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am_Unition  ·  889 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: SpinLaunch conducts first test of suborbital accelerator at Spaceport America

Is ripping through a membrane good for attitude control? Asking for a friend.

I wonder if their was enough of a pressure difference that the sudden pressurization of the chamber housing the lever arm did some damage. I dunno, the membrane isn't being aggressively sucked into the chamber, so far as I can tell.

So yeah they definitely haven't solved the system-of-interlocks problem they'll need for the exit tube, then. There's no way you can use a membrane for full speed/power. Even if you find some magical membrane able to withstand the required pressure difference but still break gracefully, if that lever arm sees 1 atmosphere doing Mach 6, you're donezo. Like the whole facility. Ruined. Good luck.

This shit is hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. There's a longer video in the article's comments that includes the phrase "I was skeptical at first". LOL "Then I heard Hanz Zimmer set to a tumbling hunk of lead, and I knew the world was changed forever".