Why aren't we shooting supplies into space?

I recently read Jules Verne's novel From Earth to the Moon and without giving out the entire plot, it is basically a bunch of artillery enthusiasts from America who build a cannon to shoot a projectile to the moon. the book was written around 1850.

the cannon is 900 feet long and is able to shoot a 9ft by 5ft projectile to the moon. now i cant remember the exact specifications but the idea seems genius to me. why spend millions of dollars on building one time use space shuttles when we can shoot parts of the space station or satellites into orbit.

if Jules Verne was able to picture this scenario a century ago I'm sure that today we have the technology to accomplish this feat.

Any thoughts on the matter?

I wonder how much G will be involved in this launch?
Actually from what i heard there was a plan involving gradually accelerating train on magnetic railroad and releasing space craft once wanted speed is achieved.
spacemonitor.blogspot.com...
Not sure that cannon would work due to ,as i said , sudden acceleration problem and due to history of artillery systems.
Iraq was probably into something like this however:
en.wikipedia.org...

no what im suggesting makes Project Babylon look like a child's toy. the Babylon guns were made to shoot at Europe and Russia and America. I'm talking about shooting into space.

Originally posted by N. Tesla
no what im suggesting makes Project Babylon look like a child's toy. the Babylon guns were made to shoot at Europe and Russia and America. I'm talking about shooting into space.

Erm, the leap from hitting america from iraq to shooting into orbit isn't very great at all. In fact, project babylon was another stepping stone to being able to shoot into orbit as far as its creator was concerned.

the babylon canyon was made for firing projectiles no more then 14in in diameter. a satellite or anything for the space station would be bigger then a foot across

Originally posted by N. Tesla
I recently read Jules Verne's novel From Earth to the Moon and without giving out the entire plot, it is basically a bunch of artillery enthusiasts from America who build a cannon to shoot a projectile to the moon. the book was written around 1850.

the cannon is 900 feet long and is able to shoot a 9ft by 5ft projectile to the moon. now i cant remember the exact specifications but the idea seems genius to me. why spend millions of dollars on building one time use space shuttles when we can shoot parts of the space station or satellites into orbit.

if Jules Verne was able to picture this scenario a century ago I'm sure that today we have the technology to accomplish this feat.

Any thoughts on the matter?

i think the flaw in this theory is that it was devised in 1850. We have learned a lot since then. Shooting a 1 foot projectile into space isn't the big deal. It is shooting something the size of an ISS module. I just don't see it working. If you generate enough thrust with one big explosion, you end up destroying the projectile, i think (and the cannon).

Why not try a rail gun?

you don't have to generate all the thrust needed. you could equip the projectile with rockets to get it out of the atmosphere. it would still require fuel but definitely not as much as our current 4 or is it 5 stage rockets. i think it could be done. in 1850 verne also wrote about submarines. seemed crazy then too.

I'm sure this has been looked at. I remember a news item or documentary back in the late 80's about a Canadian maybe US scientist or somthing. There was some sort of conspiracy to do arm trading or leaking technology. The cannons he made were HUGE ! He proposed exactly what your talking about. It's just been so long I can't remember the details. It may have been that he went to another country to get funding for his project too. I think he may have even ended up dead. It's likley on the net somewhere.

Here's a link from a quick net search

www.daviddarling.info...

A Canadian aeronautical and artillery engineer at the center of various schemes to develop space cannons. Bull earned a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering and spent the 1950s researching supersonic aerodynamics in Canada. Inspired in his youth by reading Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, Bull’s dream was to fire projectiles from Earth’s surface directly into space. In 1961, he set up HARP (High Altitude Research Project), funded by McGill University in Montreal where Bull had become a professor in the mechanical engineering department, with support from the Army Ballistic Research Laboratory.

