Blasted into space from a giant air gun

A very interesting development

When Jules Verne wrote about a gigantic gun that could be used to launch people into space in the 19th century, no one expected it to become a reality. Now physicist John Hunter has outlined the design of such a gun that he says could slash the cost of putting cargo into orbit.

Blasted into space from a giant air gun

Now, I'm no atmospheric sciences, but I wonder if such a practice becomes popular - assuming it really can cut costs, and someone is willing to spend the half-billion to develop it, wont it poke numerous holes in the upper atmosphere and will that have detrimental effects on a chaotic system we don't fully understand?

At the Space Investment Summit in Boston last week, Hunter described a design for a 1.1-kilometre-long gun that he says could launch 450-kilogram payloads at 6 kilometres per second. A small rocket engine would then boost the projectile into low-Earth orbit.

Interesting, no?

That is very interesting. Hopefully its cost lowering will help humanity explore more of space. But can it be used to defend against alien invasions?

Originally posted by exlibertateveritas
That is very interesting. Hopefully its cost lowering will help humanity explore more of space. But can it be used to defend against alien invasions?

I got the funniest mental image of cannons lobbing huge spitballs at flying saucers....,

This doesn't sound to outrageous to me. I designed an electronic ranging system for an air powered avalanche control gun similar to this one. It had a range of 5 miles. Now days they are firing guided munitions out of howitzers and the electronics can handle enough Gs to hurtle the round over 20 miles despite all the acceleration taking place over 25 feet.

It has limited applications:

While humans would clearly be killed and conventional satellites crushed by the gun's huge g-forces, it could lift robust payloads such as rocket fuel. Finding cheap ways to transport fuel into space will lower the cost of keeping the International Space Station in orbit, and in future it may be needed to supply a crewed mission to Mars.

I wonder what the G-forces would actually be in that thing? 100 G's?

But any holes poked in the atmosphere would quickly fill in so I don' think we have to worry about that.

I didn't realize until recently how much fuel the Space Station burns just to stay in orbit, but it's a lot, so this could come in handy for launching all that fuel!