Project Babylon involved Martix Churchill of Fletchamstead Highway in Coventry back the late 80s they where investigsted for making piping components for the Babylon super gun
I prefer watching his internet show to anything on TV besides Star Trek lol. my ten-year-old knows how to do more on the internet than I do. but it's easy to click on his shows and watch.
I read that the GC 45. 155mmm howitzer was the longest range field artillery piece in the world. There were also three 16” HARP guns. One in Quebec Canada, one in Yuma Arizona, and one in Barbados.
@@jonathanjohnson9611 Congress gave him US Citizenship. I don't think he betrayed anyone. I think that the CIA used and abused him. He is a credit to the Canadian people and his teachers. I wish that he had been allowed to build his space faring cannon.
Not sure this is quite megaproject-y enough (maybe better suited for side projects), but how about a video on gigantic mining equipment like the Bagger 293, the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60, and Big Muskie?
@The Infidel Ummm no? The orbital velocity of the moon is around 1,600 m/s. The fastest slingshot ever made could throw a projectile 654 ft/s (around 200 m/s).
You can't simply throw object into orbit, no matter it's velocity. It will be always on suborbital trajectory and it will hit the surface eventually. You need to apply force at least once again (idealy close to it's apopasis) to adjust it's trajectory and enter the orbit. So no, there is no device, no matter how high muzzle velocity, able to put object on orbit. Said object will always need some kind of own propulsion.
The scary part isn't the gun, it's the fact that Babbel in Arabic means Babylon. The phrase "Developed by Saddam Youths organization" is all we're missing right now
Think there was a film about this with Frank Langella playing Bull's part and Alan Arkin as the Mossad officer tried to warn him, he was on a dangerous path. The High Altitude Research Project was considered for alternative satellite launches.
Thx Hugh Nelmes. You are right about the movie. South Africa will have been a very different place today. The Africans had best Soviet guns and the South Africans still used WO2 guns. There was limited help for Israel, France, England, US, West-Germany. But it was very-very limited. With the G5 the South African Army can shell the enemy a max of 42km. (Depending on the tipe of projectile.) Dankie/ Merci.
fun fact, jules verne theorized the use of a space gun in From the Earth to the Moon rather than a rocket. as well as theorizing the US would be the first and it would be launched from florida.
Can't fault Jules Verne, rockets were only known as small fireworks in his time. But using gunpowder to reach escape velocity and shoot directly at the moon is impossible, you'd need a H-bomb or a ridiculously long barrel with compressed gas or magnets.
My father, a civil engineer, designed and built the foundations for these guns, the 'mini gun' was located in Hamrin Mountain in Northern Iraq which did actually fire test rounds and was aimed westwards at 45-degree inclined angle whereas the big gun was supposed to be built in Sinjar Mountains, my father had to move the site about 10km away from the original location to avoid damaging an ancient Yazidi Temple. It's worth mentioning that the big gun was aimed south towards the Saudi desert which may support the space theory (just an option I'm not an expert on the subject), however, given the Iraq-Saudi relations at the time, it makes no sense that Saddam would aim his gun towards Saudi with intention of shelling the country. The third gun, also a big gun, was a test gun built on a flat surface to test the ballistics and the pressure it exerted on the foundations, was successfully fired. I was a teenager back then when my father met with Dr Bull and of course, had to travel with Iraqi (intelligence minders) when he met him and his team in Europe. This was one of a few bizarre projects Saddam had embarked upon where my father was involved in the civil engineering part, the other one I recall was a replica of the hanging gardens of Babylon which was designed and never implemented.
@@BIG-STANK Dude, it is the freaking middle east! crazy thing happening has been the regular theme in here for ages! Moses staff turns into serpent, Jesus walks on water and you find his story hard to believe?
@@BIG-STANK His comment is hardly groundbreaking. It doesnt really matter if its true or not. If I was recounting a story my grandfather told me of how he and many other refugees escaped the rusians at the end of WW2 and you piped up "show us proof". I'd deck you just for being disrespectful to his memory and to all those that suffered in that war. Maybe his farther built foundations for guns that we know exsisted, maybe he didint, but told his son a good story, maybe the man just likes attention. Fact is he doesnt owe you or "us" any explanation. Somebodys farther definatly did and very likley talked with DR Bull. Not everything is a conspiracy, sit back enjoy the story and remain neutral.
Great video. The thumbnail picture and a number of the photos of the gun must have been taken from the royal armouries museum near Portsmouth on the south coast of England. Most good place to visit with every kinda cannon and large guns you could imagine.
