Can We Throw Satellites to Space? - SpinLaunch

This has been in the works for about 3 months now. Our first full documentary shoot. There is a lot of negativity in the comments from people who have not even watched the video yet. This channel is about being positive about engineering. Encouraging and inspiring the next generation of engineers. If you are looking for a channel that focuses on being negative and adds nothing to world, you have come to the wrong place. It's so much easier to point out what's hard, than using your brain to think of solutions. That's not what engineers do. We find problems, and then we find solutions. If you don't think a company that's trying to throw satellites into space, and has already built a 1/3rd prototype, isn't insanely cool. I don't know what to do for ye. That's badass. Whether they succeed or not is irrelevant. It's not your investment money they are using, chill out.

I find it quite funny that the only piece of technology that was important enough to keep as a trade secret was how to close doors really, really fast.

“It’s a door closing, I don’t know what to ask” “It’s really important not til let air back in“ I love engineering XD

The term "yeet" at 5:35 is both a very accurate and a much appreciated addition to this presentation.

Oh wow. I love this new format! Great to see you on camera. The quality of this documentary reminds me of the Discovery channel when I was a kid... way back before it got overtaken by reality shows.

I love that a engineer with a degree used "yeet" as a technical term

I think I see why the release mechanism was kept a secret. It's another ultra-fine timed system. You can't just release the capsule from a centrifuge and expect it fly like a bullet. It will be tossed in a straight line, yes, but it still will be spinning at the same angular velocity! So it has to be two locks (may be more, but that gets even more complicated), releasing the front one first and letting the rear one impart the angular momentum to stop the bullet from spinning and then releasing it just in time.

This was very interesting and well put together, but one thing I will say that I feel like I have not done anything with my life.. seeing these younger generation doing mind-blowing projects.. it's amazing! KEEP IT UP!

5:35 "SpinLaunch aims to YEET its aeroshell..." It's so simple, yet so incredibly funny.

I would love to see something like this built on the moon for launching unmanned missions further into space.

I'm nowhere near an engineer. But, just curious, rather than releasing an equal mass counterweight for balance that requires clean-up (and I assume dirties up the vacuum), could the counterweight be a magnetic load that simply gets turned off at the time of release?

I think that the real problem, which I'm a bit dissapointed you couldn't get into in the video, is the release mechanism. At those speeds, even getting it slightly wrong can send the rocket tumbling around out of control. There are many parts where going wrong for the tiniest fraction of a second can have very bad results: at what point in the rotation you release, releasing both the weight and counterweight at the same time, releasing all of the parts attaching the rocket to the rotating arm at the same time (or releasing the very big one cleanly)... It all needs to be timed to perfection, and robust enough to work many times without maintenance (unless they plan on doing maintenance under vacuum). It doesn't mean it's impossible, but I'll believe they have managed to do all of it perfectly and consistently when I see it.

Has anyone ever thought about that such a system wouldn't need to launch complex systems (satellites etc) to be viable, but just mere materials? Ideally homogenous blocks of it. Like building materials for space stations. Or supplies. 200 kg of aluminium plates or such. 200 kg of food. 200 kg of plain water. 200 kg of fuel. Trivial things that are INCREDIBLY expensive to bring into space via rocket but are perfectly suited for a spin launch system. Perfectly located center of mass. No vibrations.

This launch system will really find use when launching from airless moons.

According to this year old video “Spinlaunch have only just begun with the 1/3rd scale tests”. Why then, did these tests stop abruptly a year ago? It is safe to assume the project hit the rocks big style.

the lower graph at 32:14 has to be wrong. In 10seconds it claims it reaches a height of 160km, which means an average speed of 16.000m/s. Which is about mach46, way higher than the plan to use.

There has to be an error in the altitude vs time graph at 32:16… they’re going at Mach 6 (i.e. 2 km/s at MSL), yet you have them riding up to nearly 80 km of altitude in just 1 second. At that point you’ve got an interplanetary mass driver on your hands

18:53 - I don't know why more people aren't asking about this. The quote is that the door closes in the "blink of an eye," and is "95% closed in 30ms." Let's check this with the video. This video runs at 30FPS (as of making this comment; YouTube could still be processing a 60FPS format), which means a single frame is 33ms. So then, you'd expect that door to be fully closed in maybe 2 frames (66.7ms), double the 30ms promise, if you wanted to be generous. From the moment we can see the door (it's at an angle, so we could add another frame before we see it), it takes three entire frames to just reach the wall. That is 100ms MINIMUM to be "95% closed." This is already 3x longer than what the engineer here said. Being off by a factor of three when this is supposed to be highly precise and timed to perfection, does not look good.

Climbing a ladder while drinking coffee "Safety third!". Haha, I like these guys. Also, 13:57, both mechanical air pump styles he sited would be superchargers, not turbochargers. The latter being an impeller wheel turned by the flow of exhaust gasses, the former being a screw type mechanically turned kind of thingy.

Has anyone noticed that the projectile will be rotating about its center. It is rotating as it is attached and stays rotating after it leaves. This effect would explain the change in angle as it exits the membrane. The projectile continues this rotation as it rises. To eliminate this rotation they will need to counter-rotate the projectile on the centrifuge and somehow coordinate the launch with both position and orientation.