Oct 3, 2026 06:00 AM
I really like outside the box engineering thinking. Longshot Space is exploring the idea of shooting payloads into space with a huge gun. It's not a new idea by any means, the idea of launching payloads with a cannon is actually older than the idea of using liquid fueled rockets and was commonplace in the 19th century. (There's the extraordinary saga of Canada's Gerald Bull as well.)
Well, during World War II, the Germans made some advances on building artillery with missile like ranges. A normal gun uses a single explosive charge to create a blast wave confined by a gun barrel that drives a projectile down the barrel. The German innovation was to inject high pressure gas into the gun barrel in several stages after the projectile passes, to continually build the speed of the propulsion as the projectile moves down the barrel. This permitted them to achieve hypersonic velocities. Unfortunately for them, it never proved practical for warfare.
Longshot Space is reviving that German idea. Longshot is a tiny little startup operating from a hanger at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (If you watched Mythbusters, this was the "Alameda runway" where they conducted many of their experiments.) They have built a little subscale test gun to prove the concept that's managed to hit Mach 4.
Now they plan to build a much larger test gun in the desert somewhere, perhaps near Tonopah Nevada. Eventually they hope to build a huge gun capable of firing payloads into orbit. They admit that this will never work for human spaceflight because of the huge g-loads involved. But they talk about launching bulk cargoes this way and it should work for microelectronics. And it will be vastly less expensive than rockets.
As for me, I'm skeptical that it will work for putting payloads into orbit. That will present huge challenges, including accelerating a payload to well above Mach 25 and having the payload survive the atmospheric heating when the projectile leaves the gun (equivalent to orbital reentry) and the deceleration due to air friction as it ascends through the atmosphere. I'm inclined to think that its future utility might be in hypersonic research, as a way to accelerate small test vehicles to very high Mach numbers in the atmosphere. That might have applications in both aeronautical and weapons research.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/dvSHpGAtJ9k
Well, during World War II, the Germans made some advances on building artillery with missile like ranges. A normal gun uses a single explosive charge to create a blast wave confined by a gun barrel that drives a projectile down the barrel. The German innovation was to inject high pressure gas into the gun barrel in several stages after the projectile passes, to continually build the speed of the propulsion as the projectile moves down the barrel. This permitted them to achieve hypersonic velocities. Unfortunately for them, it never proved practical for warfare.
Longshot Space is reviving that German idea. Longshot is a tiny little startup operating from a hanger at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (If you watched Mythbusters, this was the "Alameda runway" where they conducted many of their experiments.) They have built a little subscale test gun to prove the concept that's managed to hit Mach 4.
Now they plan to build a much larger test gun in the desert somewhere, perhaps near Tonopah Nevada. Eventually they hope to build a huge gun capable of firing payloads into orbit. They admit that this will never work for human spaceflight because of the huge g-loads involved. But they talk about launching bulk cargoes this way and it should work for microelectronics. And it will be vastly less expensive than rockets.
As for me, I'm skeptical that it will work for putting payloads into orbit. That will present huge challenges, including accelerating a payload to well above Mach 25 and having the payload survive the atmospheric heating when the projectile leaves the gun (equivalent to orbital reentry) and the deceleration due to air friction as it ascends through the atmosphere. I'm inclined to think that its future utility might be in hypersonic research, as a way to accelerate small test vehicles to very high Mach numbers in the atmosphere. That might have applications in both aeronautical and weapons research.
