Re: Launch Rails...

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sat Apr 15 2000 - 14:46:18 MDT


Spike Jones wrote:
>
> > Michael S. Lorrey wrote: Practical questions:
> > How long does the rail need to be to accelerate up to 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 and
> > 8,000 mph respectively?
>
> At 4 G, I get 13 miles, 51 miles, 115 miles and 204 miles respectively.
>
> At 6 G, I get 8 miles, 34 miles, 76 miles and 136 miles respectively.
>
> Any time Ive worked with rail launchers Ive had to assume they need to
> accelerate like hell going down the rails, no wimpy 4 to 6 G. Otherwise
> the rails are too long. But that shouldnt be that much of a problem:
> we have plenty of rockets today, good sized ones, that can stand
> 30 G longitudinal, and we could go higher if we needed to.
>
> And lets dispense with these english schminglish units. We
> lose interplanetary probes that way... {8-[
>

Ok, its just that I was canalized on english units (hell, even all the
specs on the F-15 and F-111 were in english), and haven't spent enough
time in engineering in metric for it to be intuitive.

Ok, now how does the different speeds affect mass ratios on the
vehicles??



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:09:20 MDT