Spinlaunch pivots to making Satellites
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/spinlaunch-yes-the-centrifuge-rocket-company-is-making-a-hard-pivot-to-satellites/
Spinlaunch pivots to making Satellites
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/spinlaunch-yes-the-centrifuge-rocket-company-is-making-a-hard-pivot-to-satellites/
7 Comments
They haven’t given up on the idea of kinetic launches, but are planning to make a satellite constellation as “Satcom will be a much larger piece of the overall industry.”
I’d love to know the full story, or what they decided was the final hurdle in the technology before needing to pivot.
The launch site is a little north (and way west) of Vancouver, BC. What are the pros for launching that far north? Is it better for this novel launch method?
Hopping off the small launch bandwagon and onto the constellation bandwagon….
It’s almost like the idea of centrifugal ground launch was not well thought out to begin with. Curious.
How do you obtain a perigee of orbit that is larger than zero? No matter how hard you throw something (and neglecting the atmosphere) the resulting orbit will come back to the launch site. Seems to me you have to throw an upper stage, not just a satellite. Assuming you want a perigee above zero altitude…. And an atmosphere
Still super skeptical this is gonna work at all.
For all that energy you could just push out of a plane at high altitude at a fraction of the cost.
Shifting to satellite manufacturing tells us alot about the special requirements to deal with the insane g-forces generated by spinning (10k G for 30 min). In the end, I seriously doubt this will save thier clients any money at all.
They’d be much smarter to look into rail gun launch tech.
I wonder if their method for launching could be utilized on the moon more effectively? Could make for a cheap way to send material back to earth. Or into lunar orbit to be caught by something.