Here's a direct link to the video, to avoid the blogspam cruft... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co57SfcT-h0
To the blog's credit the video is right there at the top of the blog.
It was still completely encrusted in crap, however.
Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
81–90 of 109 posts
Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the pump were operated by a bicyclist and the projectile feed automated I imagine the pneumatic system would win out by a very wide margin regardless of any reduction in overall efficiency.
I've seen potato guns (obviously much larger bore than this) and inflated bicycle tires to 100psi+ How do you imagine making the cycle time better "by a very wide margin" compared to lifting 100 pounds less than 10 feet?
Isn't it a simple matter of sustained energy output scaled by the overall efficiency? I'm saying that a human cycling can sustain much much higher energy output for much longer than most other forms of exercise. Running probably comes close and swimming likely exceeds both of those but in the latter two cases I'm not clear how you could productively harness energy from the activity with any sort of efficiency so it doesn't apply here.
Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#83How do you responsibly test something like this? The payload isn't going to follow a ballistic trajectory, it's going to follow an aerodynamic one. You'd probably have to design something special to load into it to aim the damned thing. Which is a road trip to some place very empty in something like a 180º arc. Maybe 225º.
> How do you responsibly test something like this? Into the ocean, I would hope
Sir, the orcas have declared war on California.
Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#84Seems 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 think the only real advantage of this, compared to gas driven projectiles, is the lack of need for gas sealing and explosion resistance of the projectile. The projectile is accelerated much more gently. You can launch combustible, rather fragile and irregularly shaped projectiles. That said, I don't think there is much need for supersonic exit velocities for most scenarios. Maybe you could use it for impact testing…
Could it be built using medieval (or earlier) technology? One wouldn’t be worth anything on a battlefield but a few hundred of them would be interesting. I don’t know if steel that a blacksmith makes would be uniform or strong enough for that spinning arm though.
I suppose the string is even worse, though.
Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's absurdist to be concerned about this and be okay driving a car from a total harm to society perspective.
Heartily disagree. It's the Frankenstein problem. As an engineer, if you can't even start a process with sobriety, rigor, and safety in mind, that cavalier attitude only amplifies as you go down the road from experimentation to design to unleashing your ideas onto the public. It's a harbinger of what is to come if you're being a suicidal idiot during the prototyping phase. If you don't even have respect for your own…
In terms of safety to me and others this endeavor is far below what is societally acceptable and if you think otherwise you are bad at evaluating danger.
Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#86Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#87Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
All such weaponized technology carries the weight of danger, but de-weaponized technologies - which is what this represents to me - could mean some break-throughs, too. There are a lot of peaceful applications for a trebuchet. And yes, it'd need training, but its not the training part of explosives training that I think needs to be rendered obsolete, but rather the explosives manufacture and distribution network, or…
Peaceful use of weapons is cool. But that's exactly what avalanche-triggering guns already are, in full. They and trebuchets are both military artillery at heart. As far as I know they still need explosives at the terminal end, too, even when dropped by helicopter, so that part is also not going away (ignoring explosives needed for mining, etc).
Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#89What about the guy that jumped from space and broke the sound barrier?
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records/hall-of-fame/fe...
Re: Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
#90Also (mentioned by Tom), this elastic-powered supersonic trebuchet is an excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdXOS-B0Bus
This would qualify more as a Ballista than a trebuchet