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Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

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Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#21

Post by toasty228 »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #2

Seems like such an advance in this ancient technology. It would be really cool to see it applied in interesting ways. I really wonder just how effective this could be as a defense system .. the mind wanders with every update Tom makes .. I imagine an aiming/targetting system would make this an effective, easily replenished, low-resource weapon system for some applications. Attacking feral animals, perhaps? How could…

Or we can just accept it as a cool gimmick, we don't have to kill animals with supersonic trebuchets really

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#22

Post by monster_truck »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #2

Seems like such an advance in this ancient technology. It would be really cool to see it applied in interesting ways. I really wonder just how effective this could be as a defense system .. the mind wanders with every update Tom makes .. I imagine an aiming/targetting system would make this an effective, easily replenished, low-resource weapon system for some applications. Attacking feral animals, perhaps? How could…

[flagged]

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#23

Post by thot_experiment »

hinkley wrote: post #12
thot_experiment wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shooting 3d printed balls, I imagine they don't stay supersonic for very long. Significantly less dangerous to others than driving a car.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid.

It's absurdist to be concerned about this and be okay driving a car from a total harm to society perspective.

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#24

Post by monster_truck »

gattr wrote: post #9
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #2

Seems like such an advance in this ancient technology. It would be really cool to see it applied in interesting ways. I really wonder just how effective this could be as a defense system .. the mind wanders with every update Tom makes .. I imagine an aiming/targetting system would make this an effective, easily replenished, low-resource weapon system for some applications. Attacking feral animals, perhaps? How could…

I also loved the video. But I'd think if one wanted to deploy "simple" mechanical projectile weapons at scale, pneumatic launchers would be easier, more compact and more reliable (way less cool-looking and operating, though!).

Basically anyone can go buy a pellet rifle that will easily and consistently clear 1500fps. They're still pretty cool, and will go through both doors of a car

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#25

Post by nkrisc »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #2

Seems like such an advance in this ancient technology. It would be really cool to see it applied in interesting ways. I really wonder just how effective this could be as a defense system .. the mind wanders with every update Tom makes .. I imagine an aiming/targetting system would make this an effective, easily replenished, low-resource weapon system for some applications. Attacking feral animals, perhaps? How could…

I don’t think this has much practical application as an entire system. Nor is it supposed to. It was built just to achieve and artificial goal with arbitrary constraints. That doesn’t make it any less cool or interesting, but that doesn’t make it useful.

Some of the features he used are pretty cool though, like varying the winding drum diameter to vary the delivered torque over the course of the weight drop.

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#27

Post by andrewflnr »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #2

Seems like such an advance in this ancient technology. It would be really cool to see it applied in interesting ways. I really wonder just how effective this could be as a defense system .. the mind wanders with every update Tom makes .. I imagine an aiming/targetting system would make this an effective, easily replenished, low-resource weapon system for some applications. Attacking feral animals, perhaps? How could…

> without requiring fire-arms training.

You'd need trebuchet training instead, which is probably not better in the long run. I bet there's still lots of ways to kill/mangle yourself with one of these, especially once you've been around them long enough to get casual and sloppy.

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#28

Post by earleybird »

thot_experiment wrote: post #23
hinkley wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid.

It's absurdist to be concerned about this and be okay driving a car from a total harm to society perspective.

Merry Christmas

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#29

Post by qwery »

genewitch wrote: post #14
gattr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also loved the video. But I'd think if one wanted to deploy "simple" mechanical projectile weapons at scale, pneumatic launchers would be easier, more compact and more reliable (way less cool-looking and operating, though!).

like a potato cannon? I helped design the "reloadable" part of a golf-ball shooter that used acetylene as the accelerant. I don't think it went supersonic, though. There's videos (embarassing ones) on youtube. He eventually designed one that can shoot full cans of monster energy hundreds of yards. the reason i bring it up is we used to design and build pneumatic ones, that could send C and D batteries thousands of fe…

Sorry to be a bore [that's a firearms joke], but -- while I encourage everyone and their family to experiment with building such devices, with safety in mind of course, it is a lot of fun -- please don't dispose of your old batteries in the natural environment!

Really not trying to call you out here, as a teenager I once had the idea to load up my marble cannon with dead AAs (they're free!) and got a "do you really think that's a good idea?" from an environmentally conscious adult when I went asking for dead batteries.

Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

#30

Post by [deleted] »

emptybits wrote: post #20

His trebuchet launched a 4 gram projectile at 776 miles per hour. That's obviously extremely lightweight for trebuchet payload, but for comparison, his projectile is approximately 62 grains so approximately twice as heavy as 30 grain high speed 22LR rounds. And approximately 1.5 times as heavy as 40 grain subsonic rounds.

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