14 March 2011

In the first of a three-part interview with MM, Dr. John Hunter talks about gas gun research dating back two decades to Lawrence Livermore, the economics of a trip by humans to Mars, and how his company Quicklaunch proposes to make routine access to space affordable.

Moonandback Interview with John Hunter, part 2 – Gas Guns and Their Uses

15 March 2011

Propellants and oxidizers, food, tools, aluminum, graphite — all perfect candidates for orbit-by-gun, says Dr. John Hunter in part two of his interview with Moonandback Media at SpaceUp San Diego.

Moonandback Interview with Dr. John Hunter, part 3 – Gas Station In Space

16 March 2011

Dr. John Hunter talks with Moonandback in this segment about the ocean deployment of the Quicklaunch gas gun and about gas stations in space, at SpaceUp San Diego.

One of the marvels of Comic-Con is that when a panelist asks the people in the room whether they’d be willing to risk a fatal mechanical failure for the chance to go into space, everyone raised their hands. It’s the kind of place where nerds roam free, geeks can be both predator and prey, and the answer to the question, “How about going to space?” is foreordained.

The panel I’m referring to focused on the question of whether private companies are better suited to taking humanity into space, or whether NASA is doing awesome work and we, as a society, should just keep on keepin’ on. To help answer the question, the panel featured Mark Street (from XCOR), John Hunter (Quicklaunch), Chris Radcliff (San Diego Space Society), Dave Rankin (The Mars Society), Molly McCormick (Orbital Outfitters) and was moderated by Jeff Berkwits (editor and writer).

The group did praise NASA for the Mars Rovers and the Hubble space telescope (referring to the beautiful Hubble pictures, Rankin said, “let it not be said the federal government doesn’t fund the arts”) but generally they brought the hammer down on NASA and its private counterparts like Boeing and Lockheed Martin: NASA is too big, too old, and is constantly trying to perfect old ideas rather than introduce new ones.

And the group praised small “new-space” companies for being willing to fail and try, try again as they strain to bring space tourism to everyone.

But perhaps most interesting was the almost uncontested assertion that space flight will never really be profitable.

“Ninety percent of mass is propellant in space, and it $5,000 [to get pound of a pound of material into space] with rockets. SpaceX is $2,000 a pound,” Hunter said. “Going to Mars, that’s one million pounds per person. Each person is going to cost $5 billion.”

But for all that Hunter threw cold water on the proceedings, he also said money really isn’t why we go into space.

“The only thing that makes money in space is communications satellites. Mining doesn’t pan out,” he said. “You have to go to space for manned exploration for the human spirit. You’re not going to make money there.”

And the members of the panel sagely nodded their heads. For all that these folks recognize the challenges of space flight, and the amount of money and smarts that will be required, they’re generally optimists: Every single one said they expect space tourism will become reality…eventually.

* This quote added later to correct a paraphrase of mine. Thanks to commenters Jadon and eyesoars for the correction.

Comic-Con: Private Space Flight Ain’t the Miracle It’s Cracked up to Be – Read Full Article

It was at a cocktail party that Dr. John Hunter, a fast-talking 54-year-old physicist who once worked at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, had a crazy idea.
As sometimes happens over a third martini, a colleague suggested that gas-powered guns are much more powerful than conventional guns: When ignited, a gas gun can shoot a projectile at insane speeds of over 11 kilometers per second — or roughly 25,000 miles per hour.

And that got Hunter to thinking . . .

What if he could build a massive, 1-kilometer-long cannon powered by hydrogen that could be housed below the surface of the ocean? The sort of device Jules Verne wrote about in 1865 in his novel “From the Earth to the Moon”?

And what if it turned out not to be a such crazy idea, after all?

Such a cannon could solve a nagging problem at NASA: how to send manned missions to the moon and Mars at a lower fuel price. Currently, it costs thousands of dollars per pound of fuel to launch stuff into space. Hunter’ cannon could reduce that price to a few hundred dollars per pound.

And that savings could be very lucrative to the person who made it happen, which is why Hunter created and is drumming up support for Quicklaunch Inc., which he hopes will launch payloads into space within the next five years.

How would a space cannon work?

The basic concept behind a space cannon is simple: A hydrogen explosion shoots the payload — Hunter is concentrating on delivering rocket fuel at first — up the lengthy tube. The tube’s mouth sits just above the surface of the water, and when the payload emerges, it’s aimed directly into outer space.

