page_title: Space gun
section_title: Practical attempts
hierarchical_section_title: Space gun / Practical attempts
caption_attribution_description: Two sections of the Iraqi supergun Big Babylon at the Royal Armouries, Fort Nelson. Photograhed 26-Apr-06.
context_page_description: A space gun, sometimes called a Verne gun because of its appearance in From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, is a method of launching an object into space using a large gun- or cannonlike structure. Space guns could thus potentially provide a method of non-rocket spacelaunch. It has been conjectured that space guns could place satellites into Earth's orbit, and could also launch spacecraft beyond Earth's gravitational pull and into other parts of the Solar System by exceeding Earth's escape velocity of about 11.20 km/s. 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.
  Therefore, a more likely future use of space guns would be to launch objects into near Earth orbit, from where attached rockets could be fired or the objects could be "collected" by maneuverable orbiting satellites.
  In Project HARP, a 1960s joint United States and Canada defence project, a U.S. Navy 410 mm 100 caliber gun was used to fire a 180 kg projectile at 3,600 m/s, reaching an apogee of 180 km, hence performing a suborbital spaceflight.
context_section_description: The German V-3 cannon program (less well known than the V-2 rocket or V-1 flying bomb), during the Second World War was an attempt to build something approaching a space gun. Based in the Pas-de-Calais area of France it was planned to be more devastating than the other Nazi 'Vengeance weapons'. The cannon was capable of launching 140 kg (310 lb), 15 cm (5.9 in) diameter shells over a distance of 88 km (55 mi). It was destroyed by RAF bombing using Tallboy blockbuster bombs in July 1944. The V-3 cannon used staged propulsion, which gave it a far greater range.
caption: Two sections of the Project Babylon gun
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