Can it take you over the border? What a great way to smuggle video games from Canada! Wait, Canada? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This would be great to get rid of all those suit-happy lawyers.

Can one find a water baloon big enough?

this should solve the nuclear waste problem, just sling it into space.... i wonder if I can sling my mother-in-law into space???

There's no way that design could take high speeds. 10km/s (approx escape velocity) in a circular motion that's ~100m wide? That's 30 revolutions a second. According to my rusty A-level physics, an object travelling that fast in something that size would have a force of around... 100,000g's acting on it.

The day this gets made is the day the Bush/Clinton families stop their reign in America. In other words...
no time soon.

I can't wait to see a home made version of this on MythBusters!

capital punishment anyone?

"this should solve the nuclear waste problem, just sling it into space.... i wonder if I can sling my mother-in-law into space???"

I remember that episode of Futurama. The one where the Professor invents the smell-o-scope and discovers a giant ball of garbage headed straight for Earth.

Come on guys, someone put a lot of work into designing that nifty looking support structure! Give them some recognition!

Seriously though, nothing could withstand the forces that thing would generate. The friction alone would probably cause whatever was inside to melt together.

So...maybe we could retrofit the UFO or the Gravitron (ya know, those hoaky carnival rides that spin just fast enough to make anyone who ate nachos in the past 5 minutes hurl) and make our own.

And it shall be called the Slingmodo.

I say we give one to Europe, and take one here in the US, and have ourselves one massive trans-atlantic water baloon fight.

Damn, we better go easy on this one guys. I would hate to draw any bad attention and I don't think my renters insurance covers acts of Zod...

I was thinking the same thing.
centrifugal forces alone would crush whatever thats inside into tiny bits.

lets say IF they make it, and make it work.

How are we supposed to catch whatever payload this "slingatron" launches into outer space?

Three words (as Bush would say them): Nuculer Missile Shield

Would that make a great clown cannon? Of course the clown would probably come out of it a glob of red goo.

here you go... the real deal....

http://www.thekn0wledge.com/joomla/images/ringbig.jpg

@arias

The same problem would occur with that model as well. The circular acceleration would obliterate the payload. Giz discussed that already.

how bout that giant magnetic railgun that was on futureweapons a while back? i imagine if you just tilt it a bit you can get something up there...

And even if you used objects built to withstand the g forces, you're looking at massive losses due to air resistance in the thicker lower atmosphere. A better approach is to launch something from the upper atmosphere as was done with SpaceShipOne.

It also wasn't immediately obvious from their web site how they were going to handle the large imbalance that will be caused as the object circles the launcher. If you thought a washing machine jumped around a bit with unevenly distributed clothes, just imagine how much this thing is going to shake trying reach orbital velocities with heavy cargo!

Do they truly believe they can accurately control where the slinged object ends up, ie. what kind of orbit it will go into, assuming it will somehow get there in one piece? Yeah... ummmm... okay.... hope they didn't spend a lot of money coming up with THIS hair-brained idea.

@ abigsmurf: According to my rusty physics, I calculated closer to 100g's not 100,000. But the point still remains, that's way too much. There is nothing living that can handle that, and nothing you want to put into space (i.e. delicate instrumentation) could handle that. The only thing i could see it being used for is something like nuclear waste, but that raises an even bigger problem. If there is a malfunction, we could have nuclear waste falling from the sky all over our cities.

Can't we just wait until Star Trek becomes real and the engineers of that time will make something up?

Oh, yeah. We'll be dead by then.

I guess the whole obliteration thing rules out a Jackass special then.

Maybe this could be used for getting water into space cheaply. It's one of the few things holding us back from heading any further than the moon, and it must cost a fortune to take into space using thrust power.

Would the donut slingshot work with less-than-completely-solid items? To elaborate further, could one be mounted to an outhouse/ port-a-potty? Would a dingleberry be able to handle so many Gs, or would it be vaporized into farterial matter? Lastly, does anyone know why the donut is covered with those tiny blue hairs that Norelco's pattented 'Lift-n-Cut' system is designed to eliminate? I can't be the only one who's seen those commercials.

Something like this would work really well where there wasn't also air resistance to overcome.

The Moon would be an excellent place, or a large asteroid.

Well done. That solves the garbageproblem. Throw em at the sun to get the heat up :D

I think most earthly materials would probably burn up before actually hitting the sun.

FInally ACME has created a product that will finally allow Wile E. Coyote to catch the Roadrunner.

my idea, which requires super-strong nanotubes, involves 2 payloads being attached with superlong cables to the spinning center, which would actually be airborne at high altitude to minimize drag losses. The only energy source that could power the whole thing while hovering at 30,000 feet is a small nuclear reactor, so it is never going to get built.

they should trick rosie o'donnell into getting in this thing, tell her shes gettin a free trip to space. Instead of opening the trap door they should just let her spin in circles until she either melts or apologizes to whats his face, whichever comes first.

I have been fortunate to follow the slingatron's development independently over the last few years and can assure you that it is a serious new technology that warrants further investigation. The inventor of the technology, Dr. Derek Tidman was both a UofMD physics professor and the owner of a successful electrothermal & railgun company. I have personally communicated with senior government, academic, and industry scientists and engineers who view the slingatron as a potentially revolutionary new launch and intercept technology. The DARPA staff who conducted tests of the slingatron argued for continued funding, but the funds went to another project. The reality is that when 100s of millions of dollars are spent on one technology path (rail guns, in this case), there is little oxygen left for competing technologies, especially relatively unsexy ones. The sad part is that I have been convinced the slingatron could demonstrate its superiority over railguns for many applications in 2 years for $10m. Unfortunately, having a great new technology available does not automatically lead to wise technology investments by those with money to invest. If you doubt the technology, check out the papers, patents, and engineering models, then contact the inventor. I'm sure he love to respond to thoughtful criticism. I've had the pleasure of seeing him handle room fulls of critics with PhDs, leaving them convinced of the technology in the end.