History Main / SpaceshipSlingshotStunt

* Used a few times in the ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'':

* In ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'', while explaining the plan of getting to the asteroid, Dan Truman, NASA director, mentions that they will use a slingshot move around the moon to gain speed. As soon as he hears the word "slingshot," Rockhound, resident wise-ass, mentions that he saw this happen before when The Coyote used an Acme slingshot and that it didn't work out too well for him. Truman dryly responds, "We have better slingshots than the Coyote."

In RealLife, gravity assists are a well-known and often-used phenomenon and have far wider applications (and limitations) than those depicted in fiction. Wiki/TheOtherWiki does a good job explaining the ramifications.

* Parodied in one ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode, in which Zapp Brannigan does this while piloting [[WhatDidYouExpectWhenYouNamedIt the Titanic space-liner]] for pretty much no reason.

* A DifficultButAwesome way of saving fuel in VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram. Experienced players can even learn to pull off this sort of maneuver manually for common transfers like Kerbin-to-Munar-Orbit using dead reckoning and some mental geometry. ''Extremely'' experienced players eventually learn to use elaborate flight plans to slingshot and break spacecraft into and out of velocities nearing fractions of light speed with absurdly small fuel costs. This is both helped and required, however, by the game's only slight indulgence in SpaceCompression. While players can fast forward through the days or months of travel between burns, even high speed, low-tolerance burns can last several seconds or minutes, leaving plenty of time to correct for pilot error or use vector nodes to plan out that next burn.

* The ''Galileo'' spacecraft, which was crashed into the Jovian atmosphere in 2003, used slingshots from Venus, Earth, and Earth again to gain enough velocity to reach Jupiter. The ''Cassini'' spacecraft (which was controlled to crash into Saturn in Sep 15th, 2017), has taken this trope UpToEleven making two flybys of Venus, one of the Earth, and one of Jupiter to boost her towards Saturn, as well as using Titan's (Saturn's largest moon) gravity to change her orbit, allowing exploration of the Saturnian system. The ''Rosetta'' mission which used four gravity assists (Earth, Mars, Earth and Earth ''again'') to catch the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Finally, ''JUICE'', launching in 2022, will probably take the record for the highest usage of gravity assists in a single mission, using ''five'' gravity assists--Earth, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Earth ''again''--to boost it up to an orbit around Jupiter in 2032, and then 30 more gravity assists off Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto to slow it down enough to enter orbit around Ganymede in 2034.

* Integral to the pilot of ''Series/{{Farscape}}''. Proving the feasibility of this maneuver is the whole reason John went into space with ''Farscape One''. By the conclusion of the pilot, he proves his theory using Moya, with Aeryn Sun piloting and him doing the calculations on the floor, using the maneuver to escape the Peacekeepers. He performs the maneuver several times throughout the series, trying to recreate the accident that sent him to that part of space. The only thing he knows is that it involved this maneuver and a solar flare. (The maneuver here doesn't, incidentally, [[ArtisticLicensePhysics make terribly much sense]]: rather than a traditional gravity assist, he seems to be trying to accelerate to escape velocity by skipping across the upper atmosphere, a maneuver which rightly ought to ''break'' his SpacePlane.)

* A fixture of naval tactics in ''Literature/KrisLongknife'', with Kris in particular known for planning complex combinations of gravity assists to come at her enemies from unexpected angles. It's not the slingshot itself that is unusual, just her proficiency at it.

* In one issue of ''Kid Gravity'', a ''Magazine/DisneyAdventures'' comic, Kid Gravity uses this to escape a black hole, [[LampshadeHanging with his nemesis wondering how such a feat is even physically possible]]. Upon returning to school Gravity is punished for breaking the laws of physics.

* In a post-''[[Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack Empire]]'' issue of the original run of ''ComicBook/StarWarsMarvel1977'', Luke uses the Force to help pilot the Millenium Falcon around a black hole to escape a pursuing star destroyer, which is unable to replicate the maneuver and is pulled in.

* In the 2018 Swedish [[TheFilmOfTheBook adaptation]] of ''Literature/{{Aniara}}'', the eponymous spacecraft has been forced to dump all its fuel and is now travelling into the void with no means of propulsion. TheCaptain cites this trope as a means of returning home, however it's just a MotivationalLie to keep things calm because there's no hope for any of them.

* Integral to the pilot of ''Series/{{Farscape}}''. Proving the feasibility of this maneuver is the whole reason John went into space with ''Farscape One''. By the conclusion of the pilot, he proves his theory using Moya, with Aeryn Sun piloting and him doing the calculations on the floor, using the maneuver to escape the Peacekeepers. He performs the maneuver several times throughout the series, trying to recreate the accident that sent him to that part of space. The only thing he knows is that it involved this maneuver and a solar flare. (The maneuver here doesn't, incidentally, [[ArtisticLicensePhysics make terribly much sense]]: rather than a traditional gravity assist, he seems to be trying to accelerate to escape velocity by skipping across the upper atmosphere, a maneuver which rightly ought to ''brake'' his SpacePlane.)