Re-positioning an underwater cannon would be easier than moving one on land, and the sonic boom would be nearly eliminated due to a concept called impedance mismatch, which predicts that over 90 percent of the explosion’s ear-deafening sound would be reflected into the atmosphere.

“It’s a very simple idea in principal,” Hunter told FoxNews.com. “Hydrogen has a low molecular weight, so it can launch things much faster than ordinary guns can.”

Translation: highly packed gas makes a bigger bang than gunpowder or an electrical current.

“It takes 100,000 pounds of propellant per person to land on the moon from low-Earth orbit,” Hunter says. Today, it costs $5,000 – $10,000 per pound to launch those propellants. The space cannon would allow NASA and other space agencies to send fuel for future space missions directly into space, where spacecraft could fuel up at dramatically lower costs. In the future, Hunter says, colonization of the moon might mean sending 100 people at a time or more.

“I think the space cannon idea could be developed into a reliable and low-cost method of placing small payloads into orbit,” science-fiction author Ben Bova told FoxNews.com. “The major problem that I see is that it would take a fairly considerable effort of time and money to make it viable, and it’s in competition with existing rocket launchers. People tend to go with what’s already available and demonstrably reliable, rather than investing in new technology, whatever the long-range benefits might be.”

But there is already a history to the cannon. Hunter built a massive gas gun, called the SHARP (Super High Altitude Research Project), while working at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. While the project was a functional proof of concept, Hunter never found the funding to proceed with his work. The new cannon, he says, will kick-start the comatose space program, which he says has faltered since the last manned mission to the moon.

“There has been nothing significant since Apollo,” he says. “I know the astronauts are going to come after me for this, but fortunately they are all elderly so they won’t be able to catch me.”

Quicklaunch reality check

Representatives at NASA, who declined to comment for this story, have already done the numbers on future missions to the moon and Mars. The trips will be exceedingly expensive. The Orion vehicle currently being tested as a reusable spacecraft is designed to keep costs as low as possible. In 2007, Boeing proposed fuel depots at low-Earth orbit to help make rocket propellants easier to manage.

“The question with a system like this is how long will it take to build,” says Chuck Gannon, a professor at St. Bonaventure University and a space advisor to the Discovery Channel and Homeland Security. “I may be wrong, but I think a ground-based version is going to be a lot easier to construct, repair and learn from than a sea-based portable version.”

“The challenges of a mobile, kilometer-long, submerged launching tube system that has to bear the stresses of the depths, and thermal gradients and currents while maintaining an absolute ramrod straight tube….” Gannon mused, trailing off. “well, let’s say I think you could do it but I’ll bet you’ve got a decade or two of trials and kinks to work out of that system.”

With the Quicklaunch cannon, there are also questions about the physics of the actual payload rocket, possible weaponization and the environmental impact of a space cannon.

In a widely-circulated talk Hunter gave at Google headquarters, the physicist explained away many of the chief concerns — that a two-stage rocket would be used to attain speed and altitude, that payloads would be heavily insulated to withstand atmospheric pressure and drag and so on.

Possible weaponization is an interesting topic. Hunter says the cannon would be too long and too obvious to be used as a weapon — it would be an easy target. That said, Saddam Hussein had developed a space cannon concept during the first war with Iraq. Hunter himself was involved with the “Star Wars” missile defense program under Ronald Reagan and has a background in weapons.

Quicklaunch is currently in a phase-one stage, looking for funding. The next stage is to use the cannon to obtain a world altitude record for a payload launch. Then the company plans to launch a two-pound satellite into orbit before shooting the first rocket propellant into space by 2015.

“Technically, building a cannon over a kilometer long is feasible,” says Barrett S. Caldwell, PhD, an associate professor of Industrial Engineering and Aeronautics and Astronautics and the director of the Indiana Space Grant Consortium at Purdue University.

“I’m not sure where in the world’s oceans you’d put it so that the cannon remains aligned,” he mused. “Remember, at the exit speeds described, extreme precision of alignment is required, in a variety of wind and water conditions. This would be a very large target, and if placed in international waters — where you need at least 700-800 meter depth, given the angle of the cannon — ownership and guardianship is questionable.”