I have loved and hate this channel. It has shown me some many thing and had me spend hours and hours to research so many thing I have learned on here. I have spent so many hours diving deeper into the things I have learned about on here it has really cut into my time for other things. Love this channel!!!
There was a movie made about this back in the 90s that I saw on one of the premium cable channels. They implied heavily that Iraq wanted it exclusively to use against Israel. That never made much sense to me, but it's a popular theory.
Simon's different channels uncover for us his faces... My theory is that Simon needs to make 50 active channels. Then connect them and name the big channel : 50 shades of Whistler lmao
@@megaprojects9649 Ideas for 50SoW: Microprojects (tiny intricate items), Gastro-graphics (national dishes), or Beauty Blaze (failed personal care items/fads/random hairstyles) 🤔🤷🏿♀️
Funnily enough I first learned about this as a kid from a video game I played. The game Conflict: Desert Storm 2 evidently takes place in an alternate universe where the project was completed as the final mission involves you infiltrating the Babylon facility and targeting the guns for an airstrike. On an unrelated note, the first game ends with you assassinating Saddam himself, so this is actually a step down in terms of alt-history wildness in an otherwise fairly grounded game series.
I've read the Frederick Forsyth novel "The Fist Of God" which tells this story brilliantly. Well worth picking up a copy and reading if you haven't already Simon, great video please keep them coming.
Suggestion: Snowy Mountains Scheme, Australia's signature post-WW2 infrastructure project that spanned 3 decades, opened vast inland areas to irrigated farming and provided hydro power. It now has a pumped hydro energy storage plan in its early stages. It took snow melt headed out to sea and turned it inland through a series of massive dams in inhospitable terrain, with huge underground power stations on the way.
How about doing a Megaprojects about the Alcan Aluminum Company project of the early 1950's . They Built Dams, built an Aluminum Smelter with a world accessible seaport. Created Lakes . Drilled an eight mile tunnel through the mountains, connected to a Hydro power generating station 1 quarter mile inside a mountain, and built two town sites( Kitimat and Kemano) ,and eighty plus miles of power lines over rugged mountains. and a whole lot more. Start by looking up the history of Kitimat ,British Columbia Canada. My dad was one of the loggers that felled the timber to make way for construction.
On the concept of lower cost alternatives for satellite launching, Burt Rutan designed an orbit capable craft that had characteristics similar to a falling leaf. I believe I remember one crashing due to pilot error some time after Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic bought Rutan's company out. Since that crash, it would seem to have disappeared from view, although it looked to be a much less expensive way to get men as well as cargo into space. and it was designed to fall through the atmosphere in a controlled way while shedding the very high speed and landing as a glider, hence reusable, as was the huge double jumbo jet that would get it to 45K feet (13,740 meters) before being detached for it's acceleration burn to orbit. Would love to hear about that one! Thanks for all you and crew do, Simon!
In the 30's and 40's, Robert Heinlein had space launch facilities buried in Pike's Peak, among other places, that used magnetic rail launch systems as a "first stage" before rockets would take over well up into the atmosphere. Lone horizontal track that curved up into the center of the mountain and exited near the peak. He was also using a shuttle-type craft that was resusable. Been a while since I've read those stories, so memory is a bit fuzzy. RAH also, very early on, came up with the concept of "step rockets", which we now call "stages". Again, in the 30's. So, the Navy is now using rail guns on some smaller craft and mag-rail catapults on the newest carriers. :-)
Might I recommend Denver International Airport? It's the second largest airport in the world by land, fifth busiest in the USA, and among the top 20 in the world I think. It's an interesting story for sure, and also surrounded by conspiracy theories and a devil-ish horse.
I love these videos, but this one is especially blessed with the enthusiasm with which you say "giant gun" each time. I'm learning and laughing. Many thumbs up :D
I remember reading about this back when I was a kid. It always sounded like a James Bond story and I wonder still why this was never made into a movie.
Gerald Bull was said to have sold the technology needed by South African arms firm Denel to build the G5 and G6 cannons. Denel, in turn, then sold these to Iraq due to said embargo mentioned in the video. These were weapons that special forces were sent in to destroy prior to the main invasion during Operation Desert Storm. The G5 can fire a shell 30 km and it played a decisive role in the Angolan Civil War, the outcome of which was determined more by politicians than by the fighting itself.
As a kid I grew up in Highgate, Vermont in the early 90's. Small town just across the boarder from Quebec. And our neighbor was a old guy that looked a little bit like Albert Einstein, and my dad said he "made guns for Saddam".... I guess that was this?....
