Rob Goldsmith writes to point out this interview with Dr. Paul Dear, founder of the N-Prize, and explains: "For those of you who haven yet heard of the N-Prize, the N-Prize is a £9,999.99 (sterling) cash prize which can be claimed by any individual, or group, who are able to prove that they have put into orbit a small satellite. The satellite must weigh between 9.99 and 19.99 grams, and must orbit the Earth at least 9 times. This project must be done within a budget of £999.99 (sterling)."
I wonder if bribing someone at NASA or ESA to include your mini-satellite as part of the payload of the next launch would be acceptable; it's probably the most realistic chance...
Bribe? Launchers carry an awful lot of ballast up with each rocket, it might be easy to get Lockheed, Boeing, ESA or NASA to switch some of that for a well designed and built beeper sat to piggy back on the last stage of a geosync launch maybe, especially if it raises their profile in a charitable fashion.
15. Piggybacking and Shared Resources
Entrants may not 'piggyback' on other aerospace projects (for example, by launching a satellite as a passenger on a larger launch vehicle). If they do so, the entire cost of the launch will be considered part of the budget of their N-Prize entry. Similarly, no two entries (whether simultaneous or consecutive; whether by the same entrant or different entrants) are allowed to share the cost of common hardware (for example, if a single launch vehicle carries two satellites, then the total cost of the launch vehicle will be considered part of the budget for each of the two satellites).
At 20g, it's too small to carry power + a radio emitter, and still have any consistency. Any signal it could put out at that weight would be completely drowned out by the atmosphere.
I can't find it now, but I remember stumbling across an amateur rocketry web site where the author (a licensed ham) had ground down a PIC chip (I think it was a 16C84 or 16F84) from 16 pins to the middle 8 pins, added a small clock crystal, watch battery, and a little antenna wire. The PIC repeatedly transmitted the author's
"For those of you who haven yet heard of the N-Prize, the N-Prize is a $19,636.90 (dollars) cash prize which can be claimed by any individual, or group, who are able to prove that they have put into orbit a small satellite. The satellite must weigh between 0.35 and 0.71 ounces, and must orbit the Earth at least 9 times. This project must be done within a budget of $1,963.67 (dollars)."
Launching it for a couple of grand? Maybe. I'm being serious, really, I can conceive it.
However, a satellite weighing less than three quarters of an ounce yet able to be detected on the earth would most likely need an aluminum-foil dish or something, which would most likely take all the weight, and then you'd need some sort of support structure (Even if it's just wires or even tubes of air) and some sort of engine on it to make sure it made it around the earth a few times...I just think the weight requirements are the real killer here.
Um... as a rocket engineer, I'm afraid what you are arguing makes no sense...
1. Space is an altitude. Orbit is a velocity. You can orbit 1 inch off the ground if you could some how sustain 8 km/s - for example, if you put a pipe filled with vacuum surrounding the Earth. So to get to orbit, you need a lot of speed, not a particular position.
2. GEO orbit (35786 km) is really hard to get to - and pretty pointless, really. Go above 400 km and you will hang around quite a while.
3. If you are in an orbit, you cannot possibly be a risk to airplanes. (Except on the way down, and even then the risk is way smaller than the risk caused by ducks, etc. - assuming you can even survive reentry)
Probably the easiest way to win this is with a mylar balloon as the "satellite". You could make a very large, highly reflective surface that would last a few orbits.
That said, this is unlikely to be won - $2K is just too low, it will cost more than that to get flight insurance / government permission.
That's cuz metric is a plot by the Government, man. You know in England when they switched to metric in bars they went from getting a pints to half litres and the price went up, man. Half litre is like way less than a pint, man. The bars sell you less beer and the price goes UP. Bar makes more money and the government stops people drinking.
Mind you, people should stop drinking. That shit makes you paranoid. You're better off sticking with dope.
Is this some prototype for a global diamond delivery system? Serious, apprise me of the value of putting less than an ounce of something into orbit. And it's the "orbit" part that's tricky. A sufficiently large model rocket can do Alan Shepard-esque sub orbital flight. But to then pop it into orbit with a "circularizing burn" is tricky... on a budget.
