Talk:Non-rocket spacelaunch

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Technology Level in table[edit]

The HASTOL is rated at technology level 2. The definition for level 2 is "Invention begins. Once basic principles are observed, practical applications can be invented. The application is speculative and there is no proof or detailed analysis to support the assumption. Examples are still limited to paper studies." Detailed analysis has been completed and are referenced in the article, so I don't feel that 2 is the right level. Tethers Unlimited claims zero g and space tests being carried out. I would feel that this would equate to a techology level of 6 (System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment). Gasdive (talk) 04:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Endo-atmospheric tethers[edit]

I tagged this as possible OR about six months ago and no one has provided any evidence of this even existing. Googling only returns this article and other articles citing it. As such I'm taking it out, which is a shame because it seems like an interesting concept.Jmackaerospace (talk) 00:31, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, just noticed this. I put it back in a while ago. Please note the referenced patent.

thanks KitemanSA (talk) 14:48, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aerovator Needs Improvement[edit]

There is too little information provided about the aerovator to understand what it is and how it works. It SEEMS to be a dynamic structure, and thus in the wrong place, but who can tell. It needs more data and at least one reference. KitemanSA (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 04:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Still no references. Please provide at least one reference or delete the aerovator content. KitemanSA (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 04:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Orbit from Space Tower[edit]

The article states:

"A space tower is a tower that would reach outer space. To fully replace rocket-power in leaving the planet, it would not only have to reach the Kármán line at 100km height, which is a common definition of outer space, but have to reach the geosynchronous orbit at approximately 36.000 km..."

This is not correct. There is a point well below geosync where if released the payload would still remain in orbit. At the lowest such point, the orbit would be highly elliptical, growing more circular as the high point is raised. One only needs to reach geosync to attain a circular orbit.

Does anyone know where the "lowest" point is? I think I have seen it in one of the space elevator type articles or maybe one of the recent books.

KitemanSA (talk) 00:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To avoid collision with the atmosphere at the opposite end of the ellipse, I think the minimum release point is at 66% of geosync.

majermike 5/13/14 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Majermike (talk • contribs) 20:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I think the last paragraph of "Space tower" is unclear and should be deleted.

Majermike (talk) 20:09, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Brick Tower Height[edit]

The article states:

"Elementary arithmetic shows that a tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 7000 feet or 2 kilometres before the bricks at the bottom were crushed".

This looks REALLY iffy. The pyramids had trouble going up hundreds of feet, even with a rather gentle slope. Indeed, the bent pyramid needed to be sloped more gently due to the blocks dislodging at ~100 feet. I doubt anyone could build a cylinder 7000’ high with BRICK. Might it reach 7000' if the tower were a single, solid brick resting on an infinitely rigid base? Maybe. But the non-homogeneous nature of brick makes me think that there would be sufficient flaws to make even 1000' tower impossible.

Does anyone have knowledge of the actual bulk capability of brick masonary building? Can we get a better example?

KitemanSA (talk) 00:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dates in Table[edit]

Looks like dates have been added to some of the lines in the table, but not others. I do note that the dates are also provided in the references. Perhaps they should remain there implicitly, and not be in the table explicitly for some but not others. As the lawyers say, "that not included is excluded". So, those entries in the table that don't have explicit dates could wrongly be inferred to be current.

I think the dates should be removed. KitemanSA (talk) 16:41, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that they should all be dated, otherwise they're meaningless. You need to edit for the long run I think, and not assume that people will be constantly running off to sources and updating them.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 17:32, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about editing for the long run. However, each of the data entries SHOULD have a reference, either in the first column to apply to all, or each entry in each column if the references are different. EVERY reference should be dated. Would that not be an instantly available date? I don't anticipate that the references would be updated. I do however think it reasonable that people can click on the reference number to find out the details about when the data was generated. Otherwise, the table is just too dang busy! KitemanSA (talk) 17:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Space tower height[edit]

