2026-05-22
Rockets are absurd: 90% of liftoff mass is propellant burned to lift propellant. The mass driver dream — an electromagnetic catapult that simply throws payloads at orbital speed — has haunted aerospace since Gerard O'Neill sketched one in the 1970s. Let's build the most plausible version: a linear motor track laid up the eastern flank of Chimborazo (6,263 m), Ecuador's tallest peak and the point on Earth's surface farthest from its center.
The geometry. Run an evacuated tube 20 km long up a 15° grade, exiting near the summit aimed eastward to steal Earth's rotation (~465 m/s free at the equator). We need a muzzle velocity of about 7.8 km/s to reach low orbit, minus the rotational bonus, plus losses — call it 7.5 km/s.
The acceleration problem. Using v² = 2aL:
a = (7,500)² / (2 × 20,000) = 1,400 m/s² ≈ 143 g
That instantly disqualifies humans (and most electronics). But hardened artillery shells already survive 15,000 g at firing, so ruggedized fuel canisters, water, structural beams, and milspec satellites are fair game. Acceleration time: just 5.3 seconds.
The power bill. Kinetic energy of a 1,000 kg slug at 7.5 km/s:
KE = ½ × 1,000 × (7,500)² = 28.1 GJ
Delivered in 5.3 seconds means a peak draw of ~5.3 GW — five Hoover Dams during the launch pulse. Impossible to pull from the grid; the answer is a homopolar flywheel bank or a capacitor farm that trickle-charges between shots. At 90% efficiency and one launch per hour, average grid draw drops to a manageable 8.7 MW.
The atmosphere will try to murder your payload. Even at 6.3 km altitude, air density is ~0.66 kg/m³ (half sea level). For a 0.5 m² blunt projectile at Cd ≈ 0.3:
F_drag = ½ × 0.66 × (7,500)² × 0.3 × 0.5 = 2.78 MN
On a 1,000 kg slug, that's 283 g of deceleration — worse than the launch acceleration, and stagnation temperatures hit ~20,000 K. The projectile would shed half its kinetic energy and most of its nose before reaching space.
Two ways to survive:
Track engineering. 20 km of evacuated tube with superconducting coils every few meters — call it a horizontal LHC, but for FedEx. The accelerating force on the bucket is 1.4 MN; the rails must transfer that into the mountain without buckling. Anchoring requires roughly one Hoover Dam's worth of concrete spread along the bedrock, plus active cooling to handle the magnetic eddy-current heating.
Economics. At 28 GJ per shot, electricity costs about $230 per 1,000 kg launched. Compare to Falcon 9 at ~$2,700/kg. Even amortizing a $20B mountain installation across 100,000 launches, you arrive at ~$400/kg — a fivefold reduction, and zero propellant logistics.