I'm trying to not be a troll here, but this prize is designed to develop a $2K ICBM for very tiny payloads. If you put VX gas into something that might survive reentry, you'd have the plot for an Austin Powers movie. I'd call it "MoonShagger: It's a gas gas gas."
It is not the satellite that is important. It is the launcher. A 1000 £ orbital launcher of 20 grams satellites is assured to bring some innovation to the art of spatial launch.
The only innovation that a low cost launcher for 20 gram payloads is going to bring is war to every corner of the globe. If you can launch a whole lot of 20 gram bullets at orbital or near orbital velocities at that cost you could build a weapon system that is disbursed (thousands of low cost launchers) and that may be able to throw a whole bunch of 20 gram bullets one after the other. Roughly target an area with thousands of those and the damage could be spectacular. Kind of like the Jericho weapon in t
Who said it was targeted at person-scale accuracy? If you built a system that can launch 100 times a minute and then build a thousand such systems (remember these are low cost and presumably small because they are low cost) and then roughly aim them at a city. You could send 100000 bullets into the area every minute or 6,000,000 bullets over an hour. Even if the accuracy was covering a square mile that is going to put a crimp in anything in the target area.
I apologize for this paranoid mindset. I HATE to see rocket science subjugated to politics (as if it never happened before). I really do. But maybe 7.407284965 years under "the current administration" is long enough to get the feeling that if you TRY to do this, you will raise ALL KINDS of attention from a lot of 3-letter organizations.
That may be just the point. If launching LEO objects become commonplace, then the launch of one particular LEO object might just go unnoticed. Maybe the N-Prize folks need to launch something unnoticed, and are trying to make sure that there is enough noise to go undetected.
Or, maybe it is a government-involved program to find all those who are capable of launching objects to LEO, to add them to a watch-list so that if the terictz come sweet-talking them, the government will have a one-up. Or, wait, maybe
Why is a rocket so much more dangerous than a 747? You can currently build a cruise missile that will reach anywhere on the planet for a few $10K... why is a rocket so much more dangerous?
We need to get over this "rockets are scary" mentality - rockets are another way of moving from A to B, nothing more. Any method of moving can be abused, but the benefits outweigh the liabilities.
For the curious, the "throw" of a rocket is determined by the following equation:
delta-V = 9.8 * Isp * ln (Mass1 / Mass2)
Where delta-v is the change in velocity required (8-10 km/s for orbit), mass1 is the lift off mass, mass2 is the on orbit mass, and Isp is the specific impulse which is a parameter of engine design primarily effected by propellant choice. Isp varies between 100 and 450 seconds - the SSME is 450 seconds, an estes model rocket gets 100 or so seconds.
So the above example is a back of the envelope calculation for a conceptual rocket - mass1 is 10 kg, mass2 is 0.5 kg, Isp is 280 s. This gives you a delta v of 8.2 km/s, which is enough to reasonably be expected make orbit (assuming that orbit is possible at all, of course - I mean the basic engineering premise is a bit of a stretch, but the physics works).
OK, I am a rocket engineer, you are not... No, I did not neglect gravity, air resistance, etc. Orbital velocity is 7.7 km/s. I had a few hundred m/s extra for drag, and a few for gravity. I assumed a dense fuel (that's why the Isp sucks at 280), which minimizes air drag. I assume a rapid (as in high G) boost, because I don't see how you could possibly do this otherwise. I made lots of other assumptions, all vaguely reasonable, to make a back of the envelope calculation. The most unreasonable assumption
Ok, ordinarily, I'd just let this go, but, I'm bored. So here goes...
I AM a degreed Aerospace Engineer who worked in El Segundo for a company that is now known as Boeing. Savvy? I worked with real rocket engines (Marquardt 5lbf and 100lbf [aiaa.org] I knew Gil and Phil...), loaded bi-propellant into very thin titanium tanks, and worked with those who worked with the solid motors, including the PAMs. (yeah, them). Now, I grant you i'm rusty, so that I had to look several times to make sure your Delta-V equation was
OK, well getting into a credentials pissing contest with a pseudo-anonymous person is just silly - especially since, if what you say is true, our credentials are orthogonal. (My title has three letters in it, and my budget is much larger than yours I'd bet)
But, as I said, I'm pseudo-anonymous, your pseudo-anonymous - so let's let the math speak for us:
Wave drag + stagnation temperature - you seem to be assuming high velocities in the atmosphere which, as you point out, is probably a sub-op
FACT: there is absolutely no sensor or computer technology in the world that weighs a under and ounce and never ever will be!
