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DIY Cruise Missile Designer Turns Freelance
js7a writes "Bruce Simpson of New Zealand, the designer of a homebrew cruise missile as reported here, has been left destitute by hastily-imposed restrictions of his national authorities, and is now offering his services to any non-terrorist willing to provide room, board, travel, expenses, and a negotiated rate. There is no question that cruise missile, UAV, bio-warfare, chemical weapons technology, and probably nuclear technologies will all continue to fall in cost significantly for the foreseeable future."
Awesome, so I'll see this guy on this list real soon now, right?
[o]_O
Good idea mentioning Bull, but a really, really bad description of his life.
;) The cost of the project was tiny compared to most rocket programs, and they almost succeeded. Fascinating program, really.
Gerald Bull was a revolutionary ballistics designer; he was insturmental in pioneering such fields as sabot-launched projectiles (including the use of such projectiles for to replace hypersonic wind tunnel testing of objects). He also developed the concept of "base bleed" - in general,using a small rocket motor on the back of a projectile, not to provide thrust, but to fill the vaccum created as the projectile moves.
His first job after graduation was with CARDE, a Canadian research institution funded mostly by government projects. He worked on a few projects there, and due to his somewhat tactless nature (such as publicly questioning the intelligence of his funders at times), created his first enemies (in what was to become a long string of them).
While working at McGill University after CARDE, he got Pentagon and Canadian funding for the infamous HARP (High Altitude Research Project) (read Astronautix.com's summary of it - it's a very interesting read). HARP developed guns both in Barbados and Canada, with the Canadian guns used for testing, and the Barbados guns used for launches to take advantage of the Earth's rotation. The net goal of HARP was to get a projectile into orbit. Their main gun was a huge smoothbore made from two welded 16' naval guns, burning ungodly amounts of cordite; its fireball when it went off was huge
A lot of stuff happened. Partly because of political differences over the Vietnam war, and partly because Bull had made several influential people in the Canadian government mad, funding got pulled. Their last dash to get a projectile into orbit failed, and the gun has been sitting idle ever since.
Bull took all of the tech that he could and founded his own company. While he wanted to keep pursuing what HARP was working on, he basically had little choice but to make artillery pieces if he wanted to stay afloat. Using base bleed, he created some of the world's longest range and most accurate artillery pieces of the time. The US allowed (some say encouraged) him to sell weapons to South Africa, which were funnelled into Angola. However, an (overzealous?) customs agent brought charges against him; he served a short term in prison, and was released, bitter.
He moved to Brussels and agreed to sell weapons to the highest bidder, anyone except the USSR. He sold several systems to countries such as China, before finding a sponsor in Saddam Hussein. However, to be allowed to implement the ballistic-launch concept, he agreed to work on several other projects, most notably the al-Hussein missiles (enhanced SCUDs).
The gun he worked on - often called the Babylon Supergun - wasn't much of a threat to anyone. It used the concept of slow combustion - basically, having your explosives move along the barrel with the projectile, limiting the force on the barrel at any given point. A smaller version was completed, and the larger version was under construction.
What got him into trouble, however, was the al-Hussein project. While some try and cast it into doubt, there is generally little doubt that his assasination was carried out by the Mossad. His family reported that several times, he had his apartment broken into, and furniture randomly rearranged as a warning. In the end, he was found dead outside his room, five bullets in the back of his neck.
Bull wasn't a well organized person, and both of his projects fell apart without him there. Sanctions against Iraq further led to the confiscation of parts to build the gun (which he had tried to disguise as pipe components). The supergun was finally destroyed after the Gulf War.
The real moral of the story is, if you're a ballistics expert, A) don't tick off your funders, B) don't tick off Israel, and C) learn to take a hint.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Israel to kill in U.S., allied nations Source: UPI / interviews with former Israeli intelligence agents and CIA agents.
Cite: " Gerald Bull, an Ontario-born U.S. citizen and designer of the Iraqi supergun -- a massive artillery system capable of launching satellites into orbit, and of delivering nuclear chemical or biological payloads from Baghdad to Israel -- was killed in Belgium in March 1990. The killing is still unsolved, but former CIA officials said a Mossad hit team is the most likely suspect."
