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Ever since the invention of gunpowder in China during the 9th century,
Humanity has made significant advances at perfecting the technology behind guns.
But how large can a gun actually get?
And how far away can a gun actually shoot a projectile away at?
The answer starts with some context and history.
The Paris Gun was built by the Germans in 1918 and was by far the largest gun ever built up to that point.
It was used to shell Paris from a distance of 120 kilometers away,
Or about the same distance from one side of Denmark over to the other side.
It was transported along railroads and weighed 256 tons,
Which, you guessed it, is about the weight of 200 Toyota Corollas (the best unit of measurement)
It was 34 meters long and capable of firing a 106 kg shell to an altitude of 42.3 kilometers
The first shell fired from this gun in 1918 was the very first man made object to enter into the stratosphere.
And it took 182 seconds for the shell to finally make impact 120 kilometers away
After leaving the gun's barrel
Fast forward to WW2 and the Germans were BACK AT IT AGAIN with an even more ridiculously sized gun
This time called the SCHWERER GUSTAV
Which remains, to this day ,the largest gun ever built that actually fired a projectile
Just take a look at its size compared to the biggest tank ever built,
The Panzer VIII Mouse
And like the Paris gun, it was transported by rail.
But unlike the Paris Gun, this monstrosity was over 5 times heavier at 1,350 tons
More than the weight of 1,000 Corollas.
The barrel alone was 32.5 meters long,
And it took 250 men to assemble the gun in 3 days.
Once set up, the guns' caliber was 80 cm wide,
And could fire 1 shot every 30-45 minutes.
These shells weighed an impressive 7 tons,
Heavier than the German built Panzer one tank even was
Imagine a gun shooting a light tank a distance of 47 kilometers
and you'll begin to understand the power behind it
But...it didn't last long.
The germans destroyed the gun themselves in 1945 to avoid it getting captured by the Red Army,
and little advancements were made in super gun technology from there until 1961
In that year, the US and Canadian governments started a joint research mission called Project H.A.R.P,
which stood for High Altitude Research Project.
Without getting into complicated details,
the project basically tried to build a gun big enough and powerful enough to fire objects like satellites into space,
Without the need for expensive rockets.
One such gun was built in Arizona that had a caliber width of 41 cm,
and a barrel length of 41 meters,
longer than the SH FAR ER GOOSTOV.
It fired a 180 kg projectile out of the barrel at a blistering speed of 2.1 km/s
Which briefly sent it into space and set an altitude record for guns at 180 km high
which is a world record that still stands today if you're looking for something to do ;)
Since the escape velocity of earth is actually more like 11.2 km/s,
H.A.R.P was nowhere near capable of firing a projectile that could stay in space,
and it was canceled shortly after.
But the head of the project named Gerald Bull wouldn't give up so easily,
so he met up with a guy a couple decades later who really liked the idea of big guns too named SADOM,
and got to work on a new gun code-named "Project Babylon".
A prototype gun called "Baby Babylon" was successfully built that had a caliber of 350 mm and a barrel length of 46 meters
It weighed 102 tons
and after being set up on a hillside, it was supposedly capable of achieving a firing range of 750 km, (wow!)
Enough to fire something from San Francisco all the way to San Diego.
The actual non-prototype model that was never built, however, would've been far larger.
Going by the slightly obvious name of "Big Babylon",
It would've had a caliber size of an entire meter.
The barrel was going to be 156 meters long,
nearly 5 times longer than the barrel of the SH FAR ER GOOSTOV,
suspended from cables on a steel framework,
it would've been over 100 meters high at the tip,
and the complete mechanism would've weighed over 2100 tons.
Since firing projectiles directly at targets would've been laughably inaccurate with this thing,
it was going to be used instead like the H.A.R.P gun,
and fire projectiles into orbit.
These could've been satellites,
or, more sinister, guided weapons.
Using onboard rocket boosters, these projectiles could position themselves over an enemy target or city,
and drop down using gravity to pull them down and gain kinetic energy while falling.
It's unclear if this truly would've been possible for Iraq to accomplish,
and...we'll never know since Gerald Bull was mysteriously assassinated in 1990,
outside of his apartment by unknown agents.
"Big Babylon" is not, however, the largest gun ever conceived to be possible.
That honor probably has to go to the "quicklaunch gun",
which pushes the limits on how large guns can possibly get.
While not yet built, the barrel was built to be 1.1 km (chuckle of disbelief) long,
much longer than the tallest building in the world is tall.
It would be mostly submerged in the ocean and used Hydrogen instead of gunpowder as its firing source.
The claim is that it would be capable of firing a projectile at 6 km/s out of the barrel,
and then onboard rocket boosters on that projectile would speed it up to 7.8 km/s,
which could get supplies on the projectile into orbit.
While not designed for military applications,
Quicklaunch is probably about the biggest gun that humanity could conceivably build right now.
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which was lighter than the projectile fired from the SH FAR ER GOOSTOV,
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