs or replacements after every launch.
You're doing all this and you still need a launch vehicle with its own rocket engine and propellant, flight control surfaces and surface protection for its own hypersonic journey through the lower atmosphere. Everything needs to survive ridiculous g forces. All this to deliver a few kilograms of low value cargo?
These problems don't go away as you refine the technology, they are fundamental. You will always need precision release mechanisms to avoid catastrophic failure, you will always be exposed to hypersonic conditions, you will always experience ridiculous g forces, you will always need rockets for orbital insertion, you will always be restricted to low value cargo.
It's an interesting engineering problem; they might learn some cool lessons along the way, maybe some valuable patents will come out of it, but there is no hope for developing a practical space launch method competitive with existing methods.
> that would release the energy of a small nuke if it gets damaged
All we need to do now is containerise it for easy transportation across borders! Err..
My first thought on seeing the prototype was whether they've taken a map and drawn an arc in line with the rotation to see the areas that might be impacted when this thing RUDs. Perhaps they'll put it on a turntable?
Nonetheless I'd suggest it's probably safest to build this thing in a concrete pit such that failure results in a big hole, and not hot and spicy hypersonic plasma flung across the continental USA.
First, you're making a giant spinning thing that contains a ridiculous amount of energy. If the release of the projectile is off by a millisecond, instead of flying through the outlet it's instead flying into the wall of the launcher where it will deliver all of its kinetic energy in the form of an explosion with the energy of about a half ton of TNT, which sounds bad but really isn't compared to the arm its exploding next to that would release the energy of a small nuke if it gets damaged. This isn't a failure mode that can be monitored and avoided; eventually you're going to have a component fail or a software glitch and before the system can even register that something is wrong the launcher will be a crater.
You're launching bulk material into orbit where no one cares if the occasional launch fails so long as it's cheap, and you're wasting that on a launch system where the most minor failure results in not just the loss of the launch vehicle but the entire infrastructure for launching.
But even if everything works exactly as intended there are still issues. Your giant centrifuge spins up in a vacuum because at those speeds air resistance would be extremely damaging. Unfortunately, after you release the payload, it breaches the seal on the outlet and now you have a giant inrush of air into your vacuum chamber. Unfortunately, the giant arm is still spinning at 8000 kph. The surface of the arm is going to ablate as it moves through sea level air at hypersonic speeds, and its going to generate massive shock waves which are going to reverberate in the chamber. All those precision components for releasing your payload with extreme precision are going to be exposed to these hellish conditions. You're going to need extensive repairs or replacements after every launch.
You're doing all this and you still need a launch vehicle with its own rocket engine and propellant, flight control surfaces and surface protection for its own hypersonic journey through the lower atmosphere. Everything needs to survive ridiculous g forces. All this to deliver a few kilograms of low value cargo?
These problems don't go away as you refine the technology, they are fundamental. You will always need precision release mechanisms to avoid catastrophic failure, you will always be exposed to hypersonic conditions, you will always experience ridiculous g forces, you will always need rockets for orbital insertion, you will always be restricted to low value cargo.
It's an interesting engineering problem; they might learn some cool lessons along the way, maybe some valuable patents will come out of it, but there is no hope for developing a practical space launch method competitive with existing methods.