Not sure if it's been mentioned but, the "space elevator" is indeed a MASSIVE project idea, they are still trying to figure out how to make the tether. If it gets created, it could greatly increase our ability to colonize and launch and build more powerful ships.
Spent a few days on Barbados a while back. A test site for the HARP gun was listed as an "attraction." When I went to enquire about possibly taking a look, I found out that the local military base had expanded recently - the "off limits territory" now included the test site, with no publicly accessible area. Oh well. One of the fellows who ran an inland sporting club/range (shoot one of the club's guns at an average fee of $1.10 a round!) told me someone in his family had worked on it, and saw someone get killed in a construction accident.
Do you think you could do a video on the Nevada-Class Battleships as both ships had interesting careers. One of which USS Nevada tried to escape Pearl Harbor, fought at D-Day , Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and survived 2 atomic bombs. I would say that's a mega ship. Awesome video. Hope more videos are coming.
Gee, thanks for the advise Simon. I smashed that like button per your recommendation and now there is a whole in my computer screen and my hammer is wedged in it.
The nazis had a battery of super guns in Eastern France, capable of hitting London. Each barrel was made up of multiple sections, each with perpendicular side chambers with more propellant. As the projectile wooshed past, the added charges would ignite, further accelerating the projectile. And definitely read “the Fist of God” by Frederick Forsyth. A cracking yarn all about the Babylon Gun.
If you want to know a lot more about Gerald Bull and HARP, Polyus has a great video called "HARP Space Gun: Gerald Bull's High Altitude Research Project and the Martlet Launch Vehicles".
@@megaprojects9649 Pull the other one! The cliche is 'deeply UNpopular' and this channel loves cliches. Besides, why build a gun to defend yourself from popularity? To make more fans?
Ok, a bit of insider information here.. I was in engineering at the time, and TI Matrix Churchill, as they were known at the time, the TI being "Tube Investments", were boasting about a huge order to Iraq. They said they were pipeline tubes, but the interior finish was far, far better than needed.. I got this info from a trade magazine at the time and thought it was fishy. Three months later the lorry driver was arrested, and you really should have mentioned him, a true innocent victim!
0:00 Have you ever heard Simon saying "everybody" crisp and clear? He speaks so quickly when he says it, it's like "Hello every°^•|` welcome ..." But his videos are amazing, really.
Whenever i think WW1 Big Bertha gun, i think of the movie "The Great Dictator" with Chaplin where they are aiming for Paris and hit an outhouse in the middle of nowhere.. :D
Thank you for another amazing project. Would be interesting if you did a mega projects about the V3 at Mimoyecques, or for that matter either the blockhouse V2 site at Eperlecques or the Coupole near Wizernes. All would make a great video! Plus there is a phenomenal spitfire recon photo of the Coupole taken during its construction which is phenomenal! The pilot dropped into the valley and buzzed it at such low level that the photo shows he was at a lower altitude than the bunker itself!
I liked the movie "Doomsday Gun" but it didnt really depict how illicit Gerald Bull really was especially between HARP and Babylon. He screwed over everybody.
Suggestion for a video: The New Dutch Water Line (Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie). A very big undertaking involving a lot of fortifications and the possibility to inundate large stretches of land to hold off an enemy invasion.
I'm lucky 57 on the comments. I remember learning about this through a movie. Although part of the plot of the movie was Saddam wanted to shell Israel and Bull just wanted to build his gun
You've done the American moon rocket, the Saturn V. You've done the Soviet moon rocket, the N-1. How about doing an episode on the British moon rocket from the 50s, the BIS Lunar Lander? It was around a thousand solid rocket motors strapped together and a capsule that looked like something out of Jules Verne.
The US Army is developing a super gun right now!!! Look up Strategic Long Range Cannon (or something like that) and please see if you can make a video on it.
Hi! Great vid! How about a video that goes through the process and effects of a nuclear explosion? For example , after so many milliseconds the atmosphere at ground zero will heat up to x degrees etc etc? Would love to see something like that. Keep up the good work! Really interesting!
To my knowledge, they did say it was for oil. I don't know where they writer of this video found the thing about it being for pharmaceutical use. But if you see the parts of the gun on display at the Royal Armouries in Portsmouth it says there that the companies thought they were building parts for an oil pipeline. Something also not covered in the video is how Bull tried to sell his idea first to the USA, Canada, UK and Italy before taking it to the Middle East.
