by UK Mail.com
A giant 45 foot cannon so powerful it could launch satellites into space has been revealed by a Canadian inventor.
Richard Graf hopes his design, which has a specially developed bore than continually increases the speed of the satellite.
Graf believes it could even lead to giant cannons 150 feet long to launch bigger objects.
'Have you ever wanted to fly something into space but you thought that it was too expensive or too complicated to do it yourself ?' he says on the Kickstarter page for the project.
'I used to think that way too, and then I invented the Starfire space cannon.'
Graf decided to redesign the traditional cannon for his space cannon.
The Starfire gun is an 8” bore by 45 foot long multi-chambered artillery piece that has been custom designed to fire payloads into space.
'The problem with a conventional gun as a space launcher is that it has one big propellant charge and when that charge is fired it produces a very high pressure spike, often 50,000 to 60,000 PSI which drops off rapidly as the projectile travels down the bore,' said Graf
The Starfire space cannon breaks the propellant charge down into a number of smaller increments.
These increments are ignited sequentially as the vehicle travels down the 8 inch bore.
This gives you much lower pressures and much lower G loadings.
the longer the barrel the more efficient the system becomes, claims its inventor.
'These high pressures place high G loadings on a payload, often tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of G’s.
Launching at high G’s may be OK for simple payloads such as fuel or construction materials but it is not much good for launching payloads that are useful for the average person.'
Graf's invention breaks the propellant charge down into a number of smaller increments.
These increments are ignited sequentially as the vehicle travels down the bore, resulting in much lower pressures and much lower G loadings.
'One interesting aspect of this technology is that the longer the barrel the more efficient the system becomes,' Graff said.
'The Starfire gun has been limited to 45’ only because of the need to keep it road mobile, but with this technology a barrel twice or even three times as long would be practical.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2552469/Could-satellites-launched-CANNON-Canadian-inventor-believes-trying-raise-65-000-prove-it.html
