Just in time for Halloween, an Indiana man is building a pumpkin gun that will launch a ten-pound speciman a mile, with a muzzle velocity of 900 miles an hour.

He'd better beware of recruiters from Iraq.

My prediction: the oversized gourd will be instantaneously squashed and cooked. Perhaps they can use a pie shell as a target.

Only in America.

It's not so difficult. There has been serious competition in this field for over 10 years in Delaware. The current competition will be the Weekend of Nov. 1 in Lewes Deleware. It started out with catapults, but pneumatic cannon are now standard.

What about an orbital pumpkin gun? Just the thing for Halloween--an orbiting jack-o-lantern! Battery powered, of course, since a candle would not burn in the vacuum of space. (thanks to Mr. Spock for that rare bit of knowledge ;-)

*Shudder* Airborne pumpkins have a history of disaster -- years back, some Arizona skydivers were playing with a pumpkin in freefall, to celebrate Hallowe'en... it got away from them, and went through the roof, ceiling, and dining room table of the unfortunate house below them. The good thing is that no one was underneath.

OTOH, this ought to be really impressive, provided no one is hurt...

Akshully, trebuchets, onagers, ballista-type devices are all used, as well as some interesting human-powered types. They compete in their own categories as the pneumatic chunkers outrange the rest at this point.

In order to accelerate a pumpkin from zero to 900 mph in some reasonable distance (

Calculator-induced brain fart. Make that 1350 gees.

>> (

The pumpkin cannon in question already has a 30ft barrel.

I don't see why he couldn't make a barrel 2-3x as long fairly easily. That's less than the length of a semi-trailer and if he's developed a disassemblable barrel, 1-200 ft is doable. (He will have problems mounting the thing when it is fully assembled.)

I think that either the air tank(s) or the valves are more significant obstacles.

I don't think that pneumatics will get him close to the speed of sound (regardless of the projectile), but I'm proud to see an American opening up a pumpkin gap.

Size the barrel to 200 feet and you've got it down to a mere 135 gees. Still questionable whether you could keep it in one piece. And 900 mph is supersonic...if he's not lying he's already broken the sound barrier. I'm a little baffled...if you evenly spread out the weight of a couple of 1974 Caddilacs across about half the surface of a 10-lb pumpkin, I say it'd crush like a grape. But as I demonstrated above, I've been wrong before.

you can see a bunch of pictures of thse things at:

http://www.worldchampionshippunkinchunkin.com/machines/index.htm

and the parent :

http://www.worldchampionshippunkinchunkin.com/

is a veritable goldmine of info ;)

20 feet is a gross underestimate of the barrel length of the big boys; machines like "Old Glory" and "Universal Soldier" have 80+ foot tubes.

Guns like the Soldier are rumored to feature some form of slide-sabot technology (necessarily fully contained within the length of the tube - nothing's allowed to cross the firing line according to the rules); teams are obviously quite mum on the subject. ;)

It doesn't even look like this wuss is ging to go after the real competition, maybe he's setting up for a trial run ;)

Now, to get myself to Delaware... This just sounds too fun to not go once in one's life ;)

On the question of ammunition: The big timers at the Punkin Chunkin competition in Deleware have been working on sturdier and sturdier pumpkins by crossing various varieties. I know a couple of years ago the variety of choice was the "Double white diamond" variety. A white pumpkin with extraordinarily thick, hard walls.

By contrast, some of the big pneumatics will do ordinary orange pumpkins on "demonstration day" in Deleware. I've not been there, but seen video. Basically, orange pumpkins leave the barrel as a cloud of orange mist.

The current record-holder is the "Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator." With a 150 foot barrel, I estimated about 70 Gs to attain their 4000 feet plus distance. The leap to get to 100+ Gs to go supersonic is significant. Additionally, if a system can be generated to go supersonic in the barrel, I have to imagine the shockwave as the pumpkin leaves the barrel would be devastating. I'm anxious to hear about some field tests.

not only will it go 900mph but with 20 more feet of barrel I'm up to 1320mph. Yes I'm up to 50ft of 12in barrel and twice the sownd barior. I have broken the mile mark and then some. Call me and I'll explane why I did it and the compition in deliware hasent. 812-360 3809.

not only will it go 900mph but with 20 more feet of barrel I'm up to 1320mph. Yes I'm up to 50ft of 12in barrel and twice the sownd barior. I have broken the mile mark and then some. Call me and I'll explane why I did it and the compition in deliware hasent. 812-360 3809.