Yeah. Sputnik weighted 83.6Kg
You need to get an antenna and transmitter powerful enough to be trackedfrom earth an weighting 20 grams. Or put up some sort of light radar reflecting sail (only has to orbit 9 times on LEO and burn up, doesn't say it has to do anything useful).
I wonder if the tracking side is included in the budget or if you can borrow some really big antenna to try to detect the junk you put up.
What a brilliant marketing meme: with just one borderline-ludicrous sentence, he managed to get many thousands of people talking, got his name in the news, launched a website, and promoted the website creation company, all at practically no cost, backed up (should someone ever achieve the borderline-ludicrous challenge) by a home-equity loan. The publicity-to-signal ratio is huge, at miniscule cost.
With these satellites being so small they will become distinguishable from space junk.
With battery life being so short, it will revert to junk in no time. I doubt solar panels would survive a journey from the "delivery system" unless it put in space via traditional means costing way more than £9,999.99 (sterling).
Getting into orbit for less than $2,000 seems absurd (and not even worth firing up Rocksim to get specific figures).
Ground launch would require very large motors - just the motor casings (solid or hybrid fuel) would likely cost over $2000. (98mm solid fuel casing costs about $500; that size motor might be able to achieve orbital altitude, but nowhere near orbital velocity). Add the cost of the fuel and a guidance system, surely it would cost many tens of thousands of dollars to get into orbit.
Any other rocketeers here see a way to get into orbit for anywhere near $2,000? Or even $20,000?
Sounds to me that the Dear Doctor has been Pounded on the head by a (sterling) Silver Hammer.
Aren't there enough issues with space debris, without 1000 amateurs chucking miniature debris into space? It's tantamount to throwing rocks at satellites and NASA shuttles, isn't it?
What is this, space guerilla warfare??
Almost. If anyone accomplishes this on that budget or even 10 times that budget then it will become much easier for a terrorist or private citizen to start launching objects into orbit or near orbit depending on what the objective is for the individual. Such a device would allow anyone to start launching kinetic weapons at anyplace on the planet. Fire enough of them and the damage could be pretty widespread even if the targeting is not that good.
Is there a point to this "challenge"? While I've wasted my time on pointless things in the past just because I thought they were "cool", this sounds like so much self-flagelation to me -- especially on the part of the so-called "founder".
If you can get something in orbit for about $2k, I don't see why an upper weight limit would matter. Satellites are made as light as possible to keep down the cost of the launch, so I would think the goal would be to make the thing as heavy as possible within that budget. Whole thing seems stupid.
It's pound sterling, but I guess that £ only stands for pound so they felt it necessary to say sterling too.
Whatever, I'm from Georgia and played in the mud as a child, so I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be trying to answer this.
The official name is Pound Sterling and normally use to distinguish from other countries currency. The plural is Pounds Sterling. Informal, and not officially, is British Pound.
The pound sign comes from "L". Where LSD - librae, solidi, denarii - was originally used in duodecimal from pounds, shillings and pence.
I never in my life thought that history lesson from high school would ever come in hand.
The full, official name pound sterling (plural: pounds sterling) is used mainly in formal contexts and also when it is necessary to distinguish the currency used within the United Kingdom from others that have the same name. Otherwise the term pound is normally used. The currency name is sometimes abbreviated to just "sterling", particularly in the wholesale financial markets, but not in amounts; so "payment accepted in sterling" but never "that costs five sterling". The abbreviations "ster." or "stg." are sometimes used. The term British pound is commonly used in less formal contexts, although it is not an official name of the currency. A common slang term is quid (plural quid).
The term sterling is derived from the fact that, about the year of 775, silver coins known as "sterlings" were issued in the Saxon kingdoms,[6][dubious - discuss] 240 of them being minted from a pound of silver, the weight of which was probably about equal to the later troy pound. Because of this, large payments came to be reckoned in "pounds of sterlings", a phrase that was later shortened to "pounds sterling". After the Norman Conquest, the pound was divided for simplicity of accounting into 20 shillings and into 240 pennies, or pence. For a discussion of the etymology of "sterling" see Sterling silver.
