A modern von Braunian figure indeed.
"At a time when Bull’s expertise should have been in high demand by all of the world’s superpowers, he chose to make his supergun for Saddam Hussein instead, a decision that would end in murder.
Although he would end up spending much of his career in government-funded weapons research designing rockets and guns for warring countries, his personal ambition was to use his designs to launch satellites not missiles."
... and yet ...
"In 1976, Bull was arrested in South Africa for violating the United Nations arms embargo and he served six months in a US prison, wrote the New York Times after his death. On release he began selling to South Africa again, and this time was fined $55,000 for international arms dealing."
And yet the gun he designed would have be a formidable satellite launcher indeed :
" The recoil force from the gun would have totalled 27,000 tonnes – equivalent to a nuclear explosion – and would have registered as a major seismic event around the world... the capabilities of Big Babylon would have made the supergun an attractively cheap way to launch satellites. The cost was roughly $1,727 per kilogram, adjusting for inflation. By comparison, Nasa estimates that it costs $22,000 per kilogram to launch a modern satellite into orbit using conventional rockets."
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160317-the-man-who-tried-to-make-a-supergun-for-saddam-hussein
Good article. Thanks for brightening up my Saturday morning. Stories about things that go fast or explode are always welcome.
ReplyDeleteSimon Barton
ReplyDelete"Using nine tonnes of special supergun propellant, Big Babylon would have been theoretically capable of firing a 600kg projectile across 1,000 kilometres, putting Kuwait and Iran well within striking distance from inside Iraq. Alternatively, the gun could be used to launch a 2,000kg rocket-assisted projectile carrying a 200kg satellite."
So the bizarre plan was apparently to launch a rocket via a gun. On the other hand nuclear weapons can survive artillery launch so perhaps a rocket engine can as well.
We still have Frank Langella, though.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109650