SpaceToday reports that a Russian millionaire may be the next ISS tourist. The giggle factor for space tourism continues its death spiral.

Apparently some amateur rocketeer (though there's rumor he was actually a fireworks maker) blew himself up in Denver. Sad for the family, potentially very bad news for amateur rocketry.

The University of Georgia has received a 5 million grant to study electromagnetic accelerators. The piece claims they can be used for launchers, but I'm extremely skeptical. Going hypersonic in the lower atmosphere doesn't seem like a good idea to me. OTOH, for launch from the moon it could be just the ticket, but that's a long time off.

Regards going hypersonic in the lower atmosphere, what are your thoughts on HARP, which seemed to be very close to success?

http://www.astronautix.com/artic;es/abroject.htm

With a 50-200 pound payload, this looks like a swell way to get fuel, or perhaps construction material into orbit assuming several of these and a decent rate of fire (50 caliber as opposed to 100 caliber 16inch shells have a rate of fire of 2-3 rds a minute....even if the shots are on the order of one an hour this would add up quick)

From the third link:
"In fact, electromagnetic propulsion produces certain effects that currently defy scientific explanation."

Anyone know what they might be talking about? I always assumed that the physics behind electromagnetic guns or launchers was well understood. I thought the reasons we haven't seen large scale tests were more economic and engineering (i.e. scaling laboratory test beds up), than fundamental science.

I suspect the problem is one of fundemental engineering Andrew, that's how I read the article. The project appears aimed at overcoming those.

I remember reading an old NASA doc that suggested some kind of rail to help get thing up. It wasn't supersonic but it was hoped it would help the fuel equations.

Would there be an advantage to building your magnetic rail at high altitude. Say in Equador, along the equator, where you could fly or train in cargo to the large city there and then fire it off into orbit. Of course that would work better if we actually had a station in equatorial orbit so the inclinations were the same. But once we have lots of x-prize type space planes going up and down with the passengers we can work with any inclination we want so why not?

Yeah its better to build such a thing in the Us but I thing most of our good high mountains are too far North.

Ken - I think the time will come when building massive infrastructure solely for the launch of bulk cargo makes economic sense, but I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, and if then, I expect it to be for launch from the moon or an NEA for return to earth.

Derek - you're right, it's an engineering research project rather than dedicated to one particular application. I suspect that gunnery is a more likely application than launch.

Yank - if you absolutely must have gun-type launchers, the place to put them is either in the Andes or maybe Kilimanjaro. At the point where bulk cargo launch is a viable proposition plan change once you get to orbit will be a much simpler proposition since there will be tugs.

I would not be surprised if gunnery is the immediate application. The USN is intensely interested in railguns, and the grant from the project does come from the USN. (There was recently a fascinating discussion on the topic in sci.military.naval, see the top discussion here.)

OTOH, consider that currently conventional space acess thinking (cheap or dinosaur) is an outgrowth of gunnery. As Heinlein noted "Once something is proven possible, any competent engineer can make it cheaper, faster, or better". (Though I'd change it slightly to "motivated engineer".)

I don't know how the numbers work out, Damnit, Rand, I'm a lawyer not a scientist, but even if you could impart say 700 miles per hour into a launch vehicle, that would be a pretty good help, wouldn't it. You needn't go supersonic (let alone hypersonic) at sea level to get some potentially big fuel savings.

You needn't go supersonic (let alone hypersonic) at sea level to get some potentially big fuel savings.

...but consider just how much fuel you have to save in order to justify building a billion dollar catapult. Chances are good the maintenance costs alone will exceed the savings in fuel costs.

Hey Yank,

I too have thought what a great place Quito the capital of Ecuador would be for a spaceport. It's conveniently close to the U.S., has easy access by rail from coastal ports, and best of all has high elevation plus great lattitude for space launching. The nearby Andes mountains are even twice as high (20,000 ft.) and a great place for an orbital cannon.

But a cannon is only good for moving bulk comsumables such as air and rocket propellent. So I like the idea of using the Quito airport for basing a manned suborbital rocketplane.

And how about a three stage system for manned orbital flight based in Quito? The first stage is a catapult, even a lowly 150 mph catapult such as an aircraft carrier uses. The second stage is a reusable manned high altitude rocket plane to muscle the third stage into an exoatmospheric suborbital launch position. And the third stage is an expendable orbital rocket with a manned capsule.

The only drawback I know of offhand about using Quito as a spaceport is that part of the downrange flight would be overland instead of all overwater such as the Ariane launch site enjoys.

All of the launch equations change if we find a way to get bulk hydrogen up into LEO. If you can top off your tanks in orbit you don't need heat shielding to return. If you can top off your tanks in orbit a much smaller vehicle can make the journey to the moon, or Mars. You would need to design a lot of stuff around the possibility but every design would be far simplier and cheaper than what we have now. A billion dollar rail might be cheap in the long run.

If you were to try something like this now, with Bush's moon then Mars plan seems the time to do it since we're basically starting from scratch again in a lot of ways.

I was on a panel at a convention once with an ESA physcist who was looking into magnetic launchers, and other non-rocket based launch systems for them.

They were evaluating accelerating through a partially evacuated tube built somewhere like the Australian desert.

It did leave many questions un-answered.