![]() ![]() ![]() Fed up with the involvement of the Canadian and US governments in his work he moved to Brussels, Belgium, and began operating through a European company.įinally, in 1988, the Iraqi government paid Bull $25 million to begin Project Babylon – the first true spacegun project – on the condition that he continued to work on their artillery. On release he began selling to South Africa again, and this time was fined $55,000 for international arms dealing. In 1976, Bull was arrested in South Africa for violating the United Nations arms embargo and he served six months in a US prison, wrote the New York Times after his death. He set up a private company – the Space Research Corporation of Quebec – and soon started selling arms to the South African government. To find money, Bull began to sell weapons and continued to develop his space supergun as a side project. The problem was that by the 1970s the rest of the world had lost interest in superguns and were now looking elsewhere. One of the main downsides would be the sonic boom, an environmental, or even political, concern, he adds.īull was convinced that his supergun designs were the way forward, he just needed the funding. “Punching through the lower (denser) part of the atmosphere at high speed is an intense heat transfer problem, but ablative coatings and heat shields on the nose of the projectile should be up to the job,” says Higgins. ![]() Obviously, not everything can be launched this way, but gun launch is well suited for launching fuel and building materials. “Military artillery shells today have GPS and laser-guidance optics and electronics that survive these accelerations, so it can be done. ![]() You might think that no satellite could survive the huge g-force of acceleration of a spacegun launch, but this is “often over exaggerated”, according to Higgins. But although he would end up spending much of his career in government-funded weapons research designing rockets and guns for warring countries, his personal ambition was to use his designs to launch satellites not missiles. Initially, engineers used his designs to test supersonic flight without the need for an expensive wind tunnel, by firing projectiles short distances through the barrel of a large gun. At a time when Bull’s expertise should have been in high demand by all of the world’s superpowers, he chose to make his supergun for Saddam Hussein instead, a decision that would end in murder.ĭecades later, tantalising questions remain: could Bull’s supergun idea have worked? And might the idea that died with him ever return?Ī gifted academic, Bull began working with the Canadian and US governments researching supergun technology in the 1960s. So what happened? The answer is a tale of hubris, thwarted ambitions and military secrets. For example, a version posted by Tumblr user whenthebeatdropsimgoingtokms on June 26th received over 10,300 likes and reblogs in three days.But Big Babylon was never built, and no-one has got close since. On June 17th, Twitter user replied with an edit of the image in which a "gaming room" was added, with their tweet gaining over 510 retweets and 11,500 likes (shown below, right).īoth tweets received viral spread in the following days, with more edits of the image posted on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and other social media in late June 2021. The image did not see active use in memes until June 16th, 2021, when Twitter user posted a meme that received over 10,600 retweets and 129,600 likes in two weeks (shown below, left). The image saw brief popularity in August 2020, mainly through reposts of joke. Later on the same day, Twitter user used the image in a joke about renting an apartment that received over 1,400 retweets and 12,800 likes in the same period (shown below, right). The image did not see viral spread until August 24th, 2020, when Twitter user used it for a Mentally I'm Here joke that received over 1,600 retweets and 17,100 likes in one year. On January 9th, 2015, Tumblr user metagrammed posted the earliest found edit of the image which received 64 likes and reblogs in six years (authorship unconfirmed, shown below). On December 15th, 2003, the illustration in the BBC article was replaced with a more detailed version (shown below, left, photograph of the spider-hole shown below, right). In the English article and its translated versions, an illustration of the spider hole Hussein was hiding in, titled "Saddam's Hiding Place," was used (English version shown below). On December 14th, 2003, BBC reported on the capture of Hussein. The dictator was found hiding in a spider hole at one of two search sites in Ad-Dard, Iraq. On December 13th, 2003, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured during Operation Red Dawn by American military forces. ![]()
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