Following the collapse of HARP in 1967, Bull set up a private enterprise, Space Research Corporation, through which he tried to sell his space cannon ideas to various organizations and nations, including the Pentagon, China, Israel, and finally, Iraq. Bull’s ultimate goal was to put a cannon-round into orbit for scientific purposes, but the military potential of his designs led him to become an arms trader. He set up a weapons plant in northern Vermont complete with workshops, artillery range, launch-control buildings, and radar tracking station. In 1980, he was jailed in the United States for seven months for a customs violation in supplying the South African military. Once out of prison, he abandoned his American enclave to work full-time in Brussels, Belgium. In November 1987, he was contacted by the Iraqi Embassy and invited to Baghdad. Bull promised the Iraqis a launch system that could place large numbers of small satellites into orbit for tasks such as surveillance. By 1989, the Iraqis were paying Bull and his company $5 million a year to redesign their field artillery, with the promise of greater sums for Project Babylon – an immense space cannon. The Iraqi space-launcher was to have had a barrel 150 m long and been capable of firing rocket-assisted projectiles the size of a phone booth into orbit. However, it was never built and Bull soon paid the price for his dangerous liaisons. On Mar. 22, 1990, he was surprised at the door of his Brussels apartment and assassinated.





[edit on 14-7-2008 by Swingarm]

[edit on 14-7-2008 by Swingarm]

Using a giant gun based on a chemical reaction ( explosion which then shoots the projectile into orbit) is probably not feasible at this moment because we dont have the necessary materials that would withstand the great force produced by an explosion which would accelerate a ISS module into space.

Originally posted by N. Tesla
the babylon canyon was made for firing projectiles no more then 14in in diameter. a satellite or anything for the space station would be bigger then a foot across

A satellite can be as small as you like. It may be functionally limited, but the only qualification to be a satellite is to be in orbit of the earth. As others have said, a canon is not the best way to go about it for larger payloads.

As others pointed out, an explosion large enough to launch such a payload would be too difficult to contain and the excessive forces would likely damage the payload itself. Piggybacking is a much better option for getting out of the lower atmosphere before igniting your rockets.

All of that said, you could launch a micro satellite with a canon. It would probably be battery powered and so have a short lifespan, but it might still be useful if there's a specific single task or experiment you want to perform. It would need to be very compact and rugged, of course, and it might need some small thrusters to circularize its orbit.

[edit on 15-7-2008 by ngchunter]

Originally posted by ZeroKnowledge
I wonder how much G will be involved in this launch?

A typical bullet's initial acceleration is somewhere in the range of 10,000 to 20,000 G. That's based on a typical rifle muzzle velocity of 600 m/s and barrel length of about a meter

Actually, the G required to accelerate a projectile into orbit using this method would be many many orders of magnitude greater.

A projectile looses velocity during its entire flight through the air. Most rockets accelerate through their entire flight through the air (except for the space shuttle which briefly slows a bit through the lower thicker atmosphere to maintain vehicle integrity).

While theoretically possible, firing projectiles into orbit using conventional ballistics technology is totally impractical.

Space elevators are the future

www.spaceward.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

space elevators are impractical and impossible. there is no metal currently known to man that something like that can be built. watch the 3 part series called the 2057: city, 2057: health, and 2057 : world. the 2057: world part talks about space elevators but at this point they are still an impossibility.

reply to post by Swingarm

I remember a news item or documentary back in the late 80's

I watched a movie about this, that I rented, like 12 years ago.
Acording to the movie, he was killed by Musad.
from IMDB : the Doomsday Gun (1994) (TV)

Dr Gerald Bull was a genius at designing and building superguns. (Very large long range guns capable of shooting more than 100 Miles.) When a plan by the CIA to export restricted material using him was exposed, the CIA denied all knowledge and he went to jail. He was later released to help Saddam Hussein build a new supergun capable of firing over 500 miles. Israel, upon learning of the supergun, fears it would be used against themselves.

[edit on 15-7-2008 by jmdewey60]

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by Swingarm

 

I remember a news item or documentary back in the late 80's

I watched a movie about this, that I rented, like 12 years ago.
Acording to the movie, he was killed by Musad.

The truth of the matter is no one knows who did it. It could just as easily have been the doing of the Iranian sercurity agency as they were the ones who were fighting Iraq at the time. There was even a theory that the iraqi's did him in as he was becoming too much of a liability and was outliving his usefulness.

reply to post by N. Tesla


What you also have to take in to effect, is that with so many things that can go wrong just from traveling from Earth to the ISS. How many things can go even worse for an unmanned mission like shooting a projectile to the moon. Not only does it sound almost impossible (atleast today), but you also have to take in to effect the gravitational pull the earth might have on a projectile that is almost 10 ft tall. and if im not mistaking which I may be, but the moon is outside of Earths magnetic field. So not only does this projectile have to exceed and past our atmosphere it must also exceed our magnetic field while keeping this projectile on course with a landing spot already picked out on the moon. Just researching all this information, we might be better off sending robots to the moon.

