"Whatever became of the space 'gun',i.e. a long barreled artillary piece capable of firing projectiles into LEO." A fellow named Bull was a big advocate of this. He also was a large gun expert and went so far as to sell his services to the highest bidder--in this case Saddam Hussein, who tried to build a "Super Gun" up the side of a mountain with a fixed point of aim: Tel Aviv.
So, a fellow walked up to Mr. Bull as he was putting his key in the lock of his home, placed a .32 caliber gun against his medulla oblongata, and blew his brains out. Ironic, that, such a small caliber. Everyone knows it was the Mossad's doing, but nobody will admit it. Big surprise.
Any way, a big gun could launch small, high-gee-resistant payloads "almost" to low orbit. You'd need a small rocket to circularize.
I saw a proposal for a "light gas gun" (using helium or hydrogen). One proposal was: dig a hole into the ground, and a big spherical chamber at the bottom. Put an atomic bomb in the chamber; fill the entire thing with helium, and close the hole with a freely-sliding piston. Put heavy payloads on top of the piston, like pig iron, glass, any cheap stuff you want in orbit and which you don't care how comfortable it feels while getting there. Dirt. Congressmen. You know, that sort of cargo.
BOOM!
--Boris
Interstellar travel doesn't make much sense to me. But travel within the solar system would be pretty cool. It would be possible to commercialize space if there were a way to cheaply get to low earth orbit. I'd love to see that topic discussed . I have an idea that I need to get shot down by someone who knows physics better than me. New thread perhaps? Or somewhere besides FR?
An earth gun shooting a reverse meteor. A great idea because you get the power of nuclear reactions while leaving the dirty part underground!
But what about deceleration or guidance of the payload? It seems it might take as a very large amount of energy to "catch".
Why not a long ‘slow’ burn? [Would it have to be directed at the horizon?] The channel tunnel and some others might show the basic tech. Perhaps you could get pretty vertical using a mountain. What are the theoretical lower limits on the size of nuclear explosives? If they are concieved as able to drive pistons, perhaps eventually a series of these pistons tangent to, and feeding a long linear tunnel system could drive a payload at least as well as current rockets, nuclearly, while leaving the mess below.
If such a system could develop with enough tolerance in the system, then there may be no limit to how far it could be built horizontally. I think you could get a good head of steam after a couple hundered miles or so. Could a limit be the atmospheric friction?