The feasibility of earth-to-space electromagnetic (railgun) launchers (ESRL) is considered, in order to determine their technical practicality and economic viability. The potential applications of the launcher include nuclear waste disposal into space, deep space probe launches, and atmospheric research. Examples of performance requirements of the ESRL system are a maximum acceleration of 10,000 g's for nuclear waste disposal in space (NWDS) missions and 2,500 g's for earth orbital missions, a 20 km/sec launch velocity for NWDS missions, and a launch azimuth of 90 degrees E. A brief configuration description is given, and test results indicate that for the 2020-2050 time period, as much as 3.0 MT per day of bulk material could be launched, and about 0.5 MT per day of high-level nuclear waste could be launched. For earth orbital missions, a significant projectile mass was approximately 6.5 MT, and an integral distributed energy store launch system demonstrated a good potential performance. ESRL prove to be economically and environmentally feasible, but an operational ESRL of the proposed size is not considered achievable before the year 2020.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Feasibility of an earth-to-space rail launcher system


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    International Astronautical Congress ; 1982 ; Paris, France


    Publication date :

    1982-09-01


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Earth-to-space rail-launcher system

    Marshall, Richard A. | TIBKAT | 1982


    Switching for an earth-to-space rail launcher

    Zowarka, R.C. | Tema Archive | 1983


    Commercial Near-Earth Space Launcher: Understanding System Integration

    Czysz, Paul A. / Bruno, Claudio / Chudoba, Bernd | Springer Verlag | 2017


    Principle of rail launcher

    LEE JUN YEON | European Patent Office | 2020

    Free access

    Helical rail glider launcher

    Mongeau, P. / Williams, F. | Tema Archive | 1982