Once upon a time — it was 1866 — Jules Verne wrote an adventure story in which a group of Americans build a large cannon to shoot the first men to the Moon.
Later, Sir Isaac Newton developed a thought experiment that placed a cannon on a very high mountain that, with the right amount of gun powder, was able to shoot a canon into orbit.
To some degree, this is how we launch space vehicles. But not really.
Now, according to Bart Leahy, a group of graduate students and academics hopes to launch low-cost satellites into orbit using a concept similar to that of Verne.
Read more in The Space Review.
