A cannon shell will always be cheaper than NGAD or B-21 individually. The up-front costs I could see eaten by the USSF or even the Army. Perhaps named after Medaris.

Sometimes, things can start as earworms. One of the greatest marketing slogan was “Think Pink.”

On space guns…fact and fiction
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LCoWX7mxjCg

Although, it may be a good time to begin some development of this idea so that it is ready when the customers are. His company seems to have a nice start. Timing is an unknown issue, however.

Poor timing is what did in Bigelow. If commercial manned flight had been available two or three years earlier, then maybe he would have had a space station for them to go to and started generating revenue and excitement for commercial space stations. Instead, we are a decade behind where we should have been.

Edward: Thank you for an excellent analysis. My take-away from this is that once there is viable orbital industry, including space stations, manufacturing, and transportation to the Moon, asteroids and beyond, this method will become viable, especially for those facilities in Earth orbit. They will need supplies, and a cheap and quick way to get them. The cannon could provide that.

Before then however this launch method seems less appealing. Right now the need is to get sophisticated and complex payloads into orbit, not supplies.

Thus, it might be that the time has not yet come for this project.

As I was reminded a month or two ago, success depends heavily upon the initial concept or the requirements. If the business plan is wrong, success is unlikely.

So, let’s make some assumptions. We can launch a 3-unit cubesat, which is about 6″ on the diagonal, so we need a 6″ or 7″ barrel. If we have a barrel twice that diameter then we could launch four of that size of cubesat, probably making the cost per cubesat much less.

Either way, we need an upper stage in order to circularize the orbit. SpinLaunch needs the same thing, so this upper stage is possible and it is probably inexpensive, due to its small size, especially if it is a simple solid rocket.

What does it cost to put this size of cubesat into orbit on existing rockets, and what do the competitors charge for the same task?

Fabricating and installing the cannon may cost less than constructing a rocket launch complex. As with the Falcons and Starship, some technical efficiency may have to be sacrificed for price efficiency. Profit is the reward for finding efficiencies.

I think that a cannon fired launch is feasible and may be cheaper than rockets. So, is there enough potential business to keep such a company in business? Are there enough companies whose spacecraft could be inexpensively made to survive the forces? If they make the gun, will the customers come? They came for SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and they may come in greater numbers for a less expensive Starship, so maybe they would for an even cheaper cannon-fired launch.

If they do come, what is the launch rate that makes the company profitable? That was the question for the reusable Falcon 9, where some speculation was 18 launches per year. The Falcons have exceeded that assumed breakeven point. Can a cannon?

Projects like these need to be looked at every so often as new discoveries are made…like the methane (?) using PETRA boring machine, or geological finds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krubera_Cave

Most recently, Rice University’s Xiang Zhang and Pulickal Ajayan found ways to put diamond coatings in pipes to reduce scaling.

HYPACC needs a vertical tube of about a kilometer deep and 10 meters wide or so and access to sea water. The payload would be 10,000 tons to orbit–so much more than any other Verne Guns–though a rocket would still be needed. as the vehicle exits at 1,000 kilometers per hour.

If doable I could see this thing capable of multiple shots per day.

The key may be to find natural features like vertical caves in karst like blue holes, so as to avoid construction costs.

One of the more formidable oil platforms I have ever seen was Troll A, a condeep.

I could easily see one of these things serving as HYPACC infrastructure.

Edward: My question was aimed at the technical issues, but that cannot be separated from the economic ones. Anything is technically possible, assuming cost is no object. I wonder if this launch method could be both economically and technically sound.

That wasn’t Robert’s question to the engineers. Please let me add “ethical” to my list of questions that Robert was not asking: I suspect Robert is asking about technical feasibility rather than financial, ethical, or political results.
___________
Craig,
You wrote: “For this concept to be attractive, it would have to be significantly cheaper than guided launches.”

So, what was the cost of firing a shell from a WWII battleship? Doing it this way could be cheap, and you already suggested a couple of not-so-expensive solutions to the problem you presented.

Keep in mind that the way to do the impossible is to find a way around the impossible part. The same goes for reducing the costs or difficulties to a task. We use a Rocket Equation to explain why it is difficult to launch things from the Earth into orbit, but there are alternatives to simple rockets. It is good that so many people are exploring some of those alternatives in order to find better efficiencies. Profit is the reward for finding better efficiencies.

There may be one ring to rule them all (Dick Eagleson‘s comment is fresh on my mind), but there is rarely one solution to solve all problems.

Once again I suppose it is incumbent upon me to inquire as to the color of the sky on the planet you occupy – which pretty clearly is not Earth.

Gerald Bull got what he had coming. If one throws in with Mordor, one should not be surprised if one’s head is subsequently separated from one’s body by a Gondorian or Rohanian sword.

Excalibur was very much an evolution of technology application and hardly the revolution the WW2 proximity fuses were. And if it had been developed by a hungry start-up instead of a cost-plus blob, it probably wouldn’t cost six figures per round either.

American space engineers have been designing and building up a storm these past two decades – just not the ones employed at MSFC. The PRC is not copying NASA – there’s nothing there to copy. They’re copying SpaceX, mainly. You know – one of those Ayn Randian outfits built with the money of a serial entrepreneur and some brain-dead investors. Imagine what they could be doing if they had ten brain cells to put together.

Anything one could do to avoid the cost of deploying it to an unintended trajectory — adding guidance mechanisms to the payload, deploying space tugs to retrieve it once in orbit — would quickly revert to the cost of doing guided launches in the first place. I can’t see this idea going anywhere.

Just because you can, does not mean you should.

BE (Before Elon)
“Cough…you want me to invest in your space start-up…go up against EELVs? Look kid—I’m in this to make money, not lose it.”

