Ich weiß, dass dieser Artikel aus dem Jahr 2010 stammt, aber ist dies etwas, das immer noch aktiv verfolgt wird oder die Idee mehr oder weniger aufgegeben wurde?
https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-11/nasa-engineers-propose-combining-rail-gun-and-scramjet-fire-spacecraft-orbit/
1 Kommentar
There’s a launch company in the US that plans to use a rocket on a rocket rail.
It has always been a fairly silly thing for two reasons: the ground infrastructure is really expensive, so for it to be worthwhile you need to us it a lot, but the most prolific launch vehicle in history still only launches about twice a week, and it practically has only one customer. The other reason is that going really fast close to the ground makes everything very hot and yet doesn’t get you much closer to orbit, you need to go about „Mach 22“ so a super elaborate sled that gets you all the way to mach 4 doesn’t remove the need for a stage.
And I said two reasons, but a third is that rockets are structurally efficient standing up, and really not lying down. If you filled a normal orbital rocket while it was lying on its side, it would flatten and burst like a water balloon. So to make a rocket that you can launch on a sled the rocket has to be much stronger, i.e. heavier, which negates the whole point of getting a performance boost from the sled.