What is the possibility of a railgun assisted orbital launch

Reference no: EM13986160

Basic facts: The world's deepest mine is 2.4 miles deep. Railguns can acheive a muzzle velocity of a projectile on the order of 7.5 km/s. The Earth's escape velocity is 11.2 km/s.

It seems to me that a railgun style launch device built into a deep shaft such as an abandoned mine could reasonably launch a vehicle into space. I have not run the calculations and I wouldn't doubt that there might be issues with high G's that limit the potential for astronauts on such a vehicle, but even still it seems like it would be cheaper to build such a launch device and place a powerplant nearby to run it than it is to build and fuel single-use rockets.

So, what is the possibility of a railgun assisted orbital launch?

What am I missing here? Why hasn't this concept received more attention?

Reference no: EM13986160

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