Space Gun

Published on 19 May 2022. Written by Bheru Singh

About the project

A space gun is a method of launching an object into space using a large gun or cannons. Space guns provide a method of non-rocket space launch. It has been conjectured that space guns could place satellites into Earth's and could launch spacecraft beyond Earth's gravitational pull and into other parts of the Solar System by exceeding Earth's escape velocity of about 11.2 km/s or 40,320 km/h or 25,050 mph.

However, these speeds are too far into the hypersonic range for most practical propulsion systems and also would cause most objects to burn up due to aerodynamic heating or be torn apart by aerodynamic drag which constraints the future use of space guns to launch objects into near-Earth orbit.

A space gun has never been successfully used to launch an object into orbit or out of Earth's gravitational pull. The large g-force likely to be experienced by a ballistic projectile launched in this manner would mean that a space gun would be incapable of safely launching humans or delicate instruments, rather being restricted to freight, fuel or ruggedized satellites.

A space gun by itself is not capable of placing objects into stable orbit around the object from which it launches them. The orbit is a parabolic orbit, a hyperbolic orbit, or part of an elliptic orbit which ends at the planet's surface at the point of launch or another point which causes uncorrected ballistic payload striking the planet within its first orbit unless the velocity was so high as to reach or exceed escape velocity.

Ram accelerators have also been proposed as an alternative to light-gas guns. Other proposals use electromagnetic techniques for accelerating the payload, such as coil guns and rail guns.

Kit required to develop Space Gun:

Technologies you will learn by working on Space Gun:

Space Gun

About the project

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