Giant catapult defies gravity by launching satellites into orbit without the need of rocket fuel - The Brighter Side of News
Giant catapult defies gravity by launching satellites into orbit without the need of rocket fuel - The Brighter Side of News
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Giant catapult defies gravity by launching satellites into orbit without the need of rocket fuel
This is just investor bait.
No, it doesn't. It's physically impossible to fling something into orbit from earth.
You can fling it into space, but you need a circularization burn or it will just fall back down.
And since you can't accelerate anything past Mach 5 or so inside the atmosphere, the circularization burn will need to be 90% of the delta V.
Thanks for the detail! I thought it should definitely be possible in theory to throw something into orbit. But you're right, I didn't think of the atmosphere and its friction. You would also have to throw at a very flat angle so theres a lot of atmosphere for your projectile to pass through.
Even without air friction, and no matter how flat you throw it, you'd always throw it into an elliptical "orbit". But the lowest point of the ellipse would still be on the surface, no matter how high the upper end is.
So it would always come back down, unless you give it another push at the highest point (in space).
If you just throw it even faster, you'll hit escape velocity and it would leave earth entirely.