[pdoege]

Yeah, Spinlaunch is going to dump a lot of energy into the lower atmosphere, shed its glowing white hot shell, and then need get enough deltaV to put up a payload.

Anyway, the earliest patent I could find was a steam centripetal launcher in 1918. It never went anywhere and it has been followed by a number of improbable reinventions that all faded away.

NASA and the US Army tried again in 1982 and thought they could put a 60g projectile down range at 3 km/s. Mach 8. Guns and rockets could perform as well or better with simpler systems and the idea was shelved.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US1332992 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982ITM....18..209F/abstra...