From: battin@venus.iucf.indiana.edu (L GENE BATTIN)
Subject: Re: UN-WISE QUOTES
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Organization: VENUS.IUCF.INDIANA.EDU
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Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 20:55:05 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.010741.356@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, 
crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes...

>In article <1992Oct6.175025.1578@cnsvax.uwec.edu> 
>mcelwre@cnsvax.uwec.edu writes:
>>
>>          
	[stuff deleted]
> 
>>               "This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example 
>>          of the absurd length to which vicious specialization will 
>>          carry scientists working in thought-tight compartments.  Let 
>>          us critically examine the proposal.  For a projectile 
>>          entirely to escape the gravitation of the earth, it needs a 
>>          velocity of 7 miles a second.  The thermal energy of a gramme 
>>          at this speed is 15,180 calories...  The energy of our most 
>>          violent explosive - nitroglycerine - is less than 1,500 
>>          calories per gramme.  Consequently, even had the explosive 
>>          nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy 
>>          necessary to escape the earth...  Hence the proposition 
>>          appears to be basically impossible..."  A.W. Bickerton, 1926 
>>
> 
>     This is a technological argument.  I beleve he was discussing a 
>     'gun' of the H.G. Wells variety.  He is correct that this is not possible
>     even today.  

Not that I'd want to defend the original poster's somewhat peculiar reasoning,
but...
An article I read (in the 60's I believe...I think it may have been written
sometime earlier than that, however) by Willy Ley disputes your contention
that a gun cannot be made "even today" to shoot things as far as the moon.
The article basically concluded that it _was_ possible to do just that.

Wasn't there some recent stuff about some murdered gun designer who dreamed
of building a gun that could orbit stuff, and didn't he once work for the
U.S. (military? or government?) building bug guns along lines aimed at
leading up to this?

Also, I remember some discussion about a manhole cover possibly being
put into escape velocity by an A-bomb test, on some net group, recently.

(No, _not_ an A-bomb test on a net group, although some of them could
use one :-) )

> 
>     Feel free to demonstrate any of these things.  Until then ...

Well, give me enough funding $$, and I'll be glad to try... :-)

P.S.
In fact, given that all a gun needs is an explosive, a projectile, and
some kind of barrel, and given that I've heard that you can get as
big an H-bomb yield as you'd like by just scaling the right parts,
and given that noone has specified that the gun necessarily need actually
_survive_ being fired (or the gunner, or anything else in the vicinity, 
except the (obviously) hardened payload, for that matter), I think it
just _might_ be doable.... :-)

> 
>                            dale bass
>-- 
>C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
>Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
>University of Virginia
>Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926

Gene Battin
battin@venus.iucf.indiana.edu
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