Re: buoyant cannon balls

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> > I don't follow.  Bullets and cannon balls can travel faster than the
> > speed of sound.  Why should the speed of sound be a limiting factor?
> That's interesting. You have a reference for supersonic cannon-balls
> I expect?   The drag properties of round ball grow specially
> unfavorable near sonic speeds, I believe.

I don't think there's anything special about the spherical shape
that makes it resistant to exceding sound speed. Lots of bullets
do. I cited one Mach 4 bullet earlier in this thread from the
olden days. I think it likely that one has been bested in the
intervening fifty years. A Canadian named Bull once worked on a
project (HARP) which had as its goal the injection of satellites
into low Earth orbit by using two coast defense gunbarrels
welded end to end as a very high velocity first stage. He was a
genius at this sort of thing, but he was assasinated by Israeli
agents later for doing consulting work for Saddam Hussein. HARP
was abandoned by the Canadian government. It went south (to the
University of Vermont, I think) and I lost track of it thereafter.
Anyone know what happened?

Leigh