Well, I’ve always asked myself why can’t we use some kind of train or catapult to help the rockets to save fuel or to go further. Can anyone explain me why?
In: Engineering
There are plans out there for things like this, but they are extreme, even for modern engineering.
In order to understand the problem, it might help you to understand what a normal rocket has to do in order to get into orbit around the earth. A basic rocket launch has two stages. The first stage is to launch up and out of the Earth’s atmosphere. It uses up a ton of fuel, and puts a sustained 5-10 times as much stress on the rocket compared to sitting on the ground. (The rocket, and its payload experience 5-10 g’s of force.)
The second stage of the launch involves turning sideways as you exit the atmosphere, and accelerating to crazy high speeds, so that you are moving so fast you “miss” the earth as you fall. If you want to stay in space, you have to get going this fast outside of the atmosphere. This is called orbiting the earth.
Now, a catapult or launch rail system can only do step one. The payload launched up out of the atmosphere has to complete step two on its own. That means delicate rocket engines, fuel tanks, and control systems have to survive the catapult launch.
This is the big problem. Unlike a normal launch, where the rockets main engine can accelerate you out of the atmosphere at 5-10 g’s for a few minutes, a catapult has to do it all at once. That means subjecting the payload to 20-30 g’s of force immediately. This would likely kill a human passenger, and probably damage anything aboard the rocket, like those engines and fuel tanks.
None of this is to say its impossible, only that to do it with modern tech would be way harder than just launching a rocket, and probably way way more expensive.
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