Chain Flinger

(nealstephenson.substack.com)

63 points by roomey40 days ago

5 comments

JKCalhoun35 days ago
Related (Steve Mould has been fascinated with the centripetal physics of the chain): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcqX4UMXNKEdNBKABT3ZF6Fvu5Jkq3OxB" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcqX4UMXNKEdNBKABT3ZF...</a>
- kevin_thibedeau35 days ago
  This is essentially a powered Mould effect in place of using gravity.
jaggederest35 days ago
Doesn't even need to be an actual chain: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain</a>
- skybrian35 days ago
  It's like you keep shooting ammo upward at it and it catches it and throws it down again, hard.
lukebechtel35 days ago
The chain robot subplot of Seveneves makes a lot more sense now :)
- FrameworkFred35 days ago
  the chain link tech in Seveneves was wild.<p>as a nearly perfectly uninformed occasional consumer of space-related articles, I can say it makes a lot of sense (to me) why we'd use something like that to move things around the solar system.
thom35 days ago
I got my youngest a ZipString Aracna for Christmas (entirely driven by a tiny cameo in the film Weapons). It is rare that a toy for kids feels magical, but it's been a real hit over the holidays.
QuadmasterXLII35 days ago
A related idea is to improve the efficiency of a trebuchet by stringing heavy weighted nodes along the sling line. The biggest one built so far used one 50 pound node on the sling line to launch an 8 pound pumpkin 1500 feet, but the math says it keeps working better as you add more nodes. <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ruiMZYTc5HE" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ruiMZYTc5HE</a>