As the space industry expands, it is restrained by the costs of conventional rocket-launched payloads: the costs having to launch the fuel that will be used to carry the payload, which means more fuel is required to carry that fuel, which means more fuel is required to carry that fuel and so on. This is known as the ‘tyranny of the rocket equation’ as it cannot be overcome.
Unusual alternatives are required.
Lancaster Engineering and Unusual Systems partnered to evaluate the feasibility of launching certain materials into orbit using a gun rather than rockets. Such an option would seems at first to fail any basic ‘sanity check’, but after an initial evaluation – including reviews of previous attempts by HARP and others decades ago – we are finalising white papers and laymans articles on the characteristics of hypersonic projectiles launched from near sea level to Low Earth Orbit.