The cost was roughly $1,727 per kilogram, adjusting for inflation. Had Bull been able to solve these issues, the capabilities of Big Babylon would have made the supergun an attractively cheap way to launch satellites. Something similar to an anti-tank round, where the projectile is housed in a light-weight casing which falls away at the muzzle of the gun. “We know roughly what the projectiles would have looked like. This means you need to solve some far more complicated calculations than with smaller types of artillery.” He believes Bull could have worked it out though. “It burns quickly, but with such a long barrel you need a sustained release. “One very considerable technical problem with a gun of this size is how you ignite the charge,” says Hall. To do this would have required an enormous charge. Alternatively, the gun could be used to launch a 2,000kg rocket-assisted projectile carrying a 200kg satellite. Using nine tonnes of special supergun propellant, Big Babylon would have been theoretically capable of firing a 600kg projectile across 1,000 kilometres, putting Kuwait and Iran well within striking distance from inside Iraq. You can see a larger version of this graphic here (Credit: Nigel Hawtin) In total it would have weighed 1,510 tonnes far too big to be transportable, and so instead would have been mounted at a 45 degree angle on a hillside.īig Babylon would have overshadowed all previous supergun designs for size – including guns built for military use like the giant German guns from the two World Wars and later spacegun designs – although we can only estimate other details, like launch velocity. The full-size Big Babylon barrel would have been 156m in length with a one metre bore.

Project Babylon began life as three superguns two full-sized Big Babylon 1000mm calibre guns and a prototype 350mm calibre gun called Baby Babylon. 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.

But Big Babylon was never built, and no-one has got close since.

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