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Space Cannon, Revisited

Liquid-filled payloads
 
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It is known that if the human body is immersed in certain well-oxygenated liquids, life can be sustained. It has been proposed (such as in old TV show "Space: 1999") that such an environment will allow human bodies to resist significant inertial forces, such as wild maneuverings of a space-ship.

Well, suppose we try to take that idea to the limit? We could imagine a canon-shell that is hollow but filled with oxygenated liquid, in which our space traveler becomes fully immersed (including "breathing" the liquid). We might even pre-pressurize the liquid, to give the rider greater inertia protection. Now we launch that shell from a giant cannon, into orbit....

Vernon, Dec 22 2017

Nazi V3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon
As mentioned in an annotation, for anyone interested. [Vernon, Dec 22 2017]


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       This is a popular theme in science fiction.   

       Unfortunately, it's only good up to a certain G-limit. Bones are denser than muscle, which is denser than brain, which is denser than fat. So, liquid suspension might enable you to survive 50G or even possibly 200G, but not the very high G associated with a space cannon
MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 22 2017
  

       So, this Idea would work if we were launching from the Moon, or maybe Mars, right?   

       I might also point out that there are different cannon designs. If I recall right, something the Nazis were supposedly building, the "V3", was a cannon that had several injection points for exploding gasses. This would reduce the maximum pressure inside the cannon (and therefore also maximum G-forces), but still allow the payload to accelerate to such a velocity as to travel from France to Britain.
Vernon, Dec 22 2017
  

       Yes indeed. The point I was making was just that suspension in water won't allow you to withstand arbitrarily high G.
MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 22 2017
  

       That's OK if the Idea is Half-Baked. No Idea described here necessarily needs to work under all circumstances.
Vernon, Dec 22 2017
  

       // such as in old TV show "Space: 1999" //   

       We suggest that you may be confusing "Space:1999" with "UFO".   

       The aliens in UFO travelled in suits filled with a green liquid. Since their physiology was sufficiently similar to humans to accept xenotransplantation, it is likely that the liquid would have been one of the proposed perflourocarbon oxygen carriers under investigation for exactly the sort of application described.
8th of 7, Dec 22 2017
  

       I think you'll find, [8th], that it was actually a blue liquid that merely _looked_ green.
MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 22 2017
  

       Some solutions look different by reflected or transmitted light; that's probably the case here.
8th of 7, Dec 22 2017
  


 

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