Project Harp

Do you remember the Jules Verne's novel 'From the Earth to the Moon'? This novel had the unique idea of blasting a capsule into space from a location ironically near Cape Canaveral in Florida. When I read this many years ago I was enthralled with the idea of man landing on the moon. When NASA did land men on the moon, I recalled this amazing science fiction story.

Well, it turns out that this idea was actually tried back in1961. The United States and Canada combined to build a giant powerful gun that could fire a projectile into space. Project HARP was the brainchild of Gerald Bull, a Canadian ballistics engineer, who wanted to make possible Jules Verne's idea of launching objects into space without using rocket power.

You have to keep in mind that this was during the Cold War when the Soviet Union had already launched a man into orbit. The military was also interested in this ballistics gun idea as a weapon for delivering nuclear bombs.
Project HARP was situated at Seawell Airport on the island of Barbados and it consisted of two U.S. Navy 16-inch naval guns welded together. The sonic booms from this gun caused the citizens of Barbados to complain. The project ended up at a site in Yuma, Arizona where it fired a 400 lb projectile at 7000 ft/sec to go up to 110 miles above the Earth. This is a record that had not been exceeded.

The project was cancelled in 1966, but Mr. Bull wasn't finished. He ended up working on a similar project (Babylon) in Iraq for Saddam Hussein in 1988. Old Saddam had this idea that he would have a supergun to blast his enemies, including Iran and Israel. He envisioned a situation in which he could not only launch satellites but also fire weapons. Strangely enough, the project ended when Bull was assassinated, probably by the Israelis.

My take on this is that the idea of shooting an object into orbit is almost impossible because all of the acceleration that must be achieved during the firing process. Rockets are able to apply propulsion after launch to accelerate a capsule or spacecraft into orbit. Achieving an initial impulse with a gun to achieve the same objective would require one hell of a blast, an explosive force that could destroy the gun.

The calculation is based on the following formula a = Ve^2/2L  where V is the needed velocity to gain an acceleration a, and L is the length of the gun barrel. The formula is acceleration equals the velocity squared over two times the length. A projectile must be going at 11.2 kilometers per second to escape Earth's gravity.

For example a gun that was 60 kilometers in length would still have to achieve an acceleration of 1000 meters per second squared, and with a 10 seconds firing time the object would exceed 100 G, which would kill anyone fool enough to ride in it. In other words, it's impractical.

As an aside, Project Babylon ended up in a dramatic HBO movie 'Doomsday Gun' with Frank Langella as Bull, with Kevin Space, Alan Arkin and Clive Owen. Personally, the idea is not very realistic. It's just another science fiction idea of questionable validity.

Thanks for reading.