Does anybody know more exactly how high a space tower could theoretically reach with modern material and not with stone as the example (which is a tower of Babel estimation)? I mean, a combined space tower and a space elevator would seen the most optimal thing - it would decrease the tension of the cable by the weight of the cable which otherwise would have been in the place of the tower. Does anybody know any further sources of such a tower-elevator hybrid? Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:17, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think aluminum could give you a couple of hundred kilometers; the main problem is stability/buckling.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 16:58, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Towers above a kilometer are incredibly costly, and you're much better off using a simple space elevator rather than the hybrid. Quick check calculation: Assume a square tower, 20' sides, made of 4 Aluminum HSS5x5x1/2 shapes braced together as a truss. Assume unbraced length factor k = 1, modulus of elasticity E = 10000ksi, specific weight y = 172pcf. Assume that the lateral bracing is weightless and that the Euler critical buckling load is the weight of the top 1/4 of the tower (to simplify the math): P = pi^2(EI)/(kL)^2 Where I is the gross moment of intertia, 454000in^4, calculated by parallel axis theorem. Making substitutions and solving for L: L=(4pi^2(EI)/y*A)^(1/3)=3209' Meaning that the maximum height of this tower is only a kilometer. If conservative assumptions and safety factors are applied it will be less than half this. Using more aluminum could certainly increase the maximum height, but there's no way it will get anywhere near a hundred kilometers.

Majermike (talk) 21:06, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One mistake above: k should be 2, not 1, making this hypothetical tower even weaker. Majermike (talk) 00:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Categorization of Tensile Strucutures[edit]

The proposals for tethers are expanding rapidly. They include orbit change versus launch; tidally locked versus rotating; static payload pickup versus high velocity payload pickup; and space based (orbiting) versus atmosphere based. Since this is in reference to spacelaunch, I will focus on that aspect. I propose a convention that sets

tidally locked tethers = skyhooks
rotating tethers = rotovators
static = static
high velocity = hypersonic.

Given this, the orbital portion of the HASTOR would be a hypersonic rotovator. Thoughts? KitemanSA (talk) 04:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Actually, I decided to use "stationary" rather than "static".

KitemanSA (talk) 16:43, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Move article to Orbital Spacelaunch[edit]

I think we should merge it with the rocket approach, keeping two articles isn't helpful (actually, there is no orbital space launch article per se right now.)- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 17:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, we have an article that's real, which is rockets, and one that isn't. This is the one that isn't. And no, in case someone might ask, the fact that these methods aren't real isn't a reason to get rid of this article, either. It's just a reason to lump all these hopes, wishes, and other not yet real things together and separate from the real thing. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They're all real systems, but they're at different development levels.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 01:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The other thing is, there's commonality, they all have similar problems- you need sufficient energy (mostly lateral) to reach orbit, they have issues with the atmosphere etc. etc. much of this isn't covered well anywhere, it all sort of falls down the cracks.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 01:12, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Elementary Satellite theory ain't covered in that article, nor in the present one, or anywhere else that I see in Wikipedia. A novice reading this article is likely to come away with the idea that it's mainly a matter of how to get high enough and no idea of the significance of the magical speed of 8 Km/sec. By novice I mean like the ones who say, let's combine the tower with the skyhook and then we're getting somewhere. Those of us who know better, haven't supplied the background that would let anyone understand the nature of the problem of satellite launch. That could be done in one of the existing articles, including this one, or in a new one. So, why not start writing it as a preface in this article? Or one of the other related ones. The hard part is getting good material that outsiders can understand. The editorial question of whether to move or merge or split such material can wait until we've got something worth the fuss. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do think it is a concern that there is no orbital space launch article per se. However, we do have a section: Orbital spaceflight#Orbital launch. Furthermore, many of these techniques deal with getting further out in space than "only" to the orbit. I think just Space launch covers it all, so I disambiguated that one to these. I think the articles are in sufficient order as they are. However, that Space launch disambiguation article could well be expanded to introduce the subjects, including Elementary satellite theory. And it's ok with me both to merge rocket and non-rocket articles and to have them split. Mikael Häggström (talk) 05:52, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Atmospheric Damage?[edit]

