A Silicon Valley startup called SpinLaunch is set to reveal the first details of its plans to build a machine meant to hurl rockets into space. To achieve that goal, SpinLaunch has secured $40 million from some top technology investors, said Mr Jonathan Yaney, the founder. The company remains tight-lipped about exactly how this contraption will work, although its name gives away the basic idea. Rather than using propellants like kerosene and liquid oxygen to ignite a fire under a rocket, SpinLaunch plans to get a rocket spinning in a circle at up to 5,000 miles per hour and then let it go more or less throwing the rocket to the edge of space, at which point it can light up and deliver objects like satellites into orbit. Why would anyone do such a thing? Well, Mr Yaney is trying to work around the limits that physics have placed on the rocket launch industry for decades. To overcome gravity and Earth’s atmosphere, rockets must be almost perfectly engineered and, even then, can only push a relatively small payload into space. The items carried on a typical rocket, for example, make up less than 5 per cent of the rocket’s mass, with the rest going toward fuel and the rocket’s body. SpinLaunch’s so-called kinetic energy launch system would use electricity to accelerate a projectile and help do much of the dirty work fighting through gravity and the atmosphere. In theory, this means the company could build a simpler, less expensive rocket that’s more efficient at ferrying satellites. “Some people call it a non-rocket launch,” said Mr Yaney. “It seems crazy. It seems fantastic. But we are actually using relatively low-tech industrial components to break this problem into manageable chunks.” An impressive group of investors have signed on to support MR Yaney’s vision. The bulk of the $40 million came from Alphabet’s GV (formerly Google Ventures), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Airbus Ventures. Over the past few years, the rocket industry has become quite crowded. Following in the footsteps of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies, dozens of companies have appeared, trying to make small, cheap rockets that can be launched every week or perhaps even every day. SpinLaunch has a working prototype of its launcher, although the company has declined to provide details on exactly how the machine operates or will compare to its final system. The startup plans to begin launching by 2022. It will charge less than $500,000 per launch and be able to send up multiple rockets per day.
Source: https://ahmedabadmirror.indiatimes.com/
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