HARP before HAARP?

Thought those of you here may be interested in some material information from the early days of the project.

Found this on one of the usual sources, and figured it was worth shareing.

U. S. ARMY MATERIEL. COMMAND
BALLISTIC RESEARCH LABORATORIES
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, MARYLAND

Since July 1964, the gun was lengthened and a steel Martlet 38 was
successfuly fired1 7 at 8000 g's and attained a muzzle velocity of 5200
feet per eecond. The low mass fracti%n aasociated with the metal bodies
has been raised by introducing the use #-\f fiber glass bodies.

REVIEW OF THE HIGH ALTITUDE RESEARCH PROGRAM (HARP)

Thats alot of G's for such a low velocity, is it the mass that determines the variance?

I'm not really sure what you're getting at but you consider 5,200 fps low?

G's are a measure of acceleration. A rifle bullet will have an acceleration rate in the neighborhood of 9,000 G's.

[edit on 3/8/2010 by Phage]

reply to post by ADVISOR


The reason for the supergun at HARP was Dr. Gerald Bull. He was a supergun-nut and went on to build superguns for the chinese and for the iraqis until the MOSSAD eventually offed him. A driven genius, his babylon gun would have been ridiculously large and would have made the Nazi-fantasies look like a kid's project in comparison.

en.wikipedia.org...

So the gun was only there because of Gerald Bull and his rather obscure but original approach with utilizing superguns. The government evetnually killed the program rather fast.

edit to add: his ultimate goal was to orbit satelites by using project babylon-sized superguns. Though it was an economical idea it proved rather unpractical since satellites are too sensitive to withstand the acceleration they would have experience by being shot from the supergun.

[edit on 8-3-2010 by NichirasuKenshin]

[edit on 8-3-2010 by NichirasuKenshin]

[edit on 8-3-2010 by NichirasuKenshin]

Phage yes I consider 5K velocity to be slow, 9 for pistol projectiles is rather slow but cortrollable in my opinion. 24Kfps is a fast velocity and is about that of composition 4, where as semtex has around 30K.

When compared to explosives as propellants. Just consider the G11 caseless ammo rifle, that shot it's kenetic round with a small ammount of C4, making it the caseless ammo rifle of choice. Despite it not going into mass production.

I would have figured a "supergun" or railgun of being able to project an object faster than 5K even if the projected object is or was of large size. Electromagnetic railguns can produce some very inpressive results.

One reason I posted this though, is because I am not an expert or highly knoweldable in this field.

Hence why I was asking if the mass vs velocity is why the Gs are higher than the velocity, or if I am just misunderstanding the info.

I did not read all document but only connection with HAARP - which I can find - is delivery of some "chemical" compounds to high altitudes. Now they are using sounding rockets and this paper propose, that use of guns for this purpose may be more efficient then rockets.

Quotes from en.wikipedia.org...

"The U.S. Navy has tested a railgun that accelerates a 3.2 kg projectile to seven times the speed of sound"

"On January 31, 2008 the US Navy tested a railgun that fired a shell at 10.64 MJ with a muzzle velocity of 2,520 m/s.[15] Its expected performance is a muzzle velocity over 5,800 m/s, accurate enough to hit a 5 meter target over 200 nautical miles"

Hey Phage...g force is used for acceleration, but lots more than that.
Any change in direction changes it.

Originally posted by ADVISOR


Hence why I was asking if the mass vs velocity is why the Gs are higher than the velocity, or if I am just misunderstanding the info.

Take a fast short acceleration with high g's, or a long slow acceleration rail, the end velocity could be the same.

[Edit for simplification]
A Yugo and a Vette floor it to 100 mph. The vette see's higher g force, even though the end velocity is the same 100mph.

[edit on 8-3-2010 by SLaPPiE]

reply to post by ADVISOR

Now you really have me confused.

I don't know of any handgun with a muzzle velocity of much over 1,900 fps. A .270 rifle has a muzzle velocity of about 3,000 fps.

But comparing muzzle velocity to G's of acceleration is kind of mixing apples and oranges. 1G is the rate of acceleration due to gravity (32 ft/sec/sec). It's just a unit, another way to express that 8,000 G's is 256,000 ft/sec/sec. Yes, it is a very high rate of acceleration but that rail gun produces 35,000 G's.


Ok. I just realized you are talking about detonation velocities (simtex). Different concept from muzzle velocity.

[edit on 3/8/2010 by Phage]