🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17096@mindlink.bc.ca> Bruce_Dunn@mindlink.bc.ca (Bruce Dunn) writes:
>
>Last year, about 7,000 people gathered for the annual competition, the object
>of which is to hurl your pumpkin farther than anyone else's, using a
>contraption of whatever design - catapult, slingshot, centrifuge, crossbow -
>you think will do the job....

[Discussion of pumpkin chuckin' contest deleted]
>
>Which raises the question:  Are we safe here in metropolitan Washington?
>
>"Oh, I don't think they'll fly that far," says a Lewes Chamber of Commerce
>spokesman, pausing a beat and adding, "Give us anouther couple of years."
>
>(end quote)
>
>     Here is your chance.  Just think of the papers which could be written.
>
>"The optomiziation of a linear propulsion device for vegetable matter"
>"The subsonic and suspersonic aerodynamics of pumpkins"
>"Investigation of maximal G forces sustainable by living tissue, using a
>novel inexpensive surrogate for the human head"
>

A few years ago, when the SDIO Laser Propulsion Program was looking at
pulsed laser ablation for propulsion, one of the potential "propellants"
was water ice.  Since ice is a pain to work with, especially in a vacuum
chamber, one contractor did a small number of tests on 95% water in 
solid form -- cucumber slices.  While the experiments themselves didn't
lead anywhere, a party discussion with Jay Freeman did lead to 
a variety of applications:

	Zucchini thrusters -- solve the annual zucchini surplus and
		get cheap space launch at the same time.

	Scaling up -- watermelon thrusters with zucchini strap-ons

	MIRV's -- Multiple Independent Re-entry Vegetables

		"Incoming Soviet Watermelons detected, Sir!  They're not
		decoys -- we have seed echoes"

	And finally:
	SVI -- The Strategic Vegetable Initiative
		"A zucchini at 10 km/s can ruin your whole day"

So can a laser-launched pumpkin be far behind??

	Jordin (Broccoli Rocketry) Kare

-- 

	Jordin Kare	jtk@s1.gov	510-426-0363