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Giant space air cannon
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 1:55 am
by qwerty
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:03 am
by jackssmirkingrevenge
It depends what they mean by "air" gun, presumably it's a light gas gun.
Gerald Bull (one of my personal heroes, his
biography is a fascinating read) of the High Altitude research Project was doing this sort of thing with powder burning guns
over 4 decades ago.
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:23 am
by inonickname
Space guns are usually light gas or ram accelerators. Simple technology, but incredibly hard to perfect.
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:24 am
by rikukiakuchiki777
Aha, I did a physics project on the SHARP (the air-space gun) gun
It was arbitrarily assigned to me, and I was sitting there with the largest smile on my face during class... good times
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:39 am
by Moonbogg
That thing is friggin insane. A cannon over 1km long! Maybe they could use a lesson from the pneumatic guys here on how to make a proper piston for that thing. I wonder how they plan on releasing the gas? It is likely a series of staged releases along the length I would assume.
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 5:33 am
by psycix
It's basically a springer powered by a truckload of TNT (or similar).
Re: Giant space air cannon
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:24 pm
by D_Hall
qwerty wrote:Pretty cool, eh..
Umm... Not really.
"Guns to space" have been investigated since the 60s. They always have a person or three advocating them in one form or another. And yet, in 40+ years nobody has managed to pull it off, let alone in anything that even resembles a cost effective manner.
In other words, call me when they pull off their first launch to orbit. My money says that the phone never rings (at least, not because you were calling to announce the successful launch).