It is often said that Julio Vern He was a great seer. as much as writing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ten years before the first patent was published for one of these underwater vehicles. He was also a pioneer in description of space travel. It is logical that he had a lot of imagination; he was also a science fiction writer. But it showed that leaving Earth and reaching places as far away as the Moon was entirely possible. Of course, the very fact of using cannonball to reach space yes, it was exaggerated. Or maybe not so much, because now a group of Chinese scientists wants to use a similar mechanism to send astronauts beyond Earth.
These researchers realize the enormous fuel consumption What does it mean to go into space? In fact, they are not the only ones. Alternatives have been explored for many years, such as space elevator or interstellar hot air balloon travel. Options have also been studied that save a lot of fuel, but the speeds are unsafe for astronauts to travel in spacecraft.
Chinese scientists, on the contrary, believe that thanks to the cannon driven electromagnetic launch pad Astronauts could be catapulted into space with minimal fuel consumption. It’s not exactly what Jules Verne described, but it’s close enough to make you admire his work even more.
Cannon to reach space
These Chinese scientists’ plan is to use a hypersonic spacecraft that accelerates to giant electromagnetic track. Then I would leave her Mach 1.6. Mach number is a relative measure of speed that is used to measure the actual speed of an object, in this case a spacecraft, between the speed of sound. Thus, the ship will reach almost twice the speed of sound.
At this moment the ship is already would start their own engines and it would have left the Earth even faster, at seven times the speed of sound. Obviously, this implies excessive fuel consumption; the gun’s thrust is not enough to go into space. However, this will save all the fuel that would normally be used with ordinary rockets.
There is still something to dream about, like Jules Verne.
In fact, even though it has been proven possible, there is still a long way to go. So far, Chinese scientists have carried out several tests on a much smaller launch pad, approximately 2 kilometers longd. It could be used to throw objects at speed 1000 kilometers per hour.
This is achieved thanks to a type of magnets that are adjusted in such a way that they do not stick together, as usually happens when opposite poles approach each other, but push each other. The more magnets, the greater the thrust and therefore the greater the speed that can be achieved.
With longer rails, the ship could be launched at speeds sufficient to reach space. At the moment they only have theory and a little practice, but they need a lot more practice.
If all goes well, the day will come when people can be catapulted into space with minimal fuel consumption. From this point of view, the reality is that Jules Verne failed.
Source: Hiper Textual
