SpinLaunch has been working to send satellites into orbit through a giant centrifuge for nearly a decade now.
However, according to a New Scientist report, firing humans into space with this giant cannon would turn them into astronaut tartare.
During a tour of the facility, the magazine’s reporter Leah Crane asked in what she characterized as a “half-joking” manner whether it would be possible to load a whole person into the assembly.
“They said no,” she wrote. “This system is for satellites only because the g-forces from being spun around that fast would be fatal.”
Founded in 2014, the startup’s hulking centrifuge is currently running tests in the deserts of New Mexico, where Crane visited. It is designed to spin payloads really, really fast before firing them into the sky at staggering velocities. This is to provide customers with a much cheaper substitute for chemical propulsion.
“The most complex, expensive, and polluting part of space launch is the rocket,” Mark Sipperley, the slingshot project’s director of engineering, told NS. (Though this practice might reduce fossil fuel pollutants, it’s worth noting that satellite-tossing does nothing to improve the sustainability issue of space debris.)
According to NS, SpinLaunch aims to complete a space-ready accelerator by 2025, which will be three times the size of the current model. But with NASA and Pentagon inking contracts with the company, it sounds like this project has a lot of potential.
