China plans to build a giant rail gun to launch hypersonic planes into space
China plans to build a giant rail gun to launch hypersonic planes into space
It was a project that Nasa abandoned. Now China is determined to make electromagnetic hypersonic space launches a reality.
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@yogthos The articles ends in "While SpaceX’s reusable rockets have slashed satellite launch costs to US$3,000/kg, some scientists have estimated that an electromagnetic space launch system could drive those costs down to a mere US$60/kg."
This is a comparison to a launch into an orbit.
This tech can be used for both purposes, but most of the article discusses transportation. Once China puts this tech in production, I'm sure it will be used for orbital launches as well.
@yogthos I now had more time to look into the article. The whole article is focused solely on the electromagnet technology. From here it refers to some other technology that uses electromagnet acceleration like Musk's fever dream "Hyperloop" and sea carrier catapults while in the end making a reference to orbital launch costs.
Thing is: It simply doesn't make sense. Neither in point-to-point transportation nor in space launch activities this would work out, since you could reach only a single orbital plane or flight direction. To reach more than one point or orbit, you would need to have a lot of these systems, which then would result in really high operational costs.
However, this technology is fine for a highly improved land based transportation method, especially for China, which is the forth biggest country (behind Russia, Canada and the USA).
This is literally what people said about high speed rail. The argument was that this is simply not cost effective and that's why it can't be built. Yet, China covered the whole country with HSR in a decade. Short term cost effectiveness isn't really an issue when you have a state directed economy. And costs for any new technology come down over time. Maybe China will start using it for ground based transportation first, and then start using it for other applications. We'll just wait and see.
@yogthos Which people said that about high speed rail? The country I'm living in has got high speed rail since the 90s. See also Japan or France (and some other countries).
This is a common narrative in US and Canada, meanwhile countries like France or Japan are dismissed as being small. Here's an example for you https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-high-speed-bullet-trains-wont-work-in-the-u-s-right-now/
@yogthos I'm not living in the US, neither I'm a fan of most of their politics. So I definitely won't defend them.
The original point was that arguments about cost efficiency have been made regarding HSR. Every new technology is expensive when it's initially developed, and it requires significant investment. One way to look at that is to say that it's not worth spending the effort on, another way to look at it is that spending the effort creates jobs, spurs innovation, and brings long term benefits to society. It's pretty clear to me that China tends to take the long view on such things, and hence I think it's very probable that they will try building such launch systems.
@yogthos Well, I've got the opinion, that infrastructure shouldn't be operated for profit, so I've got no problem with investing a lot of money in advance. My points are meant from a technical standpoint. And when I refer to the costs, then I mean this in a way that I've got the opinion that the money should be invested in other stuff as well.
I don't think anybody is arguing this sort of stuff should be funded at the expense of other stuff though, and based on how quickly the standard of living is improving in China, seems that they are doing a pretty good job funding the other stuff.