Slashdot Mirror
Gigantic Air Gun To Blast Cargo Into Orbit
Hugh Pickens writes: "The New Scientist reports that with a hat tip to Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon , physicist John Hunter has outlined the design of a gigantic gun that could slash the cost of putting cargo into orbit. At the Space Investment Summit in Boston last week, Hunter described the design for a 1.1-kilometer-long gun that he says could launch 450-kilogram payloads at 6 kilometers per second. A small rocket engine would then boost the projectile into low-Earth orbit. The gun would cost $500 million to build, says Hunter, but individual launch costs would be lower than current methods. 'We think it's at least a factor of 10 cheaper than anything else,' Hunter says. The gun is based on the SHARP (Super High Altitude Research Project) light gas gun Hunter helped to build in the 1990s while at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. With a barrel 47 meters long, it used compressed hydrogen gas to fire projectiles weighing a few kilograms at speeds of up to 3 kilometers per second."
If you RTA (yes I know, not likely), you'll see that they acknowledge this issue, their intent is to use this for robust cargo only (rocket fuel is given as an example, not e.g. satellites or humans). They also state that ablative heatshields would be necessary to survive atmospheric transit, so wouldn't be a fully reusable vehicle either. Sounds like one for the back burner, as it isn't solving the current launch capability issues.
Oh no... it's the future.
Bullshit. Several weapon systems do just that, including the rocket assisted howitzer shells used in the M109 Paladin.
Bull was killed by Mossad because he was helping Iraq build a "supergun". You make it sound like he was killed because of Project HARP.
Search for Gerald Bull and read abut his super-gun project.
> Cargo it seems would have a better chance but any sensitive equipment (like
> 99% of anything used in space) or explosive materials (fuel) wouldn't be able
> to be shot up in a gun.
Nonsense. Guns have been firing projectiles filled with explosives for centuries. The US Army has had shells filled not only with explosives but optics, electronics, and actuators for terminal guidance for dacades. In WWII they had anti-aircraft guns that fired shells with vacuum tube proximity detonators in them. In WWI they used shells with self-winding mechanical timers. Fuel would be easy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The acceleration is an artillery piece runs to the thousands of Gs. Artillery shells are full of explosives, electronics, and machinery. This gun should be able to handle pretty much all of the consumables and many of the parts and materials needed by the space station.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Which, given that artillery shells exceed 2000g and are full of explosives, electronics, and machinery, should be easy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
For those who don't know, the OP is referring to pumpkin chunking. It's a competition to see whose machine can throw a pumpkin the farthest. There are separate categories for catapults, trebuchets and cannons, and there are annual competitions and championships all over the world.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
With discrete component electronics you just pot the whole thing in epoxy. I don't know how well that works with integrated circuits -- the point of failure is likely to be the fine wires that connect the chip to the package leads, although those may be light enough that the real concern is vibration rather than steady G force. Even vacuum tubes can be built tough, if they're built small.
But ~400 Gs (per calculations by a poster above) is nothing. The radio proximity fuzes in WW II antiaircraft projectiles didn't use transistors, and had to withstand ~20,000 Gs when fired and ~5,000 Gs of shell spin.
-- Alastair
A catapult uses a spring of some sort.
A trebuchet uses a falling weight.
The idea of the long barreled cannon is that it can spread out the acceleration of the object over its travel down the length of the barrel, rather than relying on a short rapid acceleration that would be likely to cause damage.
It saves a great deal of fuel by getting the rocket needed to achieve the remaining velocity going 3km/sec and above the atmosphere.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Extreme heat and magnetic forces would make it harder on the payload. Ultra high energy railguns usually need to have thier rails replaced everyfiring. Add in the complexity of, no doubt, hundreds of massive capicitors, it would be like the LHC.
It's not even 1 Km^2 total, even if the final pressure in the tube was 3000 atm. Certainly not enough to change the weather.
The beauty of the system is it's very simple which translates to inexpensive (for something of that scale anyway). The engine for orbit is based mostly on the need to take the most direct practical path out of the atmosphere rather than start out on an orbital trajectory.
I'm thinking it'll be a solid fuel engine to withstand the launch stresses and to be inexpensive and reliable.
The idea is to avoid costly precision. Just shoot it up there, track it's orbit and go get it. (yeah, not quite THAT simple...)
You won't ride to orbit on this, but there's lots of stuff that doesn't have to worry about being pulped on launch.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I don't know about the GP but I only needed one look. Do you realise you have reinvented Luminiferous ether?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.