May need a gun launch forum now:-)

[Viv]

Interesting company, based in Canada.

http://www.columbiad.ca/index.html

Viv

[Mike Everman]

absolutely faaasciinating reading, thanks!

[Viv]

absolutely faaasciinating reading, thanks!

Gun launching has a bit of a history, the guy who was involved in the Iraki supergun fiasco was the head man on a big project I think in Canada.

I will have to look up the referance, I think Bruno gave me the original url, they had a big naval gun with an extended barrel, it fired a ram jet dart once.


Ah here we go http://www.astronautix.com/stages/harpgun.htm

And also http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/gunnched.htm

Viv

[Viv]

http://www.astronautix.com/stages/harpgun.htm


Wow I just read the spec on that gun, 2.3 kilometres a second muzzle velocity for a 250Kg projectile!!

Detonation velocity in that MHD PDE paper the other week was 2.5Kms to 3Kms and that was just a pressure wave imagine a shell at that speed!

Viv

[paul skinner]

absolutely faaasciinating reading, thanks!

Gun launching has a bit of a history, the guy who was involved in the Iraki supergun fiasco was the head man on a big project I think in Canada.

I will have to look up the referance, I think Bruno gave me the original url, they had a big naval gun with an extended barrel, it fired a ram jet dart once.


Ah here we go http://www.astronautix.com/stages/harpgun.htm

And also http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/gunnched.htm

Viv

His name was Dr. Gerald Bull (headed the HARP project in Canada) and he was an absolutely brilliant engineer. I studied at University of Toronto where he taught for a few years. There's quite of bit of info on him in the engineering dept.

A bit of info on him if you're interested;

http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/bull.htm

[Bruno Ogorelec]

Yes, Dr. Bull.... A warning to all of us who my want to go too far with our pet ideas. He sure met a sorry end.

Bruno
The Singing Pig Propulsion Inc.

[paul skinner]

Yes, Dr. Bull.... A warning to all of us who my want to go too far with our pet ideas. He sure met a sorry end.

Bruno
The Singing Pig Propulsion Inc.

Yeah, he sure chose the wrong people as friends didn't he? I think he was even warned by Mossad on numerous occasions not to work with the Iraqi's, and chose to ignore the warnings in pursuit of the money. Hard to believe a man so brilliant could be so foolish.

[Mark]

Yes, Dr. Bull.... A warning to all of us who my want to go too far with our pet ideas. He sure met a sorry end.

Bruno
The Singing Pig Propulsion Inc.

Yeah, he sure chose the wrong people as friends didn't he? I think he was even warned by Mossad on numerous occasions not to work with the Iraqi's, and chose to ignore the warnings in pursuit of the money. Hard to believe a man so brilliant could be so foolish.

Perhaps it may be called hubris.
Mark

[Mike Kirney]

It was more than money that drove him into Saddam's arms, it was lust for revenge. The Americans cancelled one of his projects just as he was on the verge of a breakthrough I think. With no funding available in North America, he sold some ideas to the South Africans, which ran him afoul of US arms export laws and may have even landed him in jail for a year or two (not sure about that though). In just a couple of years, he went from testing gun-launched rockets from his yacht in Barbados to being an unemployed ex-con puttering about in his Montreal flat. Poor and angry at America, instead of hitting the lecture circuit or writing a book, he decided to build a giant cannon so that Saddam could bomb Israel without having to leave his compound. Its amazing to think about the disparity between where some people start life and where they wind up. Dr. Bull was born and raised in North Bay, Ontario, a largish town (80,000 people) but still quite backcountry in character. It's largest industry nowadays is hunting and angling tours. You are much more likely to find yourself talking about snowmobiles there than Middle Eastern terror cannons. Mike Harris, former premier of Ontario, is also from North Bay. I would guess that those two guys are about the same age. I wonder if they went high school together. I went to college for three semesters in North Bay, but I didn't learn anything about giant hillside cannons. Damn.

[Bruno Ogorelec]

I went to college for three semesters in North Bay, but I didn't learn anything about giant hillside cannons. Damn.

When I was in college, I didn't encounter any giant hillside cannons either. Just some giant pink elephants, but that was vodka, I think.

