VERA: My very favorite gun

[arisemobility]

What the! Holy hybrid cannon!

[D_Hall]

Stay tuned, folks... If everything goes well, on Tuesday I'm going for 1.75 million ft*lbs.

[jrrdw]

Stay tuned, folks... If everything goes well, on Tuesday I'm going for 1.75 million ft*lbs.

Soooo.....you'll be shouldering it for the shot, correct? Any real man would (snicker snicker).

[D_Hall]

Ooof... 1.75 didn't happen folks. No fault of VERA's, mind you. The attempt for 1.75 was going to be done using an "extra" shot that had already been paid for by a customer in the event their test series concluded early. It didn't so there wasn't an extra asset to go for broke with. Bummer.

[jrrdw]

So what's the cost per shot?

[D_Hall]

It's on the order of $6k per shot + instrumentation/photography costs. Current customer is running about $10k per shot due to such.

[MrCrowley]

Cheaper than I expected. We should have a Spudfiles fundraising campaign

I bet we could get reddit to pull the funds together...

[jrrdw]

Wow that's really more than I expected. I was thinking 3 or 4 hundred.

[D_Hall]

Today was a good day.

104 pounds.

1220 feet/sec.

That's 2,405,869 ft*lbs, my friends.

[D_Hall]

Wow that's really more than I expected. I was thinking 3 or 4 hundred.

It takes 3 people about 45 minutes just to open the barrel, load her, and button her back up. Figure $125/hr per person. That's $280 and doesn't even begin to account for initial set up, range expenses, photography, sabot design/construction, etc.

Regardless, even $10k/shot is dirt cheap compared to the alternatives (hint: sled tests generally start about about $75k/shot).

[MrCrowley]

Does it get cheaper the more shots someone orders?

That's 2,405,869 ft*lbs, my friends.

What's the projectile weight limit? You've probably mentioned it somewhere before but I've forgotten.

[D_Hall]

Does it get cheaper the more shots someone orders?

Absolutely. It costs about $15k just to set up the gun and get things ready to go. You haven't even fired the gun yet. After that..... I don't know exactly what the curve looks like as nobody has asked for a large number of shots, but I imagine in production you could get it down to about $3k/shot.

What's the projectile weight limit? You've probably mentioned it somewhere before but I've forgotten.

There isn't any hard limit, but we've been advertising 500 pounds. Mind you, that's just to cover our bases. The most anyone has asked about is 300 pounds.

[jrrdw]

It takes 3 people about 45 minutes just to open the barrel, load her, and button her back up. Figure $125/hr per person. That's $280 and doesn't even begin to account for initial set up, range expenses, photography, sabot design/construction, etc.

Regardless, even $10k/shot is dirt cheap compared to the alternatives (hint: sled tests generally start about about $75k/shot).

It be neet to see the process from start to finish but due to propritary issue's and concerns that's not going to show up on Youtube anytime soon or if at all. :bom:

[D_Hall]

Hint: 28 bolts. 1.25" in diameter. Impact wrenches are verbotten (chatter is bad for payloads).

[mark.f]

Sucks to have a cannon so tied up in bureaucracy and labor unions. Although that's honestly the only way anyone interested could conceivably afford to build a cannon like this (unless they also snort cocaine off of supermodels rears in their spare time as well).

Sorry to hear it didn't work out... keep us tuned for the next customer cool with you publishing their tests.