Originally posted by N. Tesla
space elevators are impractical and impossible. there is no metal currently known to man that something like that can be built. watch the 3 part series called the 2057: city, 2057: health, and 2057 : world. the 2057: world part talks about space elevators but at this point they are still an impossibility.

you are correct, there is no metal known that could be used. That is why they are looking at carbon nanotubes:

The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality

For a space elevator to function, a cable with one end attached to the Earth's surface stretches upwards, reaching beyond geosynchronous orbit, at 21,700 miles (35,000-kilometer altitude). After that, simple physics takes charge.

The competing forces of gravity at the lower end and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end keep the cable under tension. The cable remains stationary over a single position on Earth. This cable, once in position, can be scaled from Earth by mechanical means, right into Earth orbit. An object released at the cable's far end would have sufficient energy to escape from the gravity tug of our home planet and travel to neighboring the moon or to more distant interplanetary targets.

Putting physics aside the toughest challenge has been finding a super-strong cable material. "That's what has kept this idea in science fiction for 40 years," Edwards said. But the right stuff in terms of cable material is no longer thought of as "unobtainium", he said.

The answer is carbon-nanotube-composite ribbon. Small fibers of the material are set down side-by-side, then interconnected to form a growing ribbon.

Stronger than steel

The hurdle to date, Edwards said, has been the commercial fabrication of carbon nanotubes. Both U.S. and Japanese firms, among others, are ramping up production of carbon nanotubes, with tons of this now exotic matter soon to be available. "That quantity of material is going to be around well before five years time. It's not going to take long," he said.

Given the far stronger-than-steel ribbon of carbon nanotubes, a space elevator could be up within a decade. "There's no real serious stumbling block to this," Edwards explained.

"The making of carbon nanotubes is moving very quick," said Hayam Benaroya, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers in Piscataway, New Jersey. "We're moving from the scientific stage of just developing them to actual commercial entities producing them in ton-like quantities," he said.

If you think that is cool, wait till you see the concepts of space tethers. Long, strong tethers that rotate in orbit around earth. As they swing around, a hook on the end of them would rotate just above the surface of the earth. If we are waiting there for it when it arrives, we just hook on the payload and let the energy from the rotation "sling" the payload up into space. You go from a couple of hundred dollars per pound to a few cents per pound. Considering that we pay thousands per pound now, that isn't so bad now, is it?

Consider also the energy implications. Carbon nano's are superconductors when arranged properly. If we have cables up into space, we could draw electricity directly from the ionosphere. The only challenge then is being able to recieve and handle that kind of energy. You could literally power the entire planet, and then some.

[edit on 15-7-2008 by bigfatfurrytexan]

Link:www.lanl.gov...

The space elevator will potentially ferry satellites, spaceships and pieces of space stations into space using electric lifts clamped to the ribbon, serving as a means for commerce, scientific advancement and exploration.

Los Alamos is one of the most important places to the ANCIENT ONES because of the new technology that comes from it. Its the medium between Earth and Space technology.Human extraterrestrial.

Space Intelligence is the expedition that will make mankind grow if he continues to see the potential in his own design.

hmm a giant tube sticking out of the Earth, or a cable hanging from space. well the tether from space just seems so... dumb. a tube sticking out of the earth isn't much better. it would have to survive the elements. and how do you suppose you build it. and how thick will this tube have to be. I'm not saying the cannon is a perfect idea but it seems much more reasonable then sticking a rod into the earth and shooting rockets up it. what is this tube or tether going to be attached to in space?

I understand that the government is looking into it but i don't see it happening.

in order to be able to shoot something into space you will need to have more than 7.9 KM/Second . However, this speed does not calculate the aerodynamic factor so my guess - an acceleration track based on magnets would do a good job but however will not be able to post any load into the orbit. Unless the acceleration track would be at least 4 miles high where most of the Earth atmosphere is far less dense . We could use a high mountain for this - where we can drill the shooting pipe down the mountain and this would work quite well as the air pressure could be reduced inside the tube.
How fancy to drill a 4 miles deep hole in a mountain and build an accelerator ?

reply to post by N. Tesla


you are right! the space elevator should be build with nano-tubes , however we hardly achieved millimeters while we would need more than 100 miles of nantubes . An accelerator would do a better job i guess, and it would cost under a billion .