{"id":185510,"date":"2024-03-20T04:22:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T09:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/china-working-on-giant-rail-gun-to-shoot-astronauts-into-space"},"modified":"2024-03-20T04:22:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T09:22:31","slug":"china-working-on-giant-rail-gun-to-shoot-astronauts-into-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/china-working-on-giant-rail-gun-to-shoot-astronauts-into-space","title":{"rendered":"China Working on Giant Rail Gun to Shoot Astronauts Into Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/china-working-on-giant-rail-gun-to-shoot-astronauts-into-space2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Chinese scientists are working on a giant electromagnetic launch track to launch a massive 50-ton spaceplane \u2014 longer than a Boeing 737 \u2014 into orbit.<\/p>\n<p>As the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/china\/science\/article\/3255351\/nasas-dream-comes-true-china-plans-build-giant-rail-gun-launch-hypersonic-planes-space\" class=\"\"><em>South China Morning Post<\/em> reports<\/a>, the \u201cgiant rail gun\u201d system is designed to accelerate a hypersonic aircraft to speeds of up to Mach 1.6. Once it reaches the end of the track, its engine then accelerates it to the edge of space at seven times the speed of sound.<\/p>\n<p>If actually built, it could greatly cut down on the amount of fuel such a craft would need to get to space, allowing it to carry bigger payloads \u2014 and save a considerable amount of money as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chinese scientists are working on a giant electromagnetic launch track to launch a massive 50-ton spaceplane \u2014 longer than a Boeing 737 \u2014 into orbit. As the South China Morning Post reports, the \u201cgiant rail gun\u201d system is designed to accelerate a hypersonic aircraft to speeds of up to Mach 1.6. Once it reaches the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}