Yesterday, April 14, the American company Green Launch officially presented to the world its hypersonic gas gun, which is capable of delivering valuable cargo into Earth’s orbit. The developers clarified that they had been working on the creation of this space gun since 1992 – in the end, the authors of the gun preferred hydrogen to a powder or other type of pyrotechnic charge. With the addition of helium and oxygen, a rather impressive power is obtained, which accelerates the payload in the system to tremendous speeds. And, of course, it is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than conventional launch vehicles.
The fact is that conventional launch vehicles are equipped with an upper stage – an additional stage is needed to launch the rocket into orbit and further maneuver in outer space. The gun for delivering cargo into orbit does not require an additional stage, which makes this method much more affordable compared to the standard solution. Moreover, the use of a hydrogen-powered gun instead of a conventional fuel-powered launch vehicle can significantly reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere – hydrogen combustion is absolutely environmentally friendly. But the cannon also has another advantage – lower risks.
The fact is that companies, launching entire groups of satellites or a lot of valuable cargo on a launch vehicle, in the event of any failure, lose absolutely everything that was in the cargo compartment. In the case of a hypersonic gun, each individual cargo or satellite will be launched separately, reducing the risk of loss. At the same time, it is possible to launch a new cargo from a cannon once every hour and a half, and the delivery time of the cargo to near-Earth orbit is only 10 minutes. And, what is most interesting, this is no longer just a project on a computer, but a completely working technology – a test gun has already been built in Arizona by launching a projectile into the atmosphere at a speed of Mach 3.
Source: Trash Box
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