* Used in ''WesternAnimation/GreenLanternTheAnimatedSeries'' where Hal Pilots a ship [[spoiler:Into a pinhole (miniature black hole), making it "skip" over the accretion disk like a stone over water which somehow lets the ship shoot out of the pinhole's event horizon towards safety]]. Made further confusing when earlier in the episode the gravity was strong enough to "spaghetti" the prow of the ship, yet when later they are much closer to [[spoiler:The pinhole, skipping on its accretion disk,]] the ship suffers no structural damage.

* Music/UnleashTheArchers: [[https://youtu.be/_yFH-O05uS0 "Soulbound"'s]] first verse describes the Immortal and the Grandson using a swing around a remnant of a neutron star to fling themselves "into dark galactic space".

* Slingshot manouevres around Jupiter and its moons were used to give the Voyager spacecraft the extra impetus and direction to go onwards to encounter Uranus and Neptune. Otherwise they would have run out of fuel and propulsive power and taken a lot longer to reach the outermost planets.

* The ''Galileo'' spacecraft, which was disposed of in the Jovian atmosphere in 2003, used slingshots from Venus, Earth, and Earth again to gain enough velocity to reach jupiter. The ''Cassini'' spacecraft (which was controlled to crash into Saturn in Sep 15th, 2017), has taken this trope UpToEleven making two flybys of Venus, one of the Earth, and one of Jupiter to boost her towards Saturn, as well as using Titan's (Saturn's largest moon) gravity to change her orbit, allowing exploration of the Saturnian system. The ''Rosetta'' mission which used four gravity assists (Earth, Mars, Earth and Earth ''again'') to catch the comet 67P.

* In the 2018 Swedish [[TheFilmOfTheBook adaptation]] of ''Literature/{{Aniara}}'', the spaceship has been forced to dump all its fuel and is now travelling into the void with no means of propulsion. TheCaptain cites this trope as a means of returning home, however it's just a MotivationalLie to keep things calm because there's no hope for any of them.

* In ''Brake'' by Creator/PoulAnderson, a torchship on runaway course out of the solar system has a choice of doing a slingshot around Jupiter which might take them back to Earth in a few years, but not before their food runs out, or an even riskier course of using the friction of the planet's atmosphere to brake their speed, then hope their neutral buoyancy is enough to prevent them sinking into the gas giant before they're rescued.

* In the 2018 Swedish [[TheFilmOfTheBook adaptation]] of ''Literature/{{Aniara}}'', the spaceship has been forced to dump all its fuel and is now travelling into the void with no means of propulsion, but TheCaptain cites this trope as a means of returning to Mars, however it's just a MotivationalLie to keep things calm because there's no hope for any of them.

* In the 2018 Swedish FilmAdaptation of ''Literature/{{Aniara}}'', the spaceship has been forced to dump all its fuel and is now travelling into the void with no means of propulsion, but TheCaptain cites this trope as a means of returning to Mars, however it's just a MotivationalLie to keep things calm because there's no hope for any of them.

* Both the Earth and Martian forces in ''Anime/AldnoahZero'' make use of slingshot maneuvers during space combat, but that's not the impressive part. The impressive part is Slaine firing off two volleys of bullets at a seemingly anonymous patch of sky before the battle, only for the bullets to slingshot around the Earth [[spoiler:and come down to shoot his ally Saazbaum InTheBack at the climax of the episode, with just enough time between the volleys for Slaine to explain his treachery to the disbelieving Saazbaum]].

** One episode of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' had Janeway attempting to drive an alien force that had been experimenting on her crew off by flying between a pair of pulsars. Tuvok remarks that it's a far more reckless course of action than he'd come to expect from her. The aliens leave rather than face the pulsars, but ''Voyager'' flies through, counting on their momentum to help them escape. Once they're safe on the other side, Janeway remarks she didn't know Tuvok thought she was reckless, to which he responds, "Poor choice of words, Captain. It was clearly an understatement."

** A semi-regular appearance during the [[Literature/NewJediOrder Yuuzhan Vong War]] where the maneuver is called a ''[[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Solo_Slingshot Solo Slingshot]]''. In this instance the ship is being slingshot around a miniature ''singularity'' instead of a planet and is thus much faster and more dangerous that usual with Han being the first pilot skilled/crazy enough to pull it off. Late in the war the Yuuzhan Vong themselves make use of this tactic much to the chagrin of Han's daughter Jaina.

* In a post-[[Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack Empire]] issue of the original run of ComicBook/MarvelStarWars, Luke uses the force to help pilot the Millenium Falcon around a black hole to escape a pursuing star destroyer, which is unable to replicate the maneuver and is pulled in.

* A strikingly realistic depiction of a gravity turn, a real-world technique for achieving a stable orbit, appears in ''Discworld/TheLastHero'' of all books.

* In a post-[[Film/EmpireStrikesBack Empire]] issue of the original run of Comic/MarvelStarWars, Luke uses the force to help pilot the Millenium Falcon around a black hole to escape a pursuing star destroyer, which is unable to replicate the maneuver and is pulled in.