"serious damage to the atmosphere from the thousands, perhaps millions, of launches required" Isn't the only thing put into the atmosphere from a rocket launch water vapor? 71.123.78.75 (talk) 07:13, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. Many rockets use kerosine or UDMH as fuel, and/or N2O4 or Ammonium perchlorate as oxidizer. Even those whose only combustion product is water, also create nitrogen oxides. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Poorly Written?[edit]

The article "Non-Rocket spacelaunch" is very bad. The author does not now subject, books (for example, main book "Non-Rocket Space Launch and Flight", Elsevier, 2006), articles about this topics, does not know history. There are a lot of mistakes, no references or full notes (for example date of publications). The table contains many wrong data.

I try to correct some mistakes, but they so much, then is easy to write new article.
In this form the article is shame for Wikipedia and it cannot be published.

Boris Kruglyak, Ph.D. bkruglyak@gmail.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by BKruglyak (talk • contribs) 01:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article is simply very new; articles have to start somewhere.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 04:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Boris,
Would you be so kind as to edit your content to put the methods in the proper places and give a very short (one sentence?) description of each method? For instance, the "beam launcher" appears to be more of a non-conventional rocket, whereas the Levitron may not fit in any of the existing categories. Please do not hesitate to add new categories, I did!
Also, please insert your references properly. You have created two reference 1s and two reference 2s. KitemanSA (talk) 03:12, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Again, Boris, PLEASE enter your reference material properly. There are now two reference 16s. When I add another reference in a day or two there will be two 16s and two 17s. KitemanSA (talk) 18:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved them here since they were not even referenced from the text, and were not formatted correctly.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 00:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

16. Earth Accelerator for Space Ships and Missiles, by A. Bolonkin, JBIS, Vol.56, No. 11/12, 2003, p. 394-404. The cable launcher is offered and researched. Two projects are computed: for men and for projectile.
17. Centrifugal Keeper for Space Stations and Satellites, by A. Bolonkin, JBIS, Vol.56, No. 9/10, 2003, p. 314-327. Author offered and researched the rotating cable which launches and keeps the moveless space station and satellites. Four projects are computed.
18. Kinetic Space Towers and Launchers, by A. Bolonkin, JBIS, Vol.57,No.1/2, 2004, p.33-39. Author offered and researched new method for access to outer space. A cable stands up vertically and pulls up its payload to space. Five projects are computed.
19. Hypersonic Gas-Rocket Launcher of High Capability, by A. Bolonkin, JBIS, Vol. 57, No.5/6, 2004, p.162- 172. The gas hypersonic tube launcher and the special gas rocket into tube are proposed and researched. The launcher cans delivery 85,000 tons of payloads annually at cost $1-2 USD per pound.
20. Multi-Reflex Propulsion Systems for Space and Air Vehicles and Energy Transfer for long Distance, by A.Bolonkin, JBIS, Vol.57, No.11/12, 2004, p.379-390. The author suggested and researched the new high reflectivity mirror and shown this innovation allows the design of are space and air propulsion systems, engines, transmitters of energy to millions kilometers.

Patent Applications:
1. Method of space launch and hypersonic launch system. Patent application US PTO 09/344,235 of 6/25/99.
2. Hypersonic Space Launcher (Method and Installation) by A.Bolonkin. Patent application US PTO 09/13,08 of 1/26/98; 09/344,235 of 06/25/99; 1/057,819 of 01/18/02.
3. Method and Installation for Space Trip. Patent application US PTO 09/789,959 of 2/23/01.
4. Method and Installation for Space Launch. Patent application US PTO 09/873,985 of 6/04/01.
5. "Method for Gas and Payload Transportation at Long Distance and Installations for It", Patent Application USPTO # 09/978,507 of 10/18/01.
6. Cable Launcher. Patent application US PTO 09/974,670 of 10/11/01.

