Man has spent a good portion of his time, in the last hundred years or more, trying to find the most efficient way to blast off into space. Going into space is not always glamorous. There are the mundane tasks of putting objects into orbit. I guess you could say that we are more efficient now at doing this than we were, say forty years ago. Of course this is not including the use of the space shuttle which is one of the most inefficient ways to put something in orbit and also one of the most dangerous. We have dreamt of finding easy and cheap ways to do this, but so far, even though we have gotten better, we are far from our goal.

When we fist landed on the moon, scientists saw an opportunity. Since the moon's gravity is only a fraction of the earth's, it would be a lot easier to launch satellites from the moon or even build and launch space ships. If rockets were used, a lot less fuel would be required to blast off from the moon's surface than the earth's, leaving more fuel for the trip. Traditionally when people thought of a space ship or space craft, they thought of rocket power being used at blastoff. A new generation of scientists was coming to the forefront and some of them had different ideas. Some of these new ideas included space vehicles that didn't even use rockets at all. In the 1970s John P. Barber PhD designed and built the first full scale railgun. A railgun is a device that can shoot things using magnetic acceleration in place of an explosive device. It was realized soon after the first moon landing that a railgun might be able to launch space vehicles from the moon because it had sufficient power to launch something so fast that it could reach orbit in this low gravity field.

On earth the railgun was not quite powerful enough to accomplish this feat, but it got people thinking. This magnetic thing might hold some promise. Scientists began to work on antigravity devices and that research is still going on, but as far as we know, they have only succeeded in raising objects a few feet at most, of course it is possible that they have already succeeded and it is being kept secret. The railgun, while not being powerful enough to launch a spacecraft into orbit did find a use. The newest aircraft carriers will be using them instead of steam catapults to launch planes from the deck. This will lighten the carrier by doing away with the heavy boilers and equipment required to use a steam catapult, but back to launching vehicles into orbit or space. Scientists were fascinated by the repulsion demonstrated with you take two magnets and set them to reject each other. They figured that there was untapped power here and somehow they might be able to use it. Research began and still continues on a way to use this repulsion. The theory had been known for hundreds of years when man first noticed that magnets could not only attract but repel.

Railgun
Graphic Source: US Navy

We are becoming a race that is totally dependent on satellites. I have always felt that this makes us extremely vulnerable in case of war, because we are too dependent on things like global positioning and such, but I have to hope that the government knows what it is doing by not putting all its eggs into the satellite basket. The problem with this is that we find out, all too often, that there are no backup plans or that they are totally inadequate. I certainly hope this isn't the case here. Well be that as it may, we just keep launching satellites and if we could find a cheaper and environmentally less harmful way to do it, it would be a good thing. So how do you accomplish this?

The U.S. Air Force has a dream. It sort of reminds me of a MagLev train. A Maglev is a combination of superconducting magnets and linear motor technology, it is extremely fast, safe, reliable, has low environmental impact and minimum maintenance. Basically, what this all means is that a series of magnets in the train and the track repel each other while other magnets switch from repel to attract over and over thus providing forward or backward propulsion. The Air Force's idea is simple enough, build a round track leading to a ramp. Have the vehicle go around the track continuously building up speed until it is going so fast that when you change a track switch and head it for the ramp, it will be launched and go into orbit. Did you ever see a centrifuge? I am talking about the type that NASA uses where astronauts go in to practice? It also goes in a circle and at only a fraction of the speed that the Air Force's proposed vehicle would go at, people pass out. If a person were in the Air Force's vehicle they would die before ever reaching top speed for launch.

Crashed Satellite
Photo Source: NASA

It seems to me that even keeping the vehicle on the round track would be a great problem. The force of gravity or g force would crush a lot of parts. Could it be that maybe we have figured out some way to nullify g forces? That is the stuff of ufos. It has often been said that some of the maneuvers that people have seen ufos make would kill an ordinary person. So why is everyone so interested in doing away with rockets. Could it be the fact that most of the cost of the launch is the fuel cost? You bet. *Lets look at approximately what it costs for a launch in year 2000 dollars. The space shuttle cost about $300,000,000 million to launch and is by far the most expensive vehicle to launch on the face of the earth. The cheapest vehicle to launch seems to be the Russian Shtil at $200,000 but it is subsidized by the Russian government. The next cheapest is the Russian START at $7,500,000. The U.S. has the Athena 2 rocket that costs only $24,000,000 per launch. Now lets look at the cost for the payload. The Shtil costs $211 per pound for payload launched into low earth orbit, no figures for higher launches are available. The START cost $5388 per pound of payload launched into low earth orbit, no other figures are available. The shuttle payload costs $4729 per pound to low earth orbit and $23,060 per pound for higher orbits. The Athena 2 costs $5310 per pound of cargo into low earth orbit and $18,448 per pound into higher orbits.

Will the Air Force, or anyone else for that matter, be able to come up with a viable method for magnetic satellite launches form earth? The plan is being worked on constantly and sooner or later I am sure something will be developed. There is always the chance that more powerful magnets will come along increasing the power of the launch and maybe, eventually, the circular track will not be needed, just a straight track a couple of miles long. I guess we will just have to wait and see. By the way, it is estimated that launching using the magnetic method might be 100 times cheaper than some of the conventional launches.

Listen to the sound of Sputnik, the first satellite
Audio Source: NASA

*Statistics for launch costs obtained from http://www.futron.com