Is Elon Musk planning to build a Verne Gun?

[Cognisant]

The "space gun" concept.

Verne gun is a bit misleading, I'm not talking about some kind of gas propelled projectile fired out of a cannon, rather a mass driver in a vacuum tube, a "Hyperloop" to space.

Spoiler: A more in depth look at the concept.

Suppose we had a Hyperloop that was literally a loop around the Earth's equator, as the train in that vacuum tube reaches orbital velocity and the centrifugal force (angular momentum to you nerds) counteracts the pull of gravity the people on that train will experience weightlessness. If that train continues to accelerate to twice orbital velocity the occupants will find themselves standing on the train's roof, and you'd hope the train itself is secured to the maglev track because it's also experiencing the same artificial gravity. If the hyperloop tube isn't too heavy and isn't secured to the ground the weight of the train may start lifting it off the ground and if the train is as long as the track, so the entire length of the train is lifting the entire length of the track, what I've essentially described is a ground launched orbital ring.

Spoiler: A bit more on the orbital ring concept.

This ground launched orbital ring would have to be a sine wave along the equation and you might think the curvature of this wave might cause problems but in actual fact the height of the atmosphere (at least the Karman line) is insignificant compared to the diameter of the Earth so the amplitude of the sine wave would be almost imperceptible to someone looking at it from orbit, and we have cables capable of securing something several hundred kilometers high.

Anyway as interesting as that is this thread is about a gun, so rather than building a hyperloop around the equator that's longer than the equator (which is a tad expensive) why not just build a length of that track, one end on the ground and let the other rise into space from the centrifugal force of things moving through it at multiple times orbital speed. The whole thing starts off on the ground and you send concrete blocks down it which reach the end at near orbital speed (being obliterated upon contact with the atmosphere like bullets fired into water) then you start increasing the acceleration and the part of the track that isn't attached to the ground starts rising, you control the rate of ascent and keep it even by having the track tethered to the ground and reeling out the tethers in a controlled manner.

"Rising" is a bit misleading, it's not rising off the ground like a roller-coaster track arching upwards rather it's straightening out relative to the curvature of the Earth's surface, like when you're holding a hose a few feet from the end and someone turns the tap on causing it to thrash about like an angry snake except obviously you don't want it to do that.

Now this track is only going to stay up as long as you've got stuff going down (up?) it and nobody needs to launch a satellite every second so instead you send up containers full of food, water, soil, seeds, parts, materials, robots, fuel, basically the resources one would need to build space stations, a lunar colony, send ships/probes around the solar system, etc. Once they're in a stable orbit you can do several things, you can begin the construction of your own quite large space stations and loan space aboard them to whichever nation wants to put people in space, and/or you can auction off these resources to nations that would like to use them for their own space programs, and deny other nations the use of these resources in their own space programs.

So yeah do you think this could be Musk's grand scheme?
He's been funding the development of almost all the necessary technologies...

 

[JohnnyLawrence]

So yeah do you think this could be Musk's grand scheme?
He's been funding the development of almost all the necessary technologies...

i think his grand scheme is to fly thousands of satellites into space using his space X company which will then beam 5G wifi down onto the entire face of the planet

Musk is also working on neural implants which he says we must have implanted into our brains so that we can interface with the artificial intelligence

he says that if we don't do this the AI will destroy us

 

[JohnnyLawrence]

5G doesn't travel very well which is why they are going to put an antenna outside everyones house

But if you use a phased array you could shoot someone on the moon with it

or you could shoot someone on earth from space with it

 

[Cognisant]

i think his grand scheme is to fly thousands of satellites into space using his space X company which will then beam 5G wifi down onto the entire face of the planet

I like this plan, it'll probably be though stations on the ground that link to the satellites via lasers, maybe using a fiber optic cable running up to a high altitude balloon to avoid cloud interference.

Musk is also working on neural implants which he says we must have implanted into our brains so that we can interface with the artificial intelligence

Once we have an effective neural interface we won't need bodies anymore, I can put my brain on life support somewhere safe and interact with the world through robotic surrogate/simulacrum.

Spoiler

 

[JohnnyLawrence]

I like this plan, it'll probably be though stations on the ground that link to the satellites via lasers, maybe using a fiber optic cable running up to a high altitude balloon to avoid cloud interference.

they don't want cables. cables would be good because they won't fry you

they want microwaves and microwaves will fry you

here is a senator speaking to a senate hearing explaining that 5G has had no health testing:

Once we have an effective neural interface we won't need bodies anymore, I can put my brain on life support somewhere safe and interact with the world through robotic surrogate/simulacrum

you are assuming that the people behind the tech are doing it for your benefit

if you are interfaced with the cloud then your brain is hackable. Also it will be under the control of the AI