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The most efficient way to launch.


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You're looking at this from a physics/engineering standpoint. From a business standpoint, efficiency is about a lot more than energy in/energy out. It's about cost in/customer satisfaction out. Therefore a system which requires frequent costly maintenance or has a lot of downtime is a less efficient use of the money you spend to buy and run the system.

 

Other factors are not efficiency...

What you are referring to with respect to downtime/maintenance is reliability.

What others have been referring to with respect to how fast it can accelerate things is performance.

 

You could drive a gas guzzling SUV, it may be reliable for you on a day to day basis, but it certainly isn't efficient is it?

 

non magnetic launches have virtually no moving parts

What about valves, compressors, turbines, retracting brake fins, winch drums, launch sleds etc?

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You're looking at this from a physics/engineering standpoint. From a business standpoint, efficiency is about a lot more than energy in/energy out. It's about cost in/customer satisfaction out. Therefore a system which requires frequent costly maintenance or has a lot of downtime is a less efficient use of the money you spend to buy and run the system.

 

Other factors are not efficiency...

What you are referring to with respect to downtime/maintenance is reliability.

What others have been referring to with respect to how fast it can accelerate things is performance.

 

You could drive a gas guzzling SUV, it may be reliable for you on a day to day basis, but it certainly isn't efficient is it?

 

non magnetic launches have virtually no moving parts

What about valves, compressors, turbines, retracting brake fins, winch drums, launch sleds etc?

 

My mistake I meant to say that magnetic launches have virtually no moving parts. (going back to edit my post now)

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This is something I have often thought, about and is a very intriguing topic and quite a good discussion. I've always looked at LSMs as quite inefficient, since my first experience with them was S:TE and it has all those little sheds just to house everything to make that launch possible.

 

I would agree with most everything said about the LIM and LSM, but would it be possible that the old school flywheel and weight drop launch methods could be close? I know they won't generate the numbers that LIM and LSM are capable of, but if you designed the flywheel correctly it shouldn't take that much energy to get a decent launch. I'm not sure how the weight drop method works, but it would seem like all you would need would be enough energy to lift the weight up, and then try and minimize the losses in pulleys etc.

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You're looking at this from a physics/engineering standpoint. From a business standpoint, efficiency is about a lot more than energy in/energy out. It's about cost in/customer satisfaction out. Therefore a system which requires frequent costly maintenance or has a lot of downtime is a less efficient use of the money you spend to buy and run the system.

 

Other factors are not efficiency...

What you are referring to with respect to downtime/maintenance is reliability.

What others have been referring to with respect to how fast it can accelerate things is performance.

 

As an engineer who works for a company that has regular "efficiency" reviews and hires numerous efficiency consultants, I can tell you that from a business standpoint that reliability and performance are part of efficiency. It's all about how efficiently money is spent. Servers being down, employees being sick, and employees that don't perform well are all efficiency problems. How are ride downtime and under-performance different?

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The best thing about the new, fin-style LSMs vs. LIMs is that when the power is cut they naturally act as a conductive medium for eddy current braking. Meaning that unlike the hydraulic rocket coasters that have to pop up copper brake fins in case of rollback, iSpeed's LSM fins on the track do the exact same thing as soon as power is lost anyway.

 

To get perspective on that with LIMs, California Screamin has mechanical caliper brakes all along its LIM lift hill in case of power loss. If Maverick loses power on the lift, it gently glides back down.

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