The currency sign is the pound sign, originally with two cross-bars, then later more commonly £ with a single cross-bar. The pound sign derives from the blackletter "L", from the abbreviation[citation needed] LSD - librae, solidi, denarii - used for the pounds, shillings and pence of the original duodecimal currency system. Libra was the basic Roman unit of weight, derived from the Latin word for scales or balance. The ISO 4217 currency code is GBP (Great Britain pound). Occasionally, the abbreviation UKP is used but this is incorrect. The Crown dependencies use their own (non-ISO) codes: GGP (Guernsey pound), JEP (Jersey pound) and IMP (Isle of Man pound). Stocks are often traded in pence, so traders may refer to pence sterling, GBX (sometimes GBp), when listing stock prices.
The simplest way to launch satellites is to design a great big gun. The U.S. did some experiments with this with Project HARP [wikipedia.org]. They were abandoned because manned flight required lower g-forces. However, if you just wanted to put a satellite into orbit, then guns can make sense.
Unfortunately, the last guy to try this (Gerald V. Bull), went on to attempt to build a super-gun [wikipedia.org] for Saddam Hussein, and then mysteriously got shot [wikipedia.org] (possibly by Israel's Mossad).
I'm not sure I want to win this contest. There have been quite a few projects in the area, and they all get canceled.
I really don't think that's the simplest way. It SOUNDS simple, until you try to do it. In order to get a satellite into orbit with a gun on the ground, the sat has to carry a booster rocket. A gun on it's own can achieve a suborbital or an escape trajectory, but not an orbital one.
Getting the booster rocket to survive the g forces from the gun and still fire properly, at the right time, is very tricky. The gun itself tends to have to be really long, which introduces all sorts of other complications.
Get into orbit for a grand? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Get into orbit for a grand? (Score:5, Informative)
15. Piggybacking and Shared Resources
Entrants may not 'piggyback' on other aerospace projects (for example, by launching a satellite as a passenger on a larger launch vehicle). If they do so, the entire cost of the launch will be considered part of the budget of their N-Prize entry. Similarly, no two entries (whether simultaneous or consecutive; whether by the same entrant or different entrants) are allowed to share the cost of common hardware (for example, if a single launch vehicle carries two satellites, then the total cost of the launch vehicle will be considered part of the budget for each of the two satellites).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't find it now, but I remember stumbling across an amateur rocketry web site where the author (a licensed ham) had ground down a PIC chip (I think it was a 16C84 or 16F84) from 16 pins to the middle 8 pins, added a small clock crystal, watch battery, and a little antenna wire. The PIC repeatedly transmitted the author's
What? (Score:4, Funny)
At least it's a new one, can't find a term for it anywhere.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
BURN THE SATANIST!
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
English - English Translation... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:English - English Translation... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, a satellite weighing less than three quarters of an ounce yet able to be detected on the earth would most likely need an aluminum-foil dish or something, which would most likely take all the weight, and then you'd need some sort of support structure (Even if it's just wires or even tubes of air) and some sort of engine on it to make sure it made it around the earth a few times...I just think the weight requirements are the real killer here.
Parent
Re:English - English Translation... (Score:5, Informative)
1. Space is an altitude. Orbit is a velocity. You can orbit 1 inch off the ground if you could some how sustain 8 km/s - for example, if you put a pipe filled with vacuum surrounding the Earth. So to get to orbit, you need a lot of speed, not a particular position.
2. GEO orbit (35786 km) is really hard to get to - and pretty pointless, really. Go above 400 km and you will hang around quite a while.
3. If you are in an orbit, you cannot possibly be a risk to airplanes. (Except on the way down, and even then the risk is way smaller than the risk caused by ducks, etc. - assuming you can even survive reentry)
Probably the easiest way to win this is with a mylar balloon as the "satellite". You could make a very large, highly reflective surface that would last a few orbits.
That said, this is unlikely to be won - $2K is just too low, it will cost more than that to get flight insurance / government permission.
