"Bruce Sterling - Think of the Prestige" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Ballistically speaking, space cannon offer distinct advantages
over rockets. Rockets must lift, not only their own weight, but the
weight of their fuel and oxidizer. Cannon "fuel," which is contained
within the gunbarrel, offers far more explosive bang for the buck than
rocket fuel. Cannon projectiles are very accurate, thanks to the fixed
geometry of the gun-barrel. And cannon are far simpler and cheaper
than rockets.

There are grave disadvantages, of course. First, the payload
must be slender enough to fit into a gun-barrel. The most severe
drawback is the huge acceleration force of a cannon blast, which in the
case of Bull's exotic arsenal could top 10,000 Gs. This rules out
manned flights from the mouth of space-cannon. Jules Verne
overlooked this unpoetic detail when he wrote his prescient tale of
space artillery, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (1865). (Dr Bull
was fascinated by Verne, and often spoke of Verne's science fiction as
one of the foremost inspirations of his youth.)

Bull was determined to put a cannon-round into orbit. This
burning desire of his was something greater than any merely
pragmatic or rational motive. The collapse of the HARP project in
1967 left Bull in command of his own fortunes. He reassembled the
wreckage of his odd academic/military career, and started a
commercial operation, "Space Research Corporation." In the years
to follow, Bull would try hard to sell his space-cannon vision to a
number of sponsors, including NATO, the Pentagon, Canada, China,
Israel, and finally, Iraq.

In the meantime, the Vietnam War was raging. Bull's
researches on projectile aerodynamics had made him, and his
company Space Reseach Corporation, into a hot military-industrial
property. In pursuit of space research, Bull had invented techniques
that lent much greater range and accuracy to conventional artillery
rounds. With Bull's ammunition, for instance, US Naval destroyers
would be able to cruise miles off the shore of North Vietnam,
destroying the best Russian-made shore batteries without any fear of
artillery retaliation. Bull's Space Research Corporation was
manufacturing the necessary long-range shells in Canada, but his lack
of American citizenship was a hindrance in the Pentagon arms trade.

Such was Dr. Bull's perceived strategic importance that this
hindrance was neatly avoided; with the sponsorship of Senator Barry
Goldwater, Bull became an American citizen by act of Congress. This
procedure was a rare honor, previously reserved only for Winston
Churchill and the Marquis de Lafayette.

Despite this Senatorial fiat, however, the Navy arms deal
eventually fell through. But although the US Navy scorned Dr. Bull's
wares, others were not so short-sighted. Bull's extended-range
ammunition, and the murderously brilliant cannon that he designed to