Non-referring references[edit]

This is surprising, but the most important books-monographs (references) on non-rocket launch and flight, containing important scientific research, calculations, analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of individual projects; the author declared very weak articles, gave all the wrong links and excluded them from the list of non-references.
I believe that these books should be placed in References or External Links.
That are:
1) Book “Non Rocket Space Launch and Flight”. Elsevier, 2006. 488 ps. ISBN-13: 978-0-08044-731-5, ISBN-10: 0-080-44731-7 . (>100 refs.)
2. Book “Launch and Flight in Space without Rockets (v.2)”. USA, LULU, 2011, ISBN 978-1-365-81382-5, 370 ps https://archive.org/download/IsbnBarcodeLaunchAndFlightv.261319, (>100 refs.)
3) “New Concepts, Ideas, Innovations in Aerospace, Technology and the Human Sciences”, NOVA, 2006, 510 pgs. ISBN-13: 978-1-60021-787-6. (>100 refs.)
http://viXra.org/abs/1309.0193, http://www.archive.org/details/NewConceptsIfeasAndInnovationsInAerospaceTechnologyAndHumanSciences
4) Innovations and New Technologies (v2). Lulu, 2013. 465 pgs. 10.5 Mb, ISBN: 978-1-312-62280-7. (>100 refs.)
https://archive.org/details/Book5InnovationsAndNewTechnologiesv2102014/, http://intellectualarchive.com/ .
5) High-Altitude and Space TowersMast, Space Elevator, Motionless Satellites). Lulu, 2017,179 ps. ISBN: 978-1-387-18533-7.
https://archive.org/download/BookSpaceTowers813171 , http://viXra.org/abs/1906.0228

The Next references are also very useful:
6. Converting of any Matter to Nuclear Energy by AB-Generator and Aerospace. Journal of Energy Storage and Conversion, Vol.3, #1, January-June 2012, p. 43-69. Also in Book “Femtotechnology”, Lulu, 2009. http://viXra.org/abs/1604.0271. <be/> 7. RailGun Space Launcher, Journal of Aerospace Engineering, Oct. 2010, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 293-299. http://viXra.org/abs/1401.0172.
8. "Magnetic Space Launcher" has been published online 15 December 2010, in the ASCE, Journal of Aerospace Engineering (Vol. 24, No. 1, 2011, pp.124-134). https://archive.org/details/MagneticSpaceLauncher .
9. "Magnetic Suspended AB-Structures and Motionless Space Stations," has been published online 15 December 2010, in the ASCE, Journal of Aerospace Engineering (Vol.24,No.1, 2011, pp.102-111),
https://archive.org/details/MagneticSuspendedAb-structures .
10. Review of new ideas, innovations of non-rocket propulsion systems for Space Launch and Flight (Part 1-3). http://intellectualarchive.com #1368+.
11. Space Wing Electro Relativistic AB-Ship. I J N N A, 4(2) January-June 2012, pp. 13-19 • ISSN: 0974-6048, Collection “Femto” Collection: Interstellar Medium: New Research. NOVA, 2011.
https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22357 http://www.archive.org/details/SpaceWingElectroRelativisticAb-ship http://intellectualarchive.com #1371,
Sver0314 (talk) 22:17, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That is very weak article. No last (10 years) important ideas and researches. Main books of this topic NON included in Referenses. See, for example, books: 1) "Non-Rocket Space Launch and Flight", Elsevier, 2006, 488 pgs. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24056182 2) “New Concepts, Ideas, Innovations in Aerospace, Technology and the Human Sciences”, NOVA, 2007, 502 pgs. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24057071 3) “Macro-Projects: Environments and Technologies”, NOVA, 2008, 536 pgs.

            http://www.scribd.com/doc/24057930 .