New evidence of Mossad involvement in Belgium murder case Source: Haaretz Daily (an Israeli newspaper) / the Belgian government
Cite: "The Belgian State Prosecutor is considering reopening a probe into the murder of Canadian scientist Dr. Gerald Bull in Brussels 12 years ago, amid new suspicions that the Mossad was responsible. Belgian police say they have new information that the Mossad was directly involved in killing Bull."
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
And yet, don't you find it frusterating that blunt honesty is so harshly repaid?
May we never see th
This will probably kill my server (perhaps someone can throw it on bit-torrent or mirror it) but there's a video clip on my website from a news and current affairs program here in New Zealand that documented my case.
One NZ'ers investigation of the GCSB,
Actually, as you'll see if you watch the video, I *did* turn over suspicious communications to the SIS (the NZ Secret Service) and cooperated with them at their request.
However, since my support of them wasn't reciprocated I formally withdrew that support following the bankruptcy.
I'm buggered if I'm going to be an unpaid employee of a government that would do what they've done to my family.
My attitude now is that I'll simply ignore any communications that I discover to be associated with any potentially undesirable group.
If the SIS want my help, they can pay me for it.
Made a point that according to NZ gov't you could sell away to the Iranians -- making them look stupid
So making the government look stupid is a crime punishable by impoverishment?
Took the proceeds from the $200K and didn't pay your tax debt, didn't set aside savings or investments for your family and spent the money building something you don't need and lots of people don't want
Not correct. Most of the $200K was spent repaying loans and other costs I'd incurred while building up 7am.com. Work it out -- $200K for 3-years of 18-hour days, 7 days a week with little income. You can build up a lot of debt during that time and $200K doesn't go far repaying it.
It's also worth noting that in the two years following the one in which I received payment for 7am.com, I paid $135K in tax on taxable income of $200K.
That sounds like an awful lot doesn't it?
That's because only a small percentage of that was actual *tax*, the rest was a mountain of interest and penalties that the tax department piled on with glee.
It's worth noting that (because there's no capital gains tax in New Zealand) there was little tax actually owing on the sale of the company. The penalty bill was many, many times the actual tax -- and at the time they bankrupted me, I'd paid the vast majority of that off.
Refused to go on the dole
Yes, like most people I'd rather work for a living than sponge off others. The only problem is that the government has effectively forbidden me from earning a living because there aren't really a whole lot of jobs going for missile designers here in NZ. That's why I'm looking further afield.
Hardly something to criticise is it?
Sorry to reply to my own post but exactly how long were you behind in taxes
In my case the IRD appear to have thrown their own rule book out the door so they felt happy to pile on enormous penalties and refuse to waive them even though they were in breach of the law.
When an Ernst Young tax accountant challenged them on this and requested a meeting as my appointed representitive, they refused to talk with him.
What's more, although I was punished for my own tardy record-keeping, the IRD directly ignored the order of the courts on a number of separate occasions when directed to fix errors in their records.
How bad were their errors?
Well they even got my name wrong and, despite being advised of this and ordered to correct it on THREE separate occasions, by two district court judges and one high-court judge, they still hadn't done so when they applied to bankrupt me.
In fact, the bankruptcy was issued in the wrong name! Yet, in an unprecedented move, the judgement of the High Court was apparently ammended by a clerk who simply changed the name after the event.
On an earlier occasion, the IRD were also harshly berated by the court for not properly accounting for a very large (over)payment I had been made but which not credited to my account.
In fact, their whole approach to this case was unprofessional and, even when I'd gotten all my filing up to date (a year before they filed the bankruptcy move) and paid all but a small amount of the money I was supposed to have owed, their records were still in a shambles.
It seems that nobody, not even the deputy PM or the Minister for Revenue cared about this minor fact -- which again leaves me believing that this was nothing to do with debt recovery and all about scuttling an embarrassing crusise missile project.
The Americans backed the mujahideen, not the Taliban. It was the mujahideen who were the "freedom fighters" in Afgahanistan. Seems that your bias is coming through.
You may want to read up on the taliban in Afganistan.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.