A satellite in 1890s

Actually you would like to look at Verne's 'The Begum's Fortune' and 'The Sale of the North Pole' for other examples of larger caliber guns firing projectiles, that became artificial satellites around the Earth.

There was a steampunk website sometime ago where Britain had two giant cannons that fired mail bearing shells from Britain to India and India to Britain. I also believe that Steve Jackson Games' Pyramid Magazine had an article about a Victorian Space Cannon. I'll try finding it.
 

Thande

Donor
There was a steampunk website sometime ago where Britain had two giant cannons that fired mail bearing shells from Britain to India and India to Britain. I also believe that Steve Jackson Games' Pyramid Magazine had an article about a Victorian Space Cannon. I'll try finding it.
Post-carrying suborbital rockets were a mainstay of future predictions well into the 1950s. Presumably for freight rather than just letters...
 
The Paris Gun shot into the upper stratosphere. I don't think that more height wouldn't have been possible. I would question whether actual orbit could be achieved.
 
The history of How-EX

In 1878 an American banker Jacob Wootton face a great problem, he has to deliver almost fifty seperate letters in order to secure his bank in the coming year with in but two hours. The bridge is washed out, the telegraph line was down, and the mail carrier has already left. The man is stuck and needs to cross the river, but it is too high, and fast to cross.

No one knows why but the man quickly got the attention of the local militia who singled the people on the other side. Using a thick metal container stuffed with the letters the militia used its cannon to fire the canister across the river. The man on the other side picked up the canister and found some money and a note to deliver the letters.

Wootton quickly saw an amazing business in his "cannon mail." Spending a few months the man quickly learned the ways of artillery, and how limitless a cannon ball could go given the right amount of time. The Howitzer Express Mail company was formed in 1880 and worked by using advanced artillery piece which could send a single mail canister almost 2000 meters. A system of such cannons was made and fired into open fields along New York state. A single letter could move along the "cannon chain" of hundred and seventy miles in about two hours.

As time went on Wootton began creating larger and larger mail cannons. In 1890 the "Grand Cannon" was fired in Albany, New York and fired 120 lbs of mail 15 miles into the air and almost 130 miles away. As such it was soon a system of such guns, firing round the clock allowing mail to be delivered across the country in a day.
 
The Earth had a satellite in the 1890s. It was called the moon.
:D
:D

Well, an artificial satellite would require an escape velocity of 25000mph (what, about 40000kph?), so you get a gun like that and there you go. However, I believe that any gun of that time (or now, for that matter...) would have been powerful enough to hit that speed.
So, if anyone can prove that we could get something to that speed, then go for it.
 
Space1889rpg.jpg

LAWL!!!

Two words: Project Babylon

If Gerald Bull's Babylon Gun had actually been built and fired it would have been able to place a trashcan-sized satillite in orbit.
Perhaps. Question to ask is what condition the contents would be in once they got all the way up there?

I welcome any and all discussion of a space-faring culture around the turn of the century as I and some other OTLers tried to figure up such a scenario a few months ago (came up blank, farthest back we could get was the 1940s).

Also this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbiad#In_fiction

Believe that's the name y'all are looking for. I remember a local woodsman/former government assassin :)rolleyes:) who claimed that working space guns were quite workable and not too incredibly hard to make (given sufficient resources of course).
 
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Post-carrying suborbital rockets were a mainstay of future predictions well into the 1950s. Presumably for freight rather than just letters...

Until Marconi's wireless radio gets invented, this "rocket freighter" idea is the only practical use for Victorian Space Age unless you want long ranged rocket artililery too.

Even after radio is invented I'd imagine that it would take a couple of decades before it could be used due to the fragile nature of it's components.
 
So,in conclusion send a little bullet in low orbit with a big cannon,Jules Verne's style,is scientificaly impossible?No, it wouldn't have been scientifically impossible. Exceptionally unlikely, yes, but not impossible. Shoot the shell to the highest altitude and then, using a clockwork timer, fire the guncotton or cordite solid rocket to establish orbit.The calculations needed to know how much, when, how strong, how long, etc., etc. would have been pretty difficult to manage to even the minimum level needed to achieve any orbit at all,but Maybe was possible with an analytical engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine

space1899-01.jpg
 
:D

Well, an artificial satellite would require an escape velocity of 25000mph (what, about 40000kph?), so you get a gun like that and there you go. However, I believe that any gun of that time (or now, for that matter...) would have been powerful enough to hit that speed.
So, if anyone can prove that we could get something to that speed, then go for it.
An escape volocity of 25k mph will cause the satellite to escape Earth's gravity altogether, so therefore you only need a speed of about 17K mph to put it in orbit around the Earth.
 
Well considering that even the big guns of WWI like Big Bertha could only shoot a shell so far an it was far from going into orbit, I'm not sure if this could be done.

Ok, use a smaller shell. Yes a big gun of the 1890's might have been able to do that, but the shell would probably be so small that in that time there was no way to track it into space. So how would you know if it succeeded?

Some type of rocket had been around since the days of Ancient China's invention of gunpowder and fireworks. I think they may have known enough about ballistics, and simple rockets, and such to have built a rocket to put up a satalite.

It would have been interesting if they had in the 1890's the communications and electronics ability to track such a satalite once it was up, send it commands, and actually use it for some, hopefully, positive purpose.
 
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