Speaking of the ocean, environmental impact is a non-issue, says Hunter. A typical shuttle launch releases an enormous amount of acid rain, and Quicklaunch’s cannon is much safer. And the sonic boom would quickly dissipate in the depths, he notes.

“We have no plans to infringe on the whales or the pinnipeds or the crustaceans,” Hunter says with a chuckle, discounting the green-tech issue. “We love them all equally.”

Read the Original Article – Will a Space Cannon Fuel the Next Moon Landing? | Fox News

To get something into space right now, you need a rocket. You also need a lot of money, as the current going rate for getting something into orbit is about $5,000 a pound ($11,000 per kg). But what if you could, instead, do away with the rocket and still get your payload to space, for under $1,000 a pound? Sounds like a deal, right.

According to Dr. John Hunter, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and president of the company Quicklaunch, Inc., using a hydrogen-powered cannon may be the ticket for cheap access to space. That’s right, a “space gun” platform for inserting satellites, fuel, and other supplies into space genuinely could be the next big thing in space technology.

You might say, “A gun to shoot stuff into space? That sounds like something out of Jules Verne!” And you’d be right: in Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon” a giant cannon called the Columbiad was used to propel three of the characters in the story to the Moon.

“Jules Verne got it right, he just had to pick the correct fluid, ” Hunter said in a Google Techtalk, embedded below.

Rockets have been the workhorse of space-faring nations for decades, but there are a few newcomers to the game that are just getting started. Space elevators are starting to get “off the ground”, so to speak – the Space Elevator Games turned out a winner just last year – as an alternative method of transporting materials into space.

“We do hear about space elevators a lot of the time, and people always ask, ‘Are you related to space elevators?’, but we don’t interact as far as technologies go.” Hunter said.

Light-gas cannons work almost like you’d expect a really, really big gun to work: at one end inside of a long tube a gas, hydrogen, helium or methane, is pressurized to an extreme pressure, 15,000 PSI in the largest cannon proposed by Hunter. The payload is at this end of the cannon, when the pressure is released, the bullet-shaped projectile that holds the payload is ejected out of the end. Hydrogen is used because of its lightness. Since a projectile can’t go faster than what’s pushing it along inside a cannon, the lighter gas – which can travel quicker – allows for a projectile to be accelerated to incredible speeds, in excess of 13,000 miles per hour (21,000 km/hr).

These cannons have been around since the 1960s, though they haven’t seen any use in space payload delivery technology. The record setting cannon for altitude of a projectile was the High-Altitude Research Project (HARP) cannon. It was built by the United States Department of Defense and Canada’s Department of National Defence, and placed in the Yuma proving grounds in Arizona. It successfully lobbed a Martlet-2C inert projectile to 180 km (112 miles) on November 12th, 1966, which still stands as the altitude record for this type of gun.

Another iteration, developed by Dr. Hunter himself, was the Super High-Altitude Research Project (SHARP, an homage to the original cannon) in the late 1980s by Lawrence Livermore University.

Hunter explained to Universe Today via phone interview, “So here’s what happens: I started back in 1985 at Livermore and I was fresh out of grad school and they hired me to build electric guns which I could have done pretty straightforwardly. But I ran into a guy at a cocktail party, believe it or not. He knew I was working on post-production coil guns and and he said, ‘John, those are great because you can get 12km/s where we can only get to like 9 km/s with these gas guns.’ I said, ‘What’s a gas gun?’ That’s what started this whole ball rolling. As it turns out, the electric guns only get to 5.5 km/s and gas guns get to 11km/s.”

SHARP was – and still is – owned by the United States Air Force. Hunter’s company has a five-year contract to utilize the gun for testing shots, but it’s not set up to do shots vertically. SHARP was originally designed as a testbed for hypersonic engines for scramjets – jets that are accelerated to high speeds, then use a specialized engine of their own to push up to 8 or 9 times the speed of sound.

“If we’re going to to a publicized shot, where there’s a lot of publicity and stuff, we’d have to go to a different system, which would not be a big deal to build one because I could dedicate it for that particular application. If we decide to do the shot with the Air Force, that’ll probably be a smaller subset of people who could watch the shot. The Air Force is sorta careful how they do things so we have to get approval. They actually own the gun.”

