Using rockets to reach space

>using rockets to reach space
why not build a giant slingshot instead?

How much money can """"scientists""" milk out from the government with a slingshot? Think

Unrelated but I bought a slingshot yesterday and I am blown away by how powerful these fucking things are. This isn't even a professional-tier slingshot or anything. It's some fucking toy from a hobby shop. I ran out of the steel pellets to use so I just started using nuts, batteries, screws, etc... anything that can fit and I shit you not this thing will pierce a cardboard box on both sides with the velocity it can build up.

There's no material that has enough tensile strength to store the energy needed to chuck a payload into space.

Slingshots are highly inaccurate, and it's difficult to adjust this accuracy, as once you release the rubber it moves too fast to stop. But you can build a nozzle to be quite precise.

>There's no material that has enough tensile strength to store the energy needed to chuck a payload into space.

Okay, then what's the closest we've got?

>Slingshots are highly inaccurate,

No they're not. You can have guiding tracks.

>and it's difficult to adjust this accuracy,

You can adjust where it aims before you launch it, idiot.

>as once you release the rubber it moves too fast to stop.

Same with a rocket, idiot.

Wouldnt the force needed to escape atmosphere kill you?
I mean rockets are constantly propelled.
A slingshot vehicle would instsntly start losing velocity....it wouldn't be "pushed along" like a rocket is.

>Wouldnt the force needed to escape atmosphere kill you?

Only if you're a little bitch.

Slingshots have the problem that one needs to accelerate the projectile to orbit velocity all in the length of the track. This extreme acceleration would destroy anything on board the vessel. Rockets take off slow and accelerate as they gain altitude. This means rockets are in fact way easier to aim than a slingshot.

Thought so

What does the acceleration have to do with aiming the track?

Once the projectile leave the track, it can only decelerate from there thanks to gravity and drag. There's no engines on the projectile, so there's no way to course correct after launch. Adding wings or lifting surfaces to guide the projectile only increases the drag, meaning it has to accelerate even more on the track, making the option of using a slingshot even more ridiculous.

So what initial velocity would be required to leave the atmosphere at the very least?

>Inside in the first shuttle being slingshoted to moon
>the thing goes off
>We go 0 KM/H to 900.000 KM/H in 3 seconds
>In first second everyone has an stroke or rupture in internal organs
>we all die
>Nasa claims they need more money to perfect the project

>imply that we would be sending people and not non-valuables

Are you reffering to sending black people? That is racist.

A slingshot would work fine on the moon, but a railgun type launcher would be cooler

>do the same thing but shot the payload through a tube
>ELON MUSK DOES IT AGAIN

Approximately 40000 feet per second, rounded to the ten-thousands

Huh...now I feel like getting myself a slingshot.

>40000 feet per second
>only 12192 meters per second

Then just make the slingshot larger, dummy.

Damn my nostalgia is kicking in
>Be 12
>Launch ball bearing parallel to pond, watch it skip like 50 times across
>Hone my skills
>Walking around in the woods with my slingshot just shooting random things
>Couldn't bring myself to shoot animals because I felt it would be a waste
Come to think of it hunting small game with a slingshot would be fun af.

Not really a slingshot but this is what the HARP gun was for. The ultimate project goal was launching small satellites into LEO for a trivial cost. It was actually working pretty well but eventually lost its funding due to people pressuring the government into refunding a project they saw as having only military applications and "insane"

A rubber slingshot would be impractical, we could get stuff moving really fast using a giant gas gun or electromagnetic mass driver. It would need to be thousands of kilometers long in order to safely launch people though.

>Implying the thing won´t incinerate or even break by being hit with so much energy
>Implying a thing that even can handle being hit by so much energy won´t weight like a gazillion KG

The HARP project found some pretty good ways to protect against the shock. It's not at all impossible