Some Aspects Concerning the Design of Multistage Earth Orbit Launchers Using Electromagnetic Acceleration

A seaborne platform for the launching of microsatellites by long barrelled guns

“…Therefore, a more realistic scheme of rocket-assisted gun launch is adopted, a concept not unfamiliar to both artillery and naval gunnery specialists. Such a study has already been made by Schneider, Bozic, and Eggers [3]. They have proposed a design with a rocket length of 6.2 m and a base diameter of 0.60 m. A total mass of 498 kg is to be launched from the railgun, carrying a 3 kg payload (i.e., the satellite).…”

Applying railgun technology to small satellite launch

“…The currently most reasonable approach would be to drop the idea to reach a stable orbit, but instead accept a ballistic flight path of the payload. In both areas, the suborbital launch and hybrid launch, the ISL, together with partners, has conducted several studies [6], [10] and [11]. Two of them are shortly presented in the following.…”

“…For a ground based launch site, such a velocity is unrealistic, as the atmosphere would cause extreme heat loads for the projectile and velocity reduction due to air drag. In [10] and [11] a multistaged system is proposed. Such a system uses a railgun as first stage, launching a small rocket.…”

“…This railgun would improve the first-stage efficiency as compared to conventional rocket systems. The rocket of [11] is a two stage system. Fig.…”

Aerothermodynamics analysis of the electromagnetically launched projectiles under rarefied gas conditions

“…In this paper, continuum based NavierStokes solvers are employed to calculate Mach number ( ) Ma contours and temperature distributions around the EML projectile. To avoid the extreme initial velocities and thermal loads, rocket assisted EML projectiles are also proposed in two separate papers [3,4]. In these papers, the projectile is initialized with four different Mach numbers and flight characteristics are analyzed.…”