So Hunter has struck out on his own to develop a commercially viable cannon that can deliver payloads at a fraction of the cost of conventional rockets. He and two other scientists, Dr. Harry Cartland and Dr. Rick Twogood, formed Quicklaunch, Inc.

“We got out of the blocks the 30th of September when we had the Space Investment Summit. Then I made the talk at Google and then the Popular Science article and we have now briefed a venture capital group. We’re in the “hustle phase” and I expect us to be in this hustle phase for six months, where we have to go just shop our project around. But while we’re in this phase we still believe in hardware so I’m actually going to have a demonstrating submerged version late February. It basically will acquire the right inclination and do shots. It’s going to be a 10-foot prototype,” Hunter said.

Ultimately, Hunter envisions a large-scale cannon that will launch from the sea near the equator. In launching from the sea, the gun will be able to pivot and swing around to launch payloads to different orbits easily. Being near the equator is necessary because that’s where the Earth is spinning its fastest, so objects launched from equatorial latitude can obtain a higher orbit with less energy.

Critical to getting the payloads into orbit is the use of a single-stage rocket attached to the payload projectile. Since the largest gun is projected to get the package going at a little over 7km/s (4.3 miles/s), a booster is needed for that extra push to get it past the escape velocity of the Earth, which is 11.2 km/s (6.95 miles/s).

Don’t expect to see humans launching to the Moon or Mars aboard one of the projectiles, though, as the force of launch from the cannon could be up to 5,000 Gs.

The largest – and most expensive – cannon would be capable of launching 1,000-pound (454 kg) payloads into a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). The projected cost for this cannon is $500 million, but this is the last stage in a proposed series of cannons that would start out small and build on the lessons learned from each iteration.

After some initial testing with the SHARP gun and prototype models, a system that is capable of launching 2-pound (0.9 kg) payloads into space will be designed. The cost of this cannon, Hunter estimates, will be around $10 million and take two years to get rolling.

“[The 2lb capability launcher] is actually tailored to a small niche, which is the Cubesat community. It makes sense because we can “G-harden” cubesats. To me, that would make a nice niche to be able to work with academics. That’ll be a lot of fun because they’ll be orbiting Cubesats, obviously. In Phase one we’re just going to feed inert rounds, and we’re just going to do maybe 20 shots into low space and break the world record ten or twelve times. In phase two we’ll be orbiting things that will take data and will transmit,” Hunter said.

Cubesats – small satellites that are no larger than a liter volume (10cm cube) and weigh less than a kilogram – can be easily “G-hardened”, or made to withstand the impressive forces of being launched out of a huge cannon.

After this system has been tested, Hunter said, “The first commercial system is going to be a $50 million system for 100-pound [45 kg] capability. $50 million is less than the price of an F-15, basically. I think that’s quite within a lot of folks’ means, particularly if you’ve demonstrated phases one and two before that.”

Don’t get Hunter wrong: $50 million is not within the means of the average Joe, but for launching small satellites into space that’s a pretty small number. Each space shuttle mission, for example, costs $450 million, and to launch a communications satellite you’re talking $50 million to $400 million.

The largest gun – 1.1km in length – would run about $500 million and would be able to be constructed within seven years, optimally. Given that the gun itself is reusable, and that capturing the hydrogen from each firing of the gun could be done to save on fuel costs, the cost for somebody wishing to launch a payload would range between $250-$1000 per pound.

Hunter has already seen interest from various enterprises, he said.

“There has been one private company that will remain confidential. We’re going to keep them private until the smoke clears here. We’ve had serious interest from some people. We intend to increase that number of candidates substantially. We’re going to have more candidates than the last republican convention, that’s my goal!”

With regards to whether or not this type of system has had any interest from the R&D over at NASA, Hunter replied, “We have not approached NASA, and I think NASA is ultimately going to become a client of ours…I’m going to be approaching NASA in the next couple of weeks.”

For more about the specific details of the gun and payload deliver system, watch the Google Techtalk embedded above, or listen to the January 15th episode of The Space Show, on which Hunter appeared as a guest.

Source: Physorg, Google TechTalk, phone interview with John Hunter

Universe Today – Original Article

John Hunter, from the company Quicklaunch, which was set up by himself and two other scientists, bases its plans on previous work they carried out at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. In 1992 Hunter and his colleagues fired a 130 m (425 ft) cannon built to test launch hypersonic engines. Its piston, driven by methane, compressed hydrogen gas that expanded up the barrel of the over-sized gun to shoot the projectile.