Parent
Re:English - English Translation... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, I'd like to see the units translated to cubits and hogsheads.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(length) [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Simpson [wikipedia.org]
Re:English - English Translation... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Mind you, people should stop drinking. That shit makes you paranoid. You're better off sticking with dope.
Re:English - English Translation... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Tight budget (Score:5, Funny)
Slingshot (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
A rocket scientist asks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this some prototype for a global diamond delivery system? Serious, apprise me of the value of putting less than an ounce of something into orbit. And it's the "orbit" part that's tricky. A sufficiently large model rocket can do Alan Shepard-esque sub orbital flight. But to then pop it into orbit with a "circularizing burn" is tricky... on a budget.
I'm trying to not be a troll here, but this prize is designed to develop a $2K ICBM for very tiny payloads. If you put VX gas into something that might survive reentry, you'd have the plot for an Austin Powers movie. I'd call it "MoonShagger: It's a gas gas gas."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And no need to fit a guidance system. Were
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I apologize for this paranoid mindset. I HATE to see rocket science subjugated to politics (as if it never happened before). I really do. But maybe 7.407284965 years under "the current administration" is long enough to get the feeling that if you TRY to do this, you will raise ALL KINDS of attention from a lot of 3-letter organizations.
That may be just the point. If launching LEO objects become commonplace, then the launch of one particular LEO object might just go unnoticed. Maybe the N-Prize folks need to launch something unnoticed, and are trying to make sure that there is enough noise to go undetected.
Or, maybe it is a government-involved program to find all those who are capable of launching objects to LEO, to add them to a watch-list so that if the terictz come sweet-talking them, the government will have a one-up. Or, wait, maybe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to get over this "rockets are scary" mentality - rockets are another way of moving from A to B, nothing more. Any method of moving can be abused, but the benefits outweigh the liabilities.
Re:A rocket scientist asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
delta-V = 9.8 * Isp * ln (Mass1 / Mass2)
Where delta-v is the change in velocity required (8-10 km/s for orbit), mass1 is the lift off mass, mass2 is the on orbit mass, and Isp is the specific impulse which is a parameter of engine design primarily effected by propellant choice. Isp varies between 100 and 450 seconds - the SSME is 450 seconds, an estes model rocket gets 100 or so seconds.
So the above example is a back of the envelope calculation for a conceptual rocket - mass1 is 10 kg, mass2 is 0.5 kg, Isp is 280 s. This gives you a delta v of 8.2 km/s, which is enough to reasonably be expected make orbit (assuming that orbit is possible at all, of course - I mean the basic engineering premise is a bit of a stretch, but the physics works).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, I did not neglect gravity, air resistance, etc. Orbital velocity is 7.7 km/s. I had a few hundred m/s extra for drag, and a few for gravity. I assumed a dense fuel (that's why the Isp sucks at 280), which minimizes air drag. I assume a rapid (as in high G) boost, because I don't see how you could possibly do this otherwise. I made lots of other assumptions, all vaguely reasonable, to make a back of the envelope calculation. The most unreasonable assumption
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I AM a degreed Aerospace Engineer who worked in El Segundo for a company that is now known as Boeing. Savvy? I worked with real rocket engines (Marquardt 5lbf and 100lbf [aiaa.org] I knew Gil and Phil...), loaded bi-propellant into very thin titanium tanks, and worked with those who worked with the solid motors, including the PAMs. (yeah, them). Now, I grant you i'm rusty, so that I had to look several times to make sure your Delta-V equation was
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, well getting into a credentials pissing contest with a pseudo-anonymous person is just silly - especially since, if what you say is true, our credentials are orthogonal. (My title has three letters in it, and my budget is much larger than yours I'd bet)
But, as I said, I'm pseudo-anonymous, your pseudo-anonymous - so let's let the math speak for us:
Wave drag + stagnation temperature - you seem to be assuming high velocities in the atmosphere which, as you point out, is probably a sub-op
Re:A rocket scientist asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
You need to get an antenna and transmitter powerful enough to be trackedfrom earth an weighting 20 grams. Or put up some sort of light radar reflecting sail (only has to orbit 9 times on LEO and burn up, doesn't say it has to do anything useful).
