Hilariously, it’s theoretically practical for lobbing “durable” loads to space.
The US already shot a shell high into the atmosphere with a gas gun. Some startups are pursuing the “orbital gun” idea now, to decent success on shoestring budgets.
It’s actually a more interesting solution for doing things the other way around: have some kind of mining operation on the moon and use a “cannon” (most likely a rail gun) to accelerate payloads from the surface of the moon into Earth orbit or even down to the surface.
But yeah, even that one wouldn’t be for squishy payloads such as people.
PS: That said somebody else is pointing out existing experiments were the object is accelerated around and around by a mass acellerator and then release at the appropriate speed, which might work for human payloads.
The escape velocity of the moon is 8,600 kilometers per hour. That would be a big, very expensive gun to set up and achieve that velocity. But yeah, if the “shells” and guidance could be manufactured on the moon, it would be an efficient system once its operational.
Again, the emphasis is that everything is several orders of magitude cheaper if you do it on Earth, especially if its something with a lot of mass. For the price of a single lunar space gun, one could build many enormous orbital guns on Earth.
Hilariously, it’s theoretically practical for lobbing “durable” loads to space.
The US already shot a shell high into the atmosphere with a gas gun. Some startups are pursuing the “orbital gun” idea now, to decent success on shoestring budgets.
It’s actually a more interesting solution for doing things the other way around: have some kind of mining operation on the moon and use a “cannon” (most likely a rail gun) to accelerate payloads from the surface of the moon into Earth orbit or even down to the surface.
But yeah, even that one wouldn’t be for squishy payloads such as people.
PS: That said somebody else is pointing out existing experiments were the object is accelerated around and around by a mass acellerator and then release at the appropriate speed, which might work for human payloads.
The escape velocity of the moon is 8,600 kilometers per hour. That would be a big, very expensive gun to set up and achieve that velocity. But yeah, if the “shells” and guidance could be manufactured on the moon, it would be an efficient system once its operational.
Again, the emphasis is that everything is several orders of magitude cheaper if you do it on Earth, especially if its something with a lot of mass. For the price of a single lunar space gun, one could build many enormous orbital guns on Earth.