To my knowledge the order was for pipework that was destined for the petroleum industry. Sheffield Forgemasters always had their doubts about this because the degree of honing specified was only used for smooth bore guns. However, what caused the uncertainty was that such guns would have a wall thickness far in excess of what was ordered. Just how much the Government knew about these forgings is open to conjecture.
Megaprojects, you have one more chapter to do, to take in the follow-on to Quicklaunch, by a company called Greenlaunch. Both are the private spinoffs of an SDI program called SHARP (Super High Altitude Research Program) that was begun after the US found out what Bull was doing for Saddam. SHARP built a 4" test-bed launcher powered by pure hydrogen compressed rapidly by an explosion driven piston. It achieved mach nine and was designed to allow rebuilding at a 45 degree angle to reach into space. Using pure H2 it could have reached much higher speeds. When the SU and Iraq no longer worried the US, SHARP too, was discarded.
My interpreter in Iraq in 2003 could smell people from Iran . he was held captive there for 13 years. To hear these people's stories and the bloodshed they witnessed was quite the eye opener.
"133 meters, which is 155 feet in length." Um, a single meter is over 3 feet long. (39.37 inches long.) That gun has BIG feet! (About 1 yard per foot.) (Simon, you SURE you don't want a proofreader?) steve
Start learning a new language today with Babbel! Get 50% off for six months for a limited time only! Visit bit.ly/BabbelMegaprojects
Before you start learning a new language maybe you should first learn how to pronounce words like China! Chi na not Chiner! 😂😉
Get your Babbel-on with the sponsor.. :) (sorry, couldn't resist)
Nice tie in!!!
do a video about Bar Lev Line
Project Babylon involved Martix Churchill of Fletchamstead Highway in Coventry back the late 80s they where investigsted for making piping components for the Babylon super gun
"Go back and check it out. Not until you finish this video, cause I need your sweet watch time." At least he's honest and that's the best policy
A bit of the Blaze is leaking in, I guess.
T for twat... Xx
You need to go check out brain blaze. His best channel. Am I right Peter?!
I prefer watching his internet show to anything on TV besides Star Trek lol. my ten-year-old knows how to do more on the internet than I do. but it's easy to click on his shows and watch.
1:35 - Chapter 1 - Super guns
3:30 - Chapter 2 - Gerald bull
5:35 - Mid roll ads
6:50 - Chapter 3 - A dictator call
8:00 - Chapter 4 - Project babylon
11:15 - Chapter 5 - Murder
12:30 - Chapter 6 - The supergun affair
14:25 - Chapter 7 - The future
'This is MegaProjects, where we use weird analogies."
And this is why I love your channels. Your personality is awesome.
Please keep up the really weird analogies Simon
13:35 I love where he cracks up ...pharmaceuticals....righhhttttt
They use some weird unit conversions too. How did 16 inch become 1000mm? 3:48
Project Babylon? And the video’s sponsored by Babel?! COINCIDENCE I THINK NOT
Yeah...right? 😎
Came here to see if someone made that connection. Lol
@@jtrex2249 "Vocabulary lessons that aren't just learned, they're shot into your brain at Earth escape velocity."
Allegedly.
Coincidence? YES! 🤯
They were going to "Jam" the satellite, like from the movie 'Spaceballs'?! Lol
LOL A+ reference and execution
And raspberry no less
Maybe the Hot Shots 2, Saddam Hussein was closer to reality then we thought.
Bravo
I knew it, I’m surrounded by assholes
I read that the GC 45. 155mmm howitzer was the longest range field artillery piece in the world. There were also three 16” HARP guns. One in Quebec Canada, one in Yuma Arizona, and one in Barbados.
"I stole a purse, what are you in for?"
"Building and providing howitzer's to South Africa".
He was double crossed by the US government. Carter pushed it.
ah the border war, good times, when you could shoot commies with impunity, pity it ended
@@jamallabarge2665 He was Canadian. How did he betray a country he had no allegiance to?
@@jonathanjohnson9611 Congress gave him US Citizenship.
I don't think he betrayed anyone. I think that the CIA used and abused him.
He is a credit to the Canadian people and his teachers. I wish that he had been allowed to build his space faring cannon.
@@jamallabarge2665 My bad. I misread your comment.
Glad you took my suggestion for this video. Proof Mr. Whistler reads the comments (or at least someone from his staff ;) )
Not sure this is quite megaproject-y enough (maybe better suited for side projects), but how about a video on gigantic mining equipment like the Bagger 293, the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60, and Big Muskie?
Heathen! Bagger 288 is god!
DO IT SIMON!!! those things are fucking incredible
Agreed!
