Clever Canadian Crafting Cool Cannon to Catapult CubeSats Into Cosmos

Fun with alliteration aside....

This is very interesting, in that it will bring down the cost of launching CubeSats/PhoneSats and small experiments into Earth orbit substantially.

This is the Starfire Space Cannon. It's been built and tested by Richard Graf and his cohorts up in Cochrane, Canada. The goal of the Starfire cannon is to launch small, lawn dart-sized projectiles into orbit as vehicles for small satellites. Of course, there is a small problem with this sort of project: governments, even happy-go-lucky Canadian ones, don't much like it when you own a cannon capable of starting an international incident.

Graf is of the opinion that space is for everyone, and he means to get us there, one cannon shell at a time. To that end, he's constructed a 45-foot long cannon with an eight-inch bore. To further speed his projectiles into space, he's designed his cannon to fire its propellant in sequential charges as the shell — er, launch vehicle — travels down the barrel. Graf says this will break up the massive G forces which a projectile endures as it's fired.

Kooky Canuck kickstarts killer cosmic cannon for cubesats



www.dvice.com...

reply to post by JadeStar


Kind of an interesting approach, but why not just use a rail gun (lorentz force), we have lots of land in Canada and some bigass hills. The acceleration would be considerably smoother and the exit velocity of the projectile could exceed 18,000 mph. I can see it being problematic for experiments that used magnetic media obviously, but with so many different flavours of thumb drive and RAM stick out there these days, a hard drive isn't necessary to record data.

Cheers - Dave

Canadians? Ah. Really? You liberals are really diabolical. I thought like maybe the Ethiopian s were gonna invent the cube, space cannon thingey? ( This is not as bad as picking all of Islam as "The official Hot" people when a lot of them advocate an unsavoury attitude towards the rest of us.) What has Canada done for us lately? I mean like, Canada? Invade anybody lately? "Weapons of mass destruction"? We did that. Gulf a Tonkin, 911, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukashima..... yep American made. And you shot a rubiks cube into space? Really? Canadians? Should be Ethiopian s got to do the cube thingey, they're all sveldt snappy dressers.

reply to post by JadeStar


As fun as this is, depending the altitudes achieved, it concerns me a wee bit in consideration of orbital parking, and the substantial and even dangerous mess that could be made.

What was that recent movie where a catastrophic debris cloud takes out all the space stations and satellites?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for space for everyone that wants it.
If age reversal/extension technologies come along in the next 50 years such I'll have time to eventually go post-biological, I'd love to get off this rock and start planting my own little flags, even if it takes thousands of years between each destination.

I think, however, there's a certain degree of responsibility to ensure one's own payloads don't go bumping into anyone else's or jamming up the "road" for other traffic.

Otherwise, fire away, and get those cubes doing some science!

That is great....I like how the article talks about governments not liking it hahah...more power to that guy...hopefully he can eventually achieve a stable orbit with those.

Have they test filed their cannon? It seems kind of risky, as how do they know it will achieve orbit and not just kill a moose downrange, as well as just splattering these things in space without having a clear idea of orbit and placement. Shooting off a space-capable cannon, and making "space available to everyone" have overtones of clearly catching critical criticism calmly.

AliceBleachWhite
As fun as this is, depending the altitudes achieved, it concerns me a wee bit in consideration of orbital parking, and the substantial and even dangerous mess that could be made.

Kind of like air traffic control but in space? Space orbit control, run by an international body?

I think geosynchronous satellites launched now are supposed to carry enough extra fuel to move them into a graveyard orbit so they won't clutter the limited geosynchronous space with "dead" objects, but yes it's already a concern since many satellites were launched before such a requirement existed and I'm not sure it's even international yet.

But it is nice to see innovation in launching payloads to space.

Aleister
Have they test filed their cannon? It seems kind of risky, as how do they know it will achieve orbit and not just kill a moose downrange, as well as just splattering these things in space without having a clear idea of orbit and placement. Shooting off a space-capable cannon, and making "space available to everyone" have overtones of clearly catching critical criticism calmly.

I am Concerned Crazy Kannuk Could Cannonade Klondike. Yikes.

I love the creativity of it all .

I'm going a different route , though in the seemingly endless ' developmental stage ' : VLO ( very low orbit ). Moose are safer , that way ( I hope ).

Already done by another Canadian (John Bull) WHO WAS MURDERED BY MOSSAD
THIS GUY COULD BE NEXT................