Giant Slingshot: New Way to Space?

All space projects get into orbit pretty much the same way by burn­ing lots of rocket fuel, a space­ship pow­ers itself past the sky. But what if there was a dif­fer­ent approach? What if we could throw some­thing so hard, it would wind up in space? At NASA’s behest, Ed Schmidt and Mark Bundy of the Army Research Lab are look­ing at ways of fir­ing pro­jec­tiles into orbit.
The notion has a very long pedi­gree. Back in 1687 when Isaac Newton first came up with the the­ory of grav­ity he also intro­duced the con­cept of an orbital can­non which could fire a can­non­ball so fast that it would never come down. The first seri­ous attempt to shoot into space was the High Altitude Research Program (HARP)
car­ried out in the US in the 60s (not to be con­fused with HAARP High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program so beloved of the tin­foil hat brigade). HARP used a mod­i­fied 16-​​inch naval gun to loft pro­jec­tiles to the incred­i­ble alti­tude of 112 miles before being can­celled in 1967.
The ARL study looks at more sophis­ti­cated approaches than your basic can­non, includ­ing a blast wave accel­er­a­tor, and electro-​​magnetic rail gun, and an EM coil gun. But the wildest idea may be the Slingatron: a giant, hyper­ve­loc­ity, rapid-​​fire sling­shot. The machine would spin a pro­jec­tile faster and faster through a spiral-​​shaped tube, build­ing up increas­ing amounts of cen­tripetal force along the way just like a discus-​​thrower, spin­ning him­self around before a toss, or like a latter-​​day King David, wind­ing up his weapon before he whacks Goliath.
Schmidt and Bundy are cau­tiously pos­i­tive about Slingatron and the other launch concepts:

- Achieving an 8 km/​s muz­zle veloc­ity did not vio­late any laws of physics
– All had seri­ous engi­neer­ing and mate­ri­als issues
– Significant research is required
– Facilitization costs would be high
– All are high risk

So its a big project which will take some devel­op­ment, but the ben­e­fits would be phe­nom­e­nal. If we can spend $7 bil­lion+ on an air­borne laser which is frankly unim­pres­sive, why not put a bil­lion into each of these con­cepts — then use the rest to build whichever looks best?
An orbital launcher would bring the cost of putting a pay­load into orbit from around $10,000 a pound to a few hun­dred dol­lars. (The G-​​forces are so huge, astro­nauts still have to go up the hard way). The main prob­lem as far as I can see would be fights break­ing out in the queue to use it. [OK, not exactly. But Hambling’s on a roll here. Let him go with it. — ed.]
NASA wants it to send up com­po­nents of the ISS or future lunar of Mars mis­sions. Send up the pieces and it could all be assem­bled in Earth orbit before mov­ing on go where no man has gone before. Or they could use it as a first-​​stage, putting rock­ets into orbit which could then boost small probes to the rest of the solar sys­tem.
Or it could be used to put up new nano-​​satellites by the score, at short notice and with­out the need for scarce and expen­sive rock­ets.
But for the Pentagon it could be a can­di­date for the ideal Global Strike tool: capa­ble deliv­er­ing a one-​​ton bunker-​​busting tung­sten super­cav­i­tat­ing pen­e­tra­tor at orbital speed. [Not that we’re encour­ag­ing this sort of thing.] Thats real Shock & Awe, which could arrive any­where in the world with no warn­ing before bombers could get off the run­way. (Anyone remem­ber Saddam Husseins Project Babylon Supergun , or the Nazis V3 plans?)
Alternatively, an aer­obal­lis­tic pod could be launched which would break open at high alti­tude to release a dozen Dominators or sim­i­lar craft to find and attack pre­ci­sion tar­gets, catch­ing flee­ing ter­ror­ists in less time than it takes to get a Predator into the area.
Then again, the anti-​​satellite peo­ple might want to have a go too. [Not that we’re look­ing to encour­age them, either.] It would make a neat anti-​​aircraft gun, fir­ing small guided pro­jec­tiles, and might offer some inter­est­ing options for kinetic bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense.
Maybe SOCOM might want a look for about instant re-​​supply any­where, for when it absolutely, pos­i­tively has to be there within the hour, regard­less of weather con­di­tions?
If you take a look at my book Weapons Grade, youll find a chap­ter with an unusual his­tory of the Space Race. It shows how the space pro­gram for both East and West orig­i­nated with the German mil­i­tary V-​​2 pro­gram, and pro­gressed on the back of post-​​war bal­lis­tic mis­sile pro­grams. The launch­ers on both sides were mod­i­fied ver­sions of rock­ets orig­i­nally designed to carry war­heads. The idea of space travel had been around for years, but it took mil­i­tary inter­est to make it hap­pen.
We may now again be in a sit­u­a­tion where the next major break­through in space tech­nol­ogy is just wait­ing for the mil­i­tary to take the lead again.
The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less­but, I think I hear Monsieur Vernes lawyers at the door, some­thing about steal­ing his idea of going From The Earth To The Moon
– David Hambling
UPDATE 05/​10/​06 12:23PM: Not only is physi­cist a fan of the Slingatron, but, appar­ently, Google co-​​founder Larry Page is, too.

May 9th, 2006 | Space | 3204218 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/05/09/giant-slingshot-new-way-to-space/Giant+Slingshot%3A+New+Way+to+Space%3F2006-05-09+05%3A21%3A13jason You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.