"E.R." wrote:

"Jon G" wrote in message ...
"Alan Erskine" wrote in message
u...
"garfangle" wrote in message

Obviously this 'person' hasn't heard of science fiction.
google.com yet again

--
Alan Erskine
alanerskine(at)optusnet.com.au

Trial or release, Mr Bush, trial or release.



I have heard it mentioned before, however, that if a gun could be devised,
it could allow for launch of bulk frozen materials to orbit.

See : http://tinyurl.com/pep5

That would seem to be where a supergun would be most suitable: fast, cheap,
direct delivery of bulk freight. Whether there would be a market for that
vs. a space elevator, I don't know. Heron Aerospace is the only company I
know of that is actively working on gun-launch.

May I submit that it will be cheaper, easier and more profitable to
drop the stuff (from the moon, for example) than to launch the same
material up?

~er

Depends on what the stuff is. It might be possible to, say, fire some
carefully cushioned (insulated and suspended neutrally bouyant in
water?) circut boards that a space station needs *now,* or medicines
nedded in orbit *now* or other things easily produced on Earth into
LEO...but there are no semiconductor or pharmaceutical plants on the
Moon.

Yes, it would take less energy, but energy isn't always the problem,
or we'd always use sailing ships for transoceanic travel, instead of
aircraft. Sometimes time *is* the driving factor (thus the aircraft),
and the Moon's still about three days away.

And, as I (and it's not original with me) suggested earlier, this may
be the preferred way to get certain moderately bulky materials like
radioactive waste *off* Earth. The Moon doesn't help here either, except
possibly as the final repository of same.