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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
There's two reasons, one economic and one technical. Economically, there wasn't really room for small startup style companies in the space sector until fairly recently - the barrier to entry was extremely high, and there wasn't much of a commercial market. This is changing now, but meant that there was generally not much funding to pursue this kind of idea.
Technically, there's some major hurdles that limit the applicability of any kind of "catapult" launch system. Orbits are fundamentally periodic, meaning that if you put something on a ballistic arc starting at the Earth's surface, it will come back to that same altitude. This means that any satellite launched with a catapult system will need to perform a large maneuver within tens of minutes of launch to raise it's perigee enough to not immediately re-enter, which is a very very tall ask. Thats a lot of propulsion the vehicle now needs to bring on-board that it can't otherwise use for mission. Additionally, doing *anything* that soon after launch is difficult. There's also the structural issues caused by the acceleration of launch itself, which are much higher than with a rocket.
Frankly, the reason it hasn't seen more investment or research is because it's impractical. Not for the magnetic launcher itself, but for all the issues that come with using it.
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