Space guns are a theoretical technology that uses giant cannons to replace the first stage of a rocket to get bulk materials into low-Earth orbit. For many years, they have been proposed theoretically but in recent years there have been some practical demonstrations. These devices have been theorised to reduce the cost per kilogram to orbit from ~$5000 to as low as $200. Such a significant reduction in cost would dramatically accelerate the development of our local region of space.

This script performs a simple simulation of an unpowered ballistic projectile within the Earths atmosphere. The simulation uses the Velocity Verlet method to simulate the projectiles motion and applies it with a simple atmosphere model made available by NASA.

The repository contains several scripts that function in different ways to collect and display information:

• projectile_main.py: Contains the core simulation functions that are called by other scripts.
• projectile_single.py: Runs the simulation once with the parameters that are imbedded in the code. The code will need to be edited directly in order to change the simulation parameters at the moment.
• projectile_maxHeight: Iterates a parameter (such as launch velocity, launch angle, initial height, etc.) through a range of values to display how changing that parameter affects the maximum height the projectile reaches.
• projectile_dataGather: Provides the results from a series of simulation runs at once to observe how changing a parameter affects the trajectory.
• projectile_minEnergy: Iterates through a range of launch angles and increments the launch velocity until a target stable orbit (TSO) is reached. More data is then calculated to determine how the launch angle affects how much mass can be delivered to orbit in a single launch.

At the moment the parameters are changed by manually changing the values within the scripts. Future iterations of these scripts could involve changing these via the command line or with some UI elements for easier data gathering and display.

Developed for Unusual systems and in collaboration with Lancaster laboratories.