Isaac Newton used as an example a cannon placed on top of a mountain and fired with the correct velocity as a demonstartion of his law of universal gravity.
There are various methods of space launch, one of them is to shoot something out of a gigantic gun. This is one of the oldest envisioned spacelaunch methods (the other being a rocket). Jules Verne used a space gun for De la Terre à la Lune (made into a silent movie, A Trip to the Moon), as his method of spacelaunch for the intrepid spacemen.
Few currently endeavour to make this a reality, however, ballistics and cannon genius Gerald Bull most recently tried. His Project Babylon for Saddam Hussein of Iraq would have been the first true space gun. However, it appears that the Mossad assassinated him to prevent Iraq from obtaining such a long distance weapon.
Since the under the US BMD programme in the 1980's SHARP was developed at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, it is a Light Gas Gun and has been used to test fire object at Mach 9. One of the lead devlopers John Hunter later went on to set up the Jules Verne Launcher Company in 1996.
External links
- http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/05/980500-bull.htm
- Newton's Cannon animation
- http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/sharp.htm
- Boeing
- Juules Verne
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