I wonder if the tracking side is included in the budget or if you can borrow some really big antenna to try to detect the junk you put up.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A rocket scientist asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
But most things that involve BOTH propellant and the word "Cool" violate the National Association of Rocketry Safety Code. Let alone the Patriot Act!
Parent
Brilliant meme! (Score:5, Interesting)
Great, more space junk. (Score:2)
With battery life being so short, it will revert to junk in no time. I doubt solar panels would survive a journey from the "delivery system" unless it put in space via traditional means costing way more than £9,999.99 (sterling).
Those guys got it backwards (Score:5, Funny)
*Prizes* should look like 10,000.00 so they appear big.
Enough with the nines already (Score:2)
Sounds unfeasible (Score:3, Insightful)
Request For Comets (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
-- quizical look (Score:2)
Why an upper weight limit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is a sterling? Pound? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:What is a sterling? Pound? (Score:4, Informative)
The pound sign comes from "L". Where LSD - librae, solidi, denarii - was originally used in duodecimal from pounds, shillings and pence.
I never in my life thought that history lesson from high school would ever come in hand.
Parent
Re:What is a sterling? Pound? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:What is a sterling? Pound? (Score:4, Informative)
The original "Pound Sterling", way back when, was just that -- one pound of Sterling (92.5% pure) silver.
Parent
Re:What is a sterling? Pound? (Score:4, Informative)
The full, official name pound sterling (plural: pounds sterling) is used mainly in formal contexts and also when it is necessary to distinguish the currency used within the United Kingdom from others that have the same name. Otherwise the term pound is normally used. The currency name is sometimes abbreviated to just "sterling", particularly in the wholesale financial markets, but not in amounts; so "payment accepted in sterling" but never "that costs five sterling". The abbreviations "ster." or "stg." are sometimes used. The term British pound is commonly used in less formal contexts, although it is not an official name of the currency. A common slang term is quid (plural quid).
The term sterling is derived from the fact that, about the year of 775, silver coins known as "sterlings" were issued in the Saxon kingdoms,[6][dubious - discuss] 240 of them being minted from a pound of silver, the weight of which was probably about equal to the later troy pound. Because of this, large payments came to be reckoned in "pounds of sterlings", a phrase that was later shortened to "pounds sterling". After the Norman Conquest, the pound was divided for simplicity of accounting into 20 shillings and into 240 pennies, or pence. For a discussion of the etymology of "sterling" see Sterling silver.
The currency sign is the pound sign, originally with two cross-bars, then later more commonly £ with a single cross-bar. The pound sign derives from the blackletter "L", from the abbreviation[citation needed] LSD - librae, solidi, denarii - used for the pounds, shillings and pence of the original duodecimal currency system. Libra was the basic Roman unit of weight, derived from the Latin word for scales or balance. The ISO 4217 currency code is GBP (Great Britain pound). Occasionally, the abbreviation UKP is used but this is incorrect. The Crown dependencies use their own (non-ISO) codes: GGP (Guernsey pound), JEP (Jersey pound) and IMP (Isle of Man pound). Stocks are often traded in pence, so traders may refer to pence sterling, GBX (sometimes GBp), when listing stock prices.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder is some of Gerald Bull's plans are still around
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull [wikipedia.org]
You are designing a cannon to launch satellites (Score:5, Informative)
The simplest way to launch satellites is to design a great big gun. The U.S. did some experiments with this with Project HARP [wikipedia.org]. They were abandoned because manned flight required lower g-forces. However, if you just wanted to put a satellite into orbit, then guns can make sense.
Unfortunately, the last guy to try this (Gerald V. Bull), went on to attempt to build a super-gun [wikipedia.org] for Saddam Hussein, and then mysteriously got shot [wikipedia.org] (possibly by Israel's Mossad).
I'm not sure I want to win this contest. There have been quite a few projects in the area, and they all get canceled.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In order to get a satellite into orbit with a gun on the ground, the sat has to carry a booster rocket. A gun on it's own can achieve a suborbital or an escape trajectory, but not an orbital one.
Getting the booster rocket to survive the g forces from the gun and still fire properly, at the right time, is very tricky. The gun itself tends to have to be really long, which introduces all sorts of other complications.
Cheap