4) “New Technologies and Revolutionary Projects”, Sbcribd, 2010, 324 pgs,

           http://www.scribd.com/doc/32744477

16 June, 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.52.177.181 (talk) 02:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seems inappropriate to have a list of "references" that aren't referenced anywhere. Perhaps Boris' add-on references should be moved to an "Other Reading" section, if maintained at all.
KitemanSA (talk) 19:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Return the list[edit]

I would like to see the lead in list reinserted. It contained explanitory information about the article and the subject matter breakdown. Without it, the article is more difficult to follow and jumps in with undefined/unexplained terms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by KitemanSA (talk • contribs) 19:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural Reference[edit]

Does the use of a space elevator in Mega Man really belong on wikipedia. There are plenty of examples of space elevators, mass drivers, and other non-rocket launch methods in sci-fi. If we include one how do we decide where to draw the line. Maybe historic examples of the first proposal/use of a specific methoe would be appropriate.63.167.255.151 (talk) 23:25, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In response to KitemanSA: 'All stone' buildings are not built anymore due to the cost of materials; typically a steel structure handles the loads and the stone or brick is a facade or curtain wall. Brick facades will have a steel channel to support the brick every couple of stories. Note that a brick facade must have a support channel every other or every third story. Besides the crush problem with brick you get a stability problem because the mortar is a weak point. High winds, earthquakes, even vibration from truck traffic place limits on stone and brick structure height. The pyramids dealt with the issue by reducing the area of the structure as the altitude increased. So the limit for a stone or brick pile is not just the compressive strength; it is the ability of the structure to handle side loads and other dynamic forces. The Eiffel tower has its shape for the same reason - concern about side loading. All ground based compression structures to high altitude have this same problem: how to assure stability. New skyscrapers no longer attempt to correct the problem with a rigid, reinforced design; instead they have a series of mass dampers intended to counteract harmonic oscillation and have a limited flexibility designed into them. But anchoring them into bed rock only works so far. When the mass of the building exceeds the frictional force the 'slab' the building rests on against the neighboring rock(s), the potential exists for the overturning moment of a very tall building to rip the 'bedrock' out of the ground.

I also see an unacknowledged issue with mass launchers, be they electromagnetic or some other energy technology. Low earth orbit (ISS,International Space Station altitude) is 17,500 miles per hour or 8 km/sec. Any mass launcher is going to have to accelerate the payload above this velocity. Arithmetic will show that this speed is on the order of Mach 25. The now retired Concorde grew in length 10 inches due to frictional heating, at only Mach 2. Columbia was torn apart by the aerodynamic forces at 100,000 meters at Mach 20. Unless the end of the mass launcher is above the Karman line, you are proposing to accelerate the vehicle above reentry velocity while still in the dense part of the atmosphere. Today rockets launch vertically to climb above the densest part of the atmosphere before they begin to accelerate in the direction of the eventual orbit, to reduce the aerodynamic forces and frictional effects. If you combine the issues I've just mentioned, mass launchers from inside the atmosphere are going to be really difficult to make work. I do believe they will be the technology of choice to launch materials from an airless body such as Luna, but not from Earth.

Space tethers are just now becoming feasible in that the tensile strength vs. weight of carbon fiber nanotubes is the correct order of magnitude for the tension the tether must withstand to support its own weight. However, much work remains. Despite my concerns below, I believe tethers will one day replace rockets for earth 'launches'. 1) Current strength is a bit less than required - the current strength may be in the right order of magnitude (much better than the less than 10% of required strength, which is where things stood when I was born), but we need at least another 10% improvement over today's best material. 2) We have no way to fabricate a practical length of tether. Carbon nanotubes have not been assembled into a structure of 1 centimeter yet (and still retain the necessary strength). The tensile strength being advertised is for segments in length no longer than the diameter of a human hair. A tether will be 100's of kilometers long. 3) The tether will have to withstand conditions that degrade many materials - strong UV light, ions, ozone, nitrogen oxides, and dissociated oxygen at different altitudes. Whatever binding agent as well as the main structural material will be in harsh service. These are material science issues that the ISS is exploring in the various exposure facilities. 67.184.242.89 (talk) 01:47, 15 July 2010 (UTC) Dave Vetter, PE[reply]

