Giant space air cannon

[qwerty]

Pretty cool, eh..

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... r-gun.html

[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.

[inonickname]

Space guns are usually light gas or ram accelerators. Simple technology, but incredibly hard to perfect.

[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

[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.

[psycix]

It's basically a springer powered by a truckload of TNT (or similar).

[D_Hall]

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).