[Joe]

[quote="Principal Skinner"]
Yeah, he sure chose the wrong people as friends didn't he? I think he was even warned by Mossad on numerous occasions not to work with the Iraqi's, and chose to ignore the warnings in pursuit of the money. Hard to believe a man so brilliant could be so foolish.[/quote]

No, he didn't work with Saddam for money or revenge; for that matter he didn't even sell 155mm guns to S. Africa for money. The Babylon gun project was Bull's pet. What Saddam wanted was a multi-stage Scud which he had Bull working on, probably because, while a space gun would have the potential to bombard Israel in mass, the rockets were a proven technology. If I recall right, Bull wanted to use the 1000mm gun for, of course, space launch, and thoughtlessly marketed the idea to Saddam for funding.
As for the HARP project, it wasn't Canadian. Where the heck do you think he got 16" gun barrels to weld together? I've certainly never heard of the Canadians using any of them. HARP was a joint US-Canada project, and it died when the US Congress cut its funding because of some dispute with Canada. Yes, Bull was making significant progress toward a real orbital launch, probably no more than five years from doing it, given enough money.
Some time after HARP was cancelled in the late 60s, the CIA made some deal with Bull to sell artillery to the South Africans. Apparently Bull had continued research into the 70's with Extended Range projectiles for 155mm guns, and his own 155mm gun is considered one of the best (according to the plaque at Ft. Sill, OK, where there's one in the 'Missile Park')
They wanted to help the South Africans fight some Communist rebels, but they were under embargo because of apartheid, so the CIA had Bull, who had certain abilities to produce and export arms according to different laws, to ship the guns to somewhere in south eaat Asia that I can't remember, sign paperwork saying he was going to dump them in the Indian Ocean to destroy them, and then sail to South Africa instead. Somewhere along the line, he got caught, obviously couldn't prove he was on government business, and spent six months in federal prison.
As for his assination some years later, there is of course the widely held theory that it was Mossad, although it is also said he had compiled some incriminating documents on a few CIA officials, and made the mistake of allowing them to find out (what blew the cover on the Babylon project was, after all, Bull's loud mouth).
Anyway, if you want to see giant cannons, or at least some of the stuff that goes with them, go to Bull's place on the US/Canada border, or to Barbados.

[Viv]

Yeah, he sure chose the wrong people as friends didn't he? I think he was even warned by Mossad on numerous occasions not to work with the Iraqi's, and chose to ignore the warnings in pursuit of the money. Hard to believe a man so brilliant could be so foolish.

No, he didn't work with Saddam for money or revenge; for that matter he didn't even sell 155mm guns to S. Africa for money. The Babylon gun project was Bull's pet. What Saddam wanted was a multi-stage Scud which he had Bull working on, probably because, while a space gun would have the potential to bombard Israel in mass, the rockets were a proven technology. If I recall right, Bull wanted to use the 1000mm gun for, of course, space launch, and thoughtlessly marketed the idea to Saddam for funding.
As for the HARP project, it wasn't Canadian. Where the heck do you think he got 16" gun barrels to weld together? I've certainly never heard of the Canadians using any of them. HARP was a joint US-Canada project, and it died when the US Congress cut its funding because of some dispute with Canada. Yes, Bull was making significant progress toward a real orbital launch, probably no more than five years from doing it, given enough money.
Some time after HARP was cancelled in the late 60s, the CIA made some deal with Bull to sell artillery to the South Africans. Apparently Bull had continued research into the 70's with Extended Range projectiles for 155mm guns, and his own 155mm gun is considered one of the best (according to the plaque at Ft. Sill, OK, where there's one in the 'Missile Park')
They wanted to help the South Africans fight some Communist rebels, but they were under embargo because of apartheid, so the CIA had Bull, who had certain abilities to produce and export arms according to different laws, to ship the guns to somewhere in south eaat Asia that I can't remember, sign paperwork saying he was going to dump them in the Indian Ocean to destroy them, and then sail to South Africa instead. Somewhere along the line, he got caught, obviously couldn't prove he was on government business, and spent six months in federal prison.
As for his assination some years later, there is of course the widely held theory that it was Mossad, although it is also said he had compiled some incriminating documents on a few CIA officials, and made the mistake of allowing them to find out (what blew the cover on the Babylon project was, after all, Bull's loud mouth).
Anyway, if you want to see giant cannons, or at least some of the stuff that goes with them, go to Bull's place on the US/Canada border, or to Barbados.

Cool, thanks for that, I find the whole idea of gun launching quite fascinating.

The article that started this thread is still of interest and worth reading, the main thing I noticed was the idea to gun launch rolls of aluminium in to orbit for production of construction beams and stuff in space.

But it could be silicon ingots for semiconductor production or similar, the cost per kilo is still the main hurdle for orbital production crack that and it will be a license to print money.

Viv

[Jim Berquist]

Didn't Fearless leader try this too!!

He had a cannon that was longer then a football field and had a diameter of something like 1 meter....????

Julse Vern???

jim....

OK I CAN'T SPELL.....

[Psignorian]

After catching that mythbusters episode with the civil war rocket, gun-launching has stuck into the back of my mind, given how they had an ejection charge at the base of the tube. An interesting idea occured to me in the form of a recoilless gun(no rifling)-launched rocket, where a cartridge would be inserted into the bottom to provide the initial thrust, then the conventional rocket motor would take over to send it skyward. Not sure if that would be a sort of "easier said than done" thing, but it wouldn't have to have such a heavy platform to launch from. Something to consider, particularly in the interests of keeping this thread in line with rocketry. Ah, if only I didn't live in an apartment...