Citations and sources are needed[edit]

Please be sure that all additions to the Non-rocket spacelaunch article are verifiable. Any new items added to the article should have inline citations for each claim made. As a courtesy to editors who may have added claims previously, before Wikipedia citation policy is what it is today, many of the existing unsourced claims have been tagged {{citation needed}} to allow some time for sources to be added. Cheers. N2e (talk) 21:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bolus[edit]

A Bolus is a lump of undigested food or a large intravenous dose of medicine. Shouldn't this be Bolas? A bolas is a sling like weapon. At least it makes more sense. KitemanSA (talk) 14:53, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

i agree --Beaucouplusneutre (talk) 10:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

comparaison table and trl[edit]

here a nasa doc that can be usefull http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/500393main_TA01-LaunchPropulsion-DRAFT-Nov2010-A.pdf --Beaucouplusneutre (talk) 08:50, 28 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.5.54.242 (talk) 07:08, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

rocket sled launch[edit]

where to put it in the template since it can both mechanical and eletric ? --Beaucouplusneutre (talk) 10:53, 31 August 2011 (UTC) i will try to find picture for each concept and put it in the commons[reply]

what happen to the table ?[edit]

did i break something ? --Beaucouplusneutre (talk) 11:44, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

title of the page[edit]

space access or spacelaunch or non conventional spacelauch seems apropriate, what do you think ? some of the technique include rocket --Beaucouplusneutre (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bolus[edit]

A well-intentioned editor just deleted the section heading entitled Bolus and deleted any uses of that word in the subsections below it. This is incorrect.

Bolus does have a sense of the word in technical English, generally as a geometric shape, and has been used extensively in the space tether-related literature. For example, see here. I will therefore revert the deletion.

Having said that, it is clear that a large amount of the material in the Bolus section, and in the remainder of the article for that matter, is largely unsourced, and needs inline citations. Many of these have already been tagged requesting citations. If citations are not added in the next 4 to 6 weeks, I would, upon coming on the article again, simply delete the uncited material. Cheers. N2e (talk) 14:57, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

=> ...Well, I was prepared to believe you, though I had my doubts, but they were confirmed when I read through your link above, the only instances of "bolus" I found referred to a blob at the end of a tether. I suggest the term be nuked if a valid cite for its use in context (other than by the person who introduced it to this article) can't be found.

                                                      -154.5.54.242 (talk) 08:21, 16 March 2012 (UTC) an anonymous occasional grammar editor.[reply]

=> ...Addendum: I tried similar G-S searches: rotating/tether/bolus gave nothing relevant (either bolus as lump, or bolic - hyperbolic picked up as two words); rotating/tether/bolas yields several "bolas-like arrangement" or similar, plus a project BOLAS using two objects on the ends of a tether; rotating/tether/rotovator of course gave several unambiguous hits, one of which, "Advanced Propulsion Study, Eric W. Davis" contains this quote: "Forward (1988, 1990, 1992b) distinguishes two types of orbital slings: the “rotovator” and the “bolo.” The rotovator picks up payloads from the Earth’s surface (or from high up in the atmosphere) and accelerates them to orbital velocity (Artsutanov, 1969). The bolo can change payload velocity and direction, but not accelerate it from a standstill to orbital velocity (Chapman, 1981; Lorenzini et al., 2000)."

So I propose "Bolus" be turfed and replaced in all cases by "Bolo". I would do it now myself, but it's late, I'm off to bed.

