A group of guys on Kickstarter are trying to get people to help them build the Slingatron – a coil of railroad that basically shoots things into space. On the campaign page they explain their invention as such: “The Slingatron space launcher is an earth-based mechanical hypervelocity mass accelerator.”

Their vision:

We want to open up space for peaceful purposes in a dramatic way by significantly lowering space transportation costs, while dramatically increasing flight opportunities and launch reliability to earth orbit. Most importantly, we want you to be a part of this effort by not only being a backer of this Kickstarter project, but also by being a part of the user community that will grow out of this development effort. ABacker Participation Program in Slingatron Space Applications concept development is described further below.

Already the team has devised some prototypes of the thing that will one day be able to shoot a train into low Earth orbit. In order to do this however, they will need around R2,5 million to build a five meter Slingatron that should be able to launch a “1 pound payload at 2,237 mph.”

To check out their Kickstarter page, click here.

[Source: io9]