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&nbsp;The big day had arrived. Carl Robins picked up his phone from the cradle and answered “Carl… Yes... Thirty minutes, I understand” he replied. He hung up the phone, retrieved his bomber jacket from the chair and the brief case underneath it and walked out of the building. An official car was waiting.Carl was the Technical Director and Chief Designer for some of the biggest engineering projects in development. He bounced from project to project providing guidance and problem-solving expertise in Applied Physics. His current project was Javelin, an earth to low earth orbit payload delivery system.He climbed into the backseat and found John Neumann already sitting there.“This is the big deal” John said. “The first test firing of Javelin.”&nbsp;Of all of the crazy ideas you have come up with in your career, this is the biggest, most expensive, and most important of any you have ever had. If this works, it will open up Space for mankind.”Carl looked apprehensive.John Neumann was a mechanical engineer that grew up in the same neighborhood as Carl. Together, as kids, they were considered the local mad scientists. Many considered them to be future world changers - if they only survived all of their childhood experiments. Their antics kept their neighbors entertained for years as well as the local fire department. Their fathers sat back and smiled at their accomplishments and increased their liability insurance. Their mothers just worried and kept the first aid kits nearby. Most kids had baseball gloves and balls. These two had welding gloves and safety glasses.“So, what are you using for a payload in that space-cannon hybrid of yours? I don’t supposed you found an old Tesla laying around. That would have been cool… but I guess not. It wouldn’t fit in the barrel.” “Very funny,” said Carl. “Although,” he thought, “if we first crushed it without the batteries or tires, it might fit. Elon might find it funny… to have a second one up there.”John went on, “Who would have thought of using a huge steam cannon to replace the first stage of a rocket. Now you can constantly put small payloads of fuel, food, or oxygen into space… You are insane. And a great salesman too. You got someone else to pay for it.”“Not quite constantly,” Carl interrupted. “The steam boilers have to come to pressure first before each launch and that does take time.”John continued. “So, we are heading to the gulf coast to see this monstrosity go bang for the first time. Will this be like the other crazy places we have been to, to test another of your latest ‘inventions’?”&nbsp;“Ok. John, if you are going to tag along as my ‘official assistant’ then you need to get the story straight. No bang, just a big whoosh. We’re heading to the chopper to fly to the complex,” he continued, “It is situated out in the Gulf of Mexico; off the coast of Texas.”“You have been busy in California taking care of the ‘Counterwind’ project, so you haven’t had the time to go there so let me describe it for you.“It is called the Gulf Orbital Launch Facility (GOLF) operated by NASA. The repurposed oil platform facility is huge, highly modified and shaped like a Tee. On the perimeter are docking locations for the support ships. The top of the tee consists of workshops and landing pads. A causeway connects the top of the tee to the re-purposed oil platform which holds the Javelin SSC Orbit Launch System. You will see all of this as we fly in. You can’t miss it. It is primarily orange with large signs in black and yellow.” “I suppose the signs say, ‘Big Gun, Run for Your Life’”, John quipped.Carl shook his head. “This will be a long week, won’t it?”John just gave him a big smile.“Look you have been buried in your own project. You haven’t been brought up to speed in the details of this project. Again, let me fill you in.“The Javelin System is a massive steam cannon,” Carl continued, “and it is used to put high G payloads into low Earth orbit. It essentially replaces the first stage of a conventional rocket. The payloads are equipped with a second stage solid rocket booster to complete the journey into low Earth orbit. The Javelins are unguided, and we are simply lobbing payloads into low earth orbit at the lowest possible price. They are all retrieved by a remote piloted space tug. The primary payload is fuel for space operations. Food, liquids and gases and structural materials like beams and fasteners are secondary payloads. The Javelins are long and skinny for aerodynamic purposes and have many compartments. ‘Soft’ payloads will be carried on shuttles with much lower acceleration rates.”“Gerald Bull built the Project Harp gun for the Canadians and the Babylon Gun for Saddam Hussein. These guns where designed to put objects into space. The ‘Big Babylon’ had a bore of one meter, a barrel length of 156 meters. Its expected range was 750 kilometers. Slow burning propellants and long barrels were the key to the technology.”“Didn’t the Israeli’s take him out?” John asked.“Yes, they did. Someone shot him. Look, steam launch systems are currently used on American missile submarines to launch the missiles from their silos inside the submarine to above the water line. Once in the air, the solid rocket engine is ignited, and the payload is shot into space and eventually to their target.”“The Javelin Sequential Steam Cannon (SSC) Launch System, as it is formally known, is attached to an offshore oil platform off the coast of Texas in the Gulf Of Mexico. The complex is sitting on a natural gas field. A floating city is attached to the oil platform with a flexible causeway. Large hangers are located next to the helipads. The structure has two occupied stories underwater. You can see the fish swimming by. We haven’t been visited by ‘The Meg’.”“Well, that gun is big enough to take care of the ‘Meg,’ said John.Carl shook his head again. “Just like when we were ten years old again,” he commented.