                                                     -154.5.54.242 (talk) 08:21, 16 March 2012 (UTC) an anonymous occasional grammar editor.[reply]

Historical miscellenae in the article[edit]

> A parallel-sided structure made of conventional brick and stone cannot reach past 2000 meters as bricks at the bottom would be crushed under the weight <

This calculation, found in the current article, is fully redundant, since there is no foundation that could support the weight of even a 200 meter tall brick or stone building! Not even the bedrock of New York, that's why US skyscrapers were built using grid pattern, made out of steel beams.

If one needs to bury steel beams or rebar concrete pillars to artificially deep-reinforce the foundation bedrock, then there is no reason to make a stone or a brick building stand on top of all that preparation. 82.131.210.163 (talk) 17:54, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of in-line citations?[edit]

I moved the {{More footnotes|date=January 2011}}-tag to here, because it claims that the article has a reference list that is not in wp:in-line citation format, but the reference list is actually in such format. It may be in need of more references generally, but I don't find it in particular need compared to other articles. Mikael Häggström (talk) 04:03, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dubious about the subsections in Electrical[edit]

as far as I can tell all 3 subsections are synonymous. If they are different there needs to be more detail. StarTram appears to use both maglev and mass driver with reference to it's gen-2 system — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.79.209.119 (talk) 02:41, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Startram technological readiness level[edit]

Startram Gen-2 may be TRL 2, but Gen-1 is higher than this, surely. As discussed in the 2010 paper referenced on the article page, Gen-1 relies on four main categories of technology:

1) Maglev (for propulsion and levitation in the launch tunnel). The required tech is not substantially different from that operating in Japan today. Therefore, for this subsystem, TRL 8 or 9 is appropriate.

2) Energy Storage - relies on Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES). SMES is already operating today. The Startram adaptation of this technology is actually simpler to implement and far cheaper. Granted, the specific implementation of Startram SMES has not been developed, but I would place TRL for this at 5.

3) Maintaining vacuum in launch tunnel during launch - relies on steam jet ejectors and [Hydrodynamic Drives] (MHD Drive) operating as a air barrier and pump. Both of these technologies are decades old at least. TRL 8 (because they have not been implemented in this application)

4) Heat shielding - transpiration cooling and ablative shielding is well-studied and used for [[1]] vehicles from ICBMs, spacecraft, and spaceplanes. Startram vehicles will require higher performance cooling than ICBM RVs, but Startram vehicles can easily carry all necessary mass to implement adequate shielding. TRL 5 or 6.

As a consequence, I would change the TRL for Gen-1 startram to at least 5 or 6. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1:8900:996:F570:C754:45F2:F415 (talk) 00:49, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

looking for help[edit]

excuse me, I need your suggest, I am interesting in non rocket space launch system and I am considering further studying of this topic for my PhD. so it will be great to have your suggestions if you know any teacher and school can give me a guidance, thanks! Wowo0601 (talk) 03:06, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nuclear Pulse propulsion[edit]

Nuclear pulse propulsion is a type of rocket. It shouldn't be in the list of non-rocket spacelaunch. Guy who reads a lot (talk) 15:24, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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External links modified[edit]

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Orbital Ring[edit]

The following text has been replaced because it's firstly not good English and includes two Russian sites which are invalid links. It's been replaced with text from a secondary source which describes this theory. I have read no supporting evidence that Yunitskiy proposed his ideas 'first' (they were both published in 1982):

The first design^{[citation needed]} of an orbital ring offered by A. Yunitsky in 1982. A. Yunitskii, “General Planetary Transport System”, “TM” ^{[clarification needed]} (Technology for Young), no. 6, 1982 (in Russian). www.ipu.ru/stran/bod/ing/sovet2.htm Archived 2005-04-16 at the Wayback Machine; pictures: www.ipu.ru/stran/bod/ing/soviet_ris.htm^{[dead link]}.