Mass drivers as spaceship launchers

There is a way you could magnetically accelerate a ship on
earth, getting it orbital velocity (8 miles per second) requires vacuum,
a very long one. A nice mountain is needed to - to get your 40 mile long
underground tunnel sloped inside of it - and out the top of your
mountain. This gets you to somewhat thinner atmosphere but still hits
for a couple hundred G's when you break out the seal. I do not believe
any amount of padding or preparation can save you from this hammer blow.
The Russians tried to do something similar airdropping tanks like the US
airdrops cargo - the tanks survive, the crews mostly didn't. You might
could do it, but let's stick with just spacelifting cargo for now.

The magnetic approach has pro's and con's - one of the larger
con's is just the - fire the man to the moon theory; stating that with
enough power you can fire something up to or past the 11 miles per
second required to break orbit and head out into interplanetary space.
This could be done - in theory but don't try to sell this idea to
anyone, including a senate subcommittee. A pro, and perhaps a selling
point, is to build your machine for planetary defense. Your new 40 mile
toy can be loaded with tungsten slugs and you could obliterate just
about anything (threatening asteroid) - and that which you couldn't you
could put a new truck sized dent in it every 30 minutes. The best thing
is to leave the launcher behind our man mover now, the space shuttle,
burns its orbital payload worth of fuel before it even clears the tower
at the Cape. Rockets and their fuel hungry kin will be needed to get
people into orbit for many years. Magnetic is a good way to go for
launching cargo into space. Some or all of your payloads may need rocket
assist to keep your space rifle slug motivated into orbit. Even a ground
laser system vaporizing some water on tail end of these slugs may be
employed. All of these have hundreds of question attached to every
detail - questions that would need answers. The point is it can be done
- and if rocketry is too expensive, go around it.

-Ted