Revolutionary Technology Catapults Satellites into Space

By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor

Image courtesy of Spinlaunch Just when you thought the delivery of satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) had been forever revolutionized by Elon Musk, a Long Beach, CA-based spaceflight tech development company comes up with the idea to use a centrifuge to literally fling satellites into space. The company, SpinLaunch, promises to be an alternative method for launching 440-pound LEO satellites into space using one quarter of the fuel, at one tenth of the cost, multiple times per day.   Traditional fuel-based rockets use boosters that expend millions of cubic feet of methane or thousands of pounds of hydrogen. SpinLaunch, however, uses a ground-based, electric powered kinetic launch system, which relies on high-speed centrifugal forces — G forces — to propel the satellite into orbit, like a track and field athlete spinning and throwing the discus. Continue Reading