&nbsp;“Steam turbines power the facility providing all needed electricity and heat. Docks of assorted sizes are strategically located on the perimeter. The platform sits fixed in five meters of water. The SSC barrel is six hundred meters long with a one-meter diameter bore and it is mounted in a massive concrete cradle on the ocean bottom. It is muzzle loaded using two cranes to manipulate the Javelin Projectile from the deck of the transport ship to the bottom of the cannon.”&nbsp;“That is a really long barrel! Great for high muzzle velocities.” John interjected.“Once the Javelin is loaded, the end of the barrel is sealed with a plastic membrane and a partial vacuum is pulled to remove most of the atmosphere left in the bore before the time of firing. Any air in the bore would slow the acceleration of Javelin and lower the muzzle velocity. The barrel angle was set to compensate for earth’s rotation.”“That will help with the payload trajectory,” John said.“The Javelin payload vehicle is .95 meter in diameter with pop out guide vanes. The body is thirty-five meters long and can be made of metal or reinforced carbon fiber. It is designed to be reused as a structural member for space platforms and includes many attachment points. The outside is coated with a slick disposable plastic composite intended to protect the bore of the cannon. There is a thrust seal a third of the way down the projectile and near the bottom are guides. The design is for the steam to pull the Javelin out of the barrel since it is so long and slender. At the base is a solid rocket booster that carries the Javelin into low earth orbit. The Javelin is designed to carry only payloads that can survive the high G acceleration.” &nbsp;“Do you follow me so far?” John nodded yes. Carl continued, “The cannon is a sequentially fired steam cannon. This cannon will use ultra-high-pressure steam heated by natural gas to launch heavy non-organic payloads to low earth orbit. Multiple boilers are superheated at high pressure with natural gas we get from the gas field and fired sequentially to propel the Javelin high into the atmosphere. “And this is were the solid rocket kicks in, right Carl?” “Yes, a solid rocket booster takes over and pushes it the rest of the way into space. Steam has a higher density then pure gases and thereby more push. The barrel is designed with angled ports to release the high-pressure steam into the barrel just as the projectile passes them to increase muzzle velocity. There is a computer with sensors that detect the Javelin’s motion through the barrel of the cannon and fires the electric valves in sequence to push the Javelin out of the barrel. John spoke “So you’re telling me there are ports located along the length of the barrel so as the Javelin passes them, another big mass of steam hits the Javelin in the backside to accelerate it?” “Exactly, one quick hit after another, and it is rapidly accelerating in a partial vacuum, with little drag,” Carl responded. “Once launched, the boilers are refilled and reheated for the next shot. Operations will continue around the clock.” The car arrived at the helipad, and they transferred over to the helicopter, put on their headsets, and renewed their conversation. John began again. “Why are you doing it this way? Why not just use rockets? They seemed to have perfected reusable rocket boosters.”&nbsp;“Yes, they have,” explained Carl. “But it is not the cheapest way to get nonorganic items into space. The biggest problem with space exploration and industrializing the moon is one of propulsion. Getting enough fuel into space, cheaply, will allow for unrestricted travel in space and onto the moon. We can really open up the moon to accomplish industrial activity. The only way this will happened is through an efficient and cost-effective method to launch payloads.” “If a sufficient volume of fuel is constantly available, then moving about in space and maintaining orbit about the earth or the moon would be easy. Doing this at the lowest cost with the lowest possible environmental impact is the challenge. Putting sufficient propellant into space economically is the first step in solving this issue. It is also the solution to deorbit to the surface to the moon and return and to controlled thruster hopping or skimming across the surface of the moon instead of crawling on wheels.” “Establishing orbital refueling stations around the earth as well as the moon would be an advantage to both civilian and military satellite users as they will never run out of maneuvering fuel. Replacing the first stage booster with the Javelin steam cannon and launching many smaller payloads more often is a better answer than large payloads with complex and expensive multistage rocket boosters.” “’Old Shep’ Space Tugs, orbital payload recovery vehicles, would be used to gather the unguided Javelins and dock them with the space station or any other ship in orbit. The space tugs would be liquid fueled and could be manned or remotely operated. Also, a custom designed Javelin could be mated to the space tug as an auxiliary fuel and oxygen tanks then when empty, become structural members of a space structure.” “When a large and permanent orbital base is established above the earth, we can push on to the moon to commercialize it. With enough fuel and a permanent space station we can havecomfortable and reliable travel between earth and the moon. We will also have an emergency rescue backup system available. Think of ‘Trans-Lunar Shuttles’ - permanently moving between the earth and the moon, ‘Motor homes’ and ‘space trucks’ to house and transport humans, vehicles, and materials to the moon and back.” “We could even ship resins to mix with moon dust to build extruded domes for workshops and residences. Double walled domes made with moon dust and resin would provide an airtight building. Walls would consist of an inner and outer wall with a vacuum gap for thermal insulation and containment in case of an air leak. Appropriate air locks and a sealed floor would be needed.” “Is a big gun, cheap space travel and orbital gas station, a big enough vision for you?” Carl said.&nbsp;

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Javelin and Jellyfish

Darksail

Brian Oslin

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