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It's really good to see old-fashioned mechanical engineering applied to a hard problem. I'm backing this project - and if you're interested in making access to space cheap, you should too.

Though don't expect to be riding one of these - 10K gravities ... might be a little uncomfortable. (splat)

I don't know that I really want this built...that's a damned powerful suborbital cannon, when (not if) it falls into the wrong hands.

At least a skyhook doesn't fire off orbital speed payloads.

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Slingotrons don't decimate cities with ballistic payloads - people do. ;-)

Sure...and I'm not a big fan of trusting people to be careful, or even sane. I support keeping guns out of the hands of lunatics and violent criminals.

I'm also not for building more nukes, and this cannon is less "too-terrible-to-use", so I'm willing to be it -will- be used far more often, even though the damage done at the target is pretty much the same. Put the money into something more useful and less dangerous.

We're within spitting distance of the materials to build an actual skyhook...why waste time and money on less than half a solution. I'll skip the detailed list of advantages offered by the skyhook...anyone with an interest in space should be able to recite them already.

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Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of the skyhook and space elevators - but this could be seen as pragmatic stop-gap that would actually work now. You could slingatron the carbon nanotube cable into orbit for the skyhook. ;-)

I'm personally rooting for the space elevator...

'Skyhook' and 'Slingatron' both sound like names of characters or devices in a James Bond film.

This kickstarter video is pretty dry. Not sure if they will get the wide appeal and enthusiasm to get funded. We'll see.

Doesn't seem that expensive to test. Wonder why NASA hasn't tried it?

That's exactly my issue with it. It's an expensive stopgap that will be appropriated by the military almost instantly.
General X: "Hey, we'd really like to drop a nuke on Iraq, but the radioactive fallout will raise a real shitstorm of bad press."
Aide Y: "How about that big mass-driver over there? Same damage potential, but no fallout."
General X: "Well I'll be..."

and two hours later, we have mushroom clouds.

We don't need that, no matter how much it'll help fill in the gap for a few years.

lol launching quarter pounders into space, is that what they eat on the space staion?

It sure would be neat if you could rig up a continuous feed mechanism to fire shots at a rate of 60 Hz or 30 Hz or 15 Hz, or even 10 or 6 Hz. That would be very useful for... hunting.

Moving this video to dag's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.