Quote Originally Posted by Aloha_Shooter View Post
Yes and no. You're thinking of traditional guns in this case. What hurts the sensitive components usually isn't the total acceleration resulting in escape velocity but rather the acceleration over time (aka "jerk"). It's generally the sudden change in momentum that harms them; this is why they can go up on a rocket using steady or slowly varying thrust. Gerard O'Neill's Institute for Space Studies created software that could automatically design mass drivers (aka rail guns or EM cannons) to get payloads to orbit using constant or slowly increasing acceleration to avoid this problem.

There are a number of problems with mass driver solutions, not the least of which are the altitude desired, the heating effects, and the length of rail needed to get something into orbit, but they aren't insoluble problems. In fact, if we as a civilization really want steady timely access to space, mass drivers are one of the most efficient ways to do it.
I don't know a whole lot about mass drivers, but from what I've seen, I don't think they're workable on Earth for the reasons you've pointed out. I think there was even a proposal for one that was supposed to use a massive magnetic levitation system to keep the whole thing pointed at the sky, which just seems far to ridiculous to work in real life.

I think mass drivers will be constructed on the moon once there's an established human presence there.