Free Republic 3rd Qtr 2025 Fundraising Target: $81,000 Receipts & Pledges to-date: $2,760
3%  
Woo hoo!! 3rd Qtr 2025 FReepathon is now underway!!

Keyword: bigbanglist

Brevity: Headers | « Text »
  • A Cannon for Shooting Supplies into Space

    01/15/2010 3:00:45 PM PST · by Reaganesque · 35 replies · 1,372+ views
    Popular Science ^ | 1/15/10 | Amina Elahi
    John Hunter wants to shoot stuff into space with a 3,600-foot gun. And he’s dead serious—he’s done the math. Making deliveries to an orbital outpost on a rocket costs $5,000 per pound, but using a space gun would cost just $250 per pound. Building colossal guns has been Hunter’s pet project since 1992, when, while a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he first fired a 425-foot gun he built to test-launch hypersonic engines. Its methane-driven piston compressed hydrogen gas, which then expanded up the barrel to shoot a projectile. Mechanical firing can fail, however, so when Hunter’s company,...
  • UDOT admits it was at fault in backyard artillery accident

    05/22/2005 11:04:44 AM PDT · by JustReading · 23 replies · 816+ views
    DAILY HERALD ^ | Michael Rigert
    Friday, March 25, 2005 - 12:00 AM | UDOT admits it was at fault in backyard artillery accident Michael Rigert DAILY HERALD The Utah Department of Transportation said it was most definitely at fault when an artillery round that easily could have killed several people landed in a Pleasant Grove family's back yard Wednesday afternoon. The round was meant for avalanche control in Provo Canyon. Tom Hudachko, a Utah Department of Transportation spokesman, said crews were conducting avalanche control with the cannon in the vicinity of Slide Canyon and Lost Creek when the 105 mm howitzer projectile was launched over...