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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
It's mostly because of the amount of energy involved. Let's say you're at the equator, where the rotational speed of the ground is highest. From outside Earth, you're moving a little less than 0.5 km/s. LEO orbits are typically around 7 km/s. Assuming there's no atmosphere, you're talking about going from 125 kJ to 24.5 MJ in kinetic energy minimum to launch a 1 kg satellite.
Now consider that you lose 1.6-1.9 km/s worth of orbital speed pushing through Earth's atmosphere. Now we're up to 37 MJ of energy for that 1 kg satellite.
Now consider: what is energy? Force applied through distance, right? Which is going to require less force, a magnetic catapult that's, say, 1-2 km long, or a rocket that's burning the entire time it's under the 100 km "ceiling" of Earth's atmosphere?
So, with all that in mind, you can see why--from a technological level--we just haven't been able to even *consider* a magnetic catapult. The amount of energy involved has been too much to deal with.
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