
Secrets of the Mystery Gun that Shelled Paris - boundlessdreamz
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/10/09/secrets-of-the-mystery-gun-that-shelled-paris/?Qwd=./ModernMechanix/6-1930/paris_gun&Qif=paris_gun_0.jpg&Qiv=thumbs&Qis=XL#qdig
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yread
Be sure to read -DOUG-'s comment at the end of the article!

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movix
I was snooping around that web site after reading the fascinating article, and
found this article in the 'Scary' section. Food for thought no?

[http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/06/05/the-computer-
data-...](http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/06/05/the-computer-data-bank-
will-it-kill-your-freedom/)

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pj
I love reading about the historical future of technology. Post it and I'll
vote it up!

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pg
Sputnik's perigee was only about 155 miles. Could this gun have shot a shell
into orbit if they'd made it sufficiently light?

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ivankirigin
The issue with a gun to get things into orbit is that you need to provide
enough force right at the beginning to get into space. That would destroy most
anything. So you could shoot something into orbit, but it will be a largely
mangled hunk of metal by the end of it.

If I were in 1910, trying to get something into space, I'd use a hot air
balloon to go a few miles, then shoot a gun. Ideally, it would be done at the
equator, where the tangential speeds are higher and getting into orbit is
easier.

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pg
We can deal with mangled hunk of metal problem in version 2. For now I'm just
asking whether one could get anything into orbit by shooting it from this gun.

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smhinsey
If I was setting out to do it, I'd think about a three part system. First
would be the gun on the surface, the second would be a launch vehicle, and the
third would be a satellite in orbit to act as a target. The gun fires the
launch vehicle at the target. The satellite (I picture it as a donut, with the
projectile aimed at the center) uses an electromagnet to "fix" the launch
vehicle's orbit. Aside from whatever physics I am ignorant of, I think the big
question mark here is power as I would expect the draw of the magnet to be
beyond what you could plausibly provide with solar panels. It's also
questionable how well this would scale. It doesn't seem like something you
would ever think of using to launch crewed vehicles or things like the Hubble,
but if the marginal cost of your launches is low, it seems like individual
cargo capacity is less important. You could launch raw materials, small parts
and assemblies, and maybe even things like human consumables.

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ivankirigin
The influence of magnetic forces decays at r^2 in distance, making any sort of
magnetic tractor beam extremely unfeasible.

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smhinsey
I'm having trouble explaining it in words, but I'm thinking of it as more of a
funnel you aim at than a discrete beam.

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dangoldin
There's some more information here too:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun>

