Re: Orbital Cannon

At 04:37 AM 5/28/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Just before the Iraqi war in 1990,  a fairly famous Canadian weapons
maker 
>who had worked for the Iraqis got himself offed, probably by the
Mossad. 
>One of his things was orbital launch using super guns.

That was Dr. Gerard Bull. He worked on the High Altitude Research
Project
(HARP, not to be confused with HAARP) in the 60s. HARP was a joint
project
involving Canada and the U.S. study the feasibility of sending
scientific
or military payloads into space using ballistic or orbital trajectories.
Using modified (lengthened, smooth-bore) Navy surplus barrels bull
launched
hundreds scientific packages "to study the ionosphere" on ballistic
trajectories to altitudes of 75 to 100+ miles. The payloads were
basically
saboted, fin stabilized canisters, some with solid rocket second stages,
but almost all had functioning electronics. The electronics package was
usually a solid-state set up packed in plastic or resin and sand to
survive
the launch Gs. The program was cancelled before any payloads were fired
into orbit.

Bull went on to do contract work for several countries that wanted their
artillery to out range their opponents artillery. I think he landed in
jail
in the US sometime in the 80s for helping the wrong people. After he got
out he moved his operations to Europe. He was contracted by the Iraqis
to
build 3 super guns and was then murdered. I have also heard that he
helped
the Chinese develop their own super guns.

The origional question was what kind of satellite systems could survive
the
Gs of being fired. Solid-state electronics and solid rocket fuel could.
Things like solar panels, liquid fuel rockets and cameras would need
some
serous help to survive the thousands of Gs placed on the payload during
launch.  

Ndege Diamond--Nezach(at)earthlink(dot)net
    http://home.earthlink.net/~nezach/
     "A witty saying proves nothing."