AE
“Cough…you want me to invest in your little outfit now that Elon has cornered spacelift? You can count me out…gee, this steak seems tougher than last time…”

“To this day, holds the record for highest altitude projectile ever launched.”

By “chance of success” as analyzed by engineers, I suspect Robert is asking about technical feasibility rather than financial or political results.

Ray Van Dune is correct that electronics can survive the cannon. Containing liquids may require heavier walls in the payload container than may be desirable, but still feasible. I’m not sure about economical. If Starship is able to launch payloads for (rough order of magnitude) $100 per pound, then a cannon would need to be pretty big to put enough mass in orbit to compete with the larger bulk carriers. Cubesats and some smallsats may be able to be built to survive the cannon. It could be interesting to see how things like solar arrays and deployable items respond to the forces.

As with SpinLaunch, a small rocket would be needed to circularize the orbit. Most likely a solid propellant motor would be desirable, and the motor may need to take up a significant portion of the mass that is shot into space.

The nosecone may be interesting, as the maximum Q could be fairly high.

So, what kind of cannon would this take? Battleship cannons in WWII got to be around 20 inches in diameter, and they could only throw a heavy projectile around 20 miles. To get better speed, a longer cannon with more pressure behind it may be needed, so a heafty barrel may have to be used.

As with the proximity fuse mentioned by Ray, the way to do the impossible is to find the impossible part (vacuum tubes not strong enough to survive the cannon) and work around it (solid state electronics, potting the electronics within epoxy, etc.).

As we have seen, lately, with the advent of commercial space there are plenty of mad scientists and crazed engineers willing to try the darnedest things. Forget about “if we can send a man to the Moon, then we should be able to …” phrases. Going to the Moon turned out to be possible with the meager technology of the 1960s. What is really impressive is catching a fly with chopsticks, and in real life rather than in the movies.

Fortunately, commercial space done in this way — with different people trying different seemingly unlikely or impossible concepts — has resulted in several concepts designed by Americans and actually BUILT by Americans, without stingy so called “space advocates” dumping on them but rather cheering them on — even to the point of the occasional flyovers with videos to report on progress being made at various sites around the country.

This starts with American Jeff Bezos and his New Shepard and New Glenn concepts — both are operational. Elon Musk, a naturalized American (making him an American), had the concepts of reusability, commercial manned and cargo spacecraft, huge low Earth orbit (low latency) communication constellations, all of which are operational, and he is now working on a Super Heavy reusable launch vehicle and its reusable orbital/deep-space upper stage. ULA’s American-conceived and American-built Vulcan is also flying operationally with an American Centaur upper stage.

And talk about improving American spaceflight rather than stifling it, the reusability of just the Falcon booster alone has made not only America the leader in all of spaceflight, it has made a single American company the world leader. What, pray tell, will New Glenn be doing in five years or ten years? What about all the other American companies verging on their own reusable launch vehicles? What will their contributions to American spaceflight be?

We spent like’ 10+ million dollars on all this–in 1960’s money.
The remains of the barrel assembly still exist in Barbados.

That was the only “sanction” the Mossad ever did that made me angry…proof that looking at people as problems instead of resources never results in anything good long term.

To Ray,

Right you are. In fact, we have more modern electronics that are survivable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur

It would not exist had people had to ask funds from investors—who (as proven by their stupidity in supporting Spinlaunch) don’t have five brain cells put together.

Obama was no friend to space. He said he wanted a cheaper alternative to spacelaunch…but didn’t want to fund those either.

Distressingly, the trend is that American engineers come up with ideas only China chooses to build—due to lack of either public or private interest.
Many in leadership positions there are engineers. Our congress is made up of suits and protesters who only supply hot air. China’s 640-2 project is just going to be aimed at Taiwan, so….

There is a concept that is something along the lines of a Verne Gun….HYPACC
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16822672-800-its-a-blast/

There are huge blue-holes in the ocean (better for Sea Dragon?)

PETRA has a robot named “Swifty” that is to use a no-contact, thermal spallation process using a jet of 1,800 degree gas. If not HYPACC, then a ballistic compass rose.

Space force needs to fund this, in that it can have a dual use.

Imagine an asterisk of tubes surrounding a central location. When not launching, this can double as an ultrasound/infrasound array—which should be named in honor of Douglas Orson ReVelle (1945-2010).

Just once, I’d like to see a concept designed by Americans actually BUILT by Americans for a change, without running into the stinginess of so called “space advocates” who would prefer to dump on it…in the form of Randian screeds that do nothing to improve American spaceflight—only stifle it.

My humble opinion anyway.

Verne sure did write something along those lines. From the Earth to the Moon, in which are chronicled the adventures of Impey Barbicane and the Baltimore Gun Club building a gi-normous cannon on the Florida coast and then shooting himself and some others to the Moon with it. Movie version came out in 1958 starring Joseph Cotten as Barbicane – with first name changed to Victor – and with the so-very-fetching Debra Paget added to provide a bit of Victorian-era spice. I believe the film was shot in 3-D, but I’m not sure it was ever released in that format.

Verne was obviously prescient anent the launch site, but the rest of the tech required copious hand-waving of physical reality. As others here have pointed out, an actual gun would impart G-forces at launch amply sufficient to instantly transform a human body into a slightly smaller volume of nasty pink goo.

H.G. Wells also had a go at Moon travel fiction, First Men in the Moon. The motive force in this case was far kinder to human physiognomy even if not possible via any physics known in either his own time or now – anti-gravity paint. As with Verne’s work, Wells’s was movie-fied in 1964 with the also-very-fetching Martha Hyer as the requisite eye-candy. It also featured insect people animated by the peerless Ray Harryhousen.

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.