Yeah!
@@JohnnyWednesday Ive been asking for the bagger 288 for a while now!
A video that combined several topics I've asked for in the past: Gerald Bull, Project Babylon, and Project HARP. Thanks, Megaprojects!
Fun fact: The Paris gun’s muzzle velocity is high enough that it could throw a projectile into a lunar orbit (if it were somehow on the moon)
If it was correct, that would mean the projectiles fired from the Paris Gun was the first man-made objects to fly beyond the stratosphere.
@The Infidel Ummm no? The orbital velocity of the moon is around 1,600 m/s. The fastest slingshot ever made could throw a projectile 654 ft/s (around 200 m/s).
One step closer to humanities greatest secret desire, to blow up the moon.
You can't simply throw object into orbit, no matter it's velocity. It will be always on suborbital trajectory and it will hit the surface eventually. You need to apply force at least once again (idealy close to it's apopasis) to adjust it's trajectory and enter the orbit. So no, there is no device, no matter how high muzzle velocity, able to put object on orbit. Said object will always need some kind of own propulsion.
@@quokka7555 wait, the Paris Gun can launch itself into orbit?
Mega project suggestion in future to consider: The Smart Tunnel in Malaysia.
The scary part isn't the gun, it's the fact that Babbel in Arabic means Babylon. The phrase "Developed by Saddam Youths organization" is all we're missing right now
Think there was a film about this with Frank Langella playing Bull's part and Alan Arkin as the Mossad officer tried to warn him, he was on a dangerous path. The High Altitude Research Project was considered for alternative satellite launches.
Thx Hugh Nelmes. You are right about the movie. South Africa will have been a very different place today. The Africans had best Soviet guns and the South Africans still used WO2 guns. There was limited help for Israel, France, England, US, West-Germany. But it was very-very limited. With the G5 the South African Army can shell the enemy a max of 42km. (Depending on the tipe of projectile.) Dankie/ Merci.
fun fact, jules verne theorized the use of a space gun in From the Earth to the Moon rather than a rocket. as well as theorizing the US would be the first and it would be launched from florida.
So he was 2/3 right! 🤭
Can't fault Jules Verne, rockets were only known as small fireworks in his time. But using gunpowder to reach escape velocity and shoot directly at the moon is impossible, you'd need a H-bomb or a ridiculously long barrel with compressed gas or magnets.
Ahh yes, the sweet sweet sassiness of the Blaze is spreading throughout the Whistlerverse. Sir, we are truly blessed 😁
My father, a civil engineer, designed and built the foundations for these guns, the 'mini gun' was located in Hamrin Mountain in Northern Iraq which did actually fire test rounds and was aimed westwards at 45-degree inclined angle whereas the big gun was supposed to be built in Sinjar Mountains, my father had to move the site about 10km away from the original location to avoid damaging an ancient Yazidi Temple. It's worth mentioning that the big gun was aimed south towards the Saudi desert which may support the space theory (just an option I'm not an expert on the subject), however, given the Iraq-Saudi relations at the time, it makes no sense that Saddam would aim his gun towards Saudi with intention of shelling the country. The third gun, also a big gun, was a test gun built on a flat surface to test the ballistics and the pressure it exerted on the foundations, was successfully fired.
I was a teenager back then when my father met with Dr Bull and of course, had to travel with Iraqi (intelligence minders) when he met him and his team in Europe. This was one of a few bizarre projects Saddam had embarked upon where my father was involved in the civil engineering part, the other one I recall was a replica of the hanging gardens of Babylon which was designed and never implemented.
Show us proof
@@BIG-STANK Dude, it is the freaking middle east! crazy thing happening has been the regular theme in here for ages! Moses staff turns into serpent, Jesus walks on water and you find his story hard to believe?
@@meysamghahremaninejad6809 been lied to about everything. Who knows what to believe
@@BIG-STANK I was joking and I totally agree with you.
@@BIG-STANK His comment is hardly groundbreaking. It doesnt really matter if its true or not. If I was recounting a story my grandfather told me of how he and many other refugees escaped the rusians at the end of WW2 and you piped up "show us proof". I'd deck you just for being disrespectful to his memory and to all those that suffered in that war.
Maybe his farther built foundations for guns that we know exsisted, maybe he didint, but told his son a good story, maybe the man just likes attention. Fact is he doesnt owe you or "us" any explanation. Somebodys farther definatly did and very likley talked with DR Bull. Not everything is a conspiracy, sit back enjoy the story and remain neutral.
Great video