A company that wants to shoot payloads into orbit with a cannon
Link here. The company is called Longshot. It isn’t the only company attempting to do this. I reported on another company, Green Launch, in 2022, but have heard little from it since then.
I leave it to the engineers in my readership to tell me if this company has any chance of success. It seems to me that any payloads it launches would likely have to be dead weight, like water or oxygen or fuel, as the speeds involve would damage delicate instrumentation.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here. The company is called Longshot. It isn’t the only company attempting to do this. I reported on another company, Green Launch, in 2022, but have heard little from it since then.
I leave it to the engineers in my readership to tell me if this company has any chance of success. It seems to me that any payloads it launches would likely have to be dead weight, like water or oxygen or fuel, as the speeds involve would damage delicate instrumentation.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News


May I suggest attention seeking Holywood celebrities?
Yes, I believe we already have an experienced all-female crew ready to go!
Seriously, I read that the German engineers in WWII refused to believe that an artillery shell could be designed to contain a radar fuse that would detect the proximity of a target, because the G-forces of firing it would destroy the circuitry, especially the vacuum tubes that were used before solid-state transistors existed.
This not only did a better job of shooting down planes, but resulted in a field artillery shell that exploded ABOVE the ground by a few meters! Instead of hitting the ground and expending most of its blast force and shrapnel up and outwards, it exploded over the enemy’s heads, raining death down onto them even if they were hunkered down in trenches. Basically won the Battle of the Bulge.
SpinLaunch is still raising money, and has appointed “Aerospace Pioneer Dómhnal Slattery and Defense & Satcom Veteran Peter Hadinger to Advisory Board” to read some recent news.
I suspect SpinLaunch’s model would work better. It at least doesn’t pound the bottom of the capsule with sudden escape-velocity worth of force.
Gerald Bull would be proud. Cheers –
It’s not the velocity that the payload will experience, it’s the acceleration (as noted by Ray Van Dune above).
Looking at a .30-06 being fired from a 22 inch barrel with a muzzle velocity of between 2,800 to 3,000 ft/sec, if you assume a uniform acceleration all the way down the barrel (probably not true, but run the math) you’ve got something like 36,000 to 38,000 gees acting on the bullet.
I have no idea what the muzzle velocity of a howitzer is but that’s probably on the same level of acceleration. Not many payloads will be able to withstand that.
I like it better than Spinlaunch.
Didn’t Jules Verne write something along those lines?