The Quicklaunch design has replaced the methane piston with a combustion system burning natural gas in a heat exchanger inside a chamber of hydrogen gas. The combustion system heats the hydrogen to 1,430˚C (2,600˚F), which increases the gas pressure by 500%. An operator then opens a valve to allow the hot, pressurized hydrogen into the 1100-meter-long barrel of the gun, where it instantly expands, shooting the projectile out and into space. As soon as the payload has left, an iris at the end of the barrel closes to capture the hydrogen for re-use. Once the projectile is launched, a small rocket engine then boosts the payload into a low-Earth orbit.

Hunter calculates the pressure would be sufficient to launch a 450 kg payload at six kilometers per second (13,000 mph). The process would produce 5,000 Gs, and so would only be suitable for rugged payloads such as strengthened satellites and rocket fuel. Hunter said the system could not be used as a people-launcher because a person shot out of the cannon “would probably get compressed to half their size,” causing instant death.

Hunter said the heat generated would be short-lived, with the projectile clearing the atmosphere in under 100 seconds. He also said the projectiles may need to be designed so that outer layers could burn off.

Hunter’s proposal is to operate the “Quicklauncher” from the ocean near the equator, where the Earth’s faster rotation will help launch payloads into space. The cannon would float, with 490 m (1,600 ft) of it below the surface, where it would be stabilized by ballast. Operators would be able to swivel it as required to deliver the payload into different orbits.

Hunter plans to test a 3 meter prototype in a water tank in February, and a full-size cannon could be built within seven years, if Quicklaunch can raise the required $500 million. While this is a sizeable upfront cost, the potential savings in the long term are substantial, because the cannon is reusable. Its use would significantly reduce the cost of keeping the International Space Station in orbit.

The proposal was outlined in October in Boston, U.S., at the Space Investment Summit.

© 2010 PhysOrg.com – Click here to read original article

Download audio file (the-space-show-2010-01-15.mp3)

Dr. John Hunter talks for over an hour about hydrogen gas gun technology, low cost space access, space physics and engineering with Dr. David Livingston on The Space Show.

Popular Science Full Web Article

John Hunter wants to shoot stuff into space with a 3,600-foot gun. And he’s dead serious—he’s done the math. Making deliveries to an orbital outpost on a rocket costs $5,000 per pound, but using a space gun would cost just $250 per pound.

Building colossal guns has been Hunter’s pet project since 1992, when, while a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he first fired a 425-foot gun he built to test-launch hypersonic engines. Its methane-driven piston compressed hydrogen gas, which then expanded up the barrel to shoot a projectile. Mechanical firing can fail, however, so when Hunter’s company, Quicklaunch, released its plans last fall, it swapped the piston for a combustor that burns natural gas. Heat the hydrogen in a confined space and it should build up enough pressure to send a half-ton payload into the sky at 13,000 mph.

Hunter wants to operate the gun, the “Quicklauncher,” in the ocean near the equator, where the Earth’s fast rotation will help slingshot objects into space. A floating cannon—dipping 1,600 feet below sea level and steadied by a ballast system—would let operators swivel it for different orbits. Next month, Hunter will test a functional, 10-foot prototype in a water tank. He says a full-size launcher could be ready in seven years, provided the company can round up the $500 million. Despite the upfront cost, Hunter says he has drawn interest from investors because his reusable gun saves so much cash in the long haul. Just don’t ever expect a ride in the thing: The gun produces 5,000 Gs, so it’s only for fuel tanks and ruggedized satellites. “A person shot out of it would probably get compressed to half their size,” Hunter says. “It’d be over real quick.”

How to Shoot Stuff into Space

STEP 1: HEAT IT
The gun combusts natural gas in a heat exchanger within a
chamber of hydrogen gas, heating the hydrogen to 2,600˚F and causing a 500 percent increase in pressure.

STEP 2: LET THE HYDROGEN LOOSE
Operators open the valve, and the hot, pressurized hydrogen quickly expands down the tube, pushing the payload forward.

STEP 3: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND
After speeding down the 3,300-foot-long barrel, the projectile shoots out of the gun at 13,000 mph. An iris at the end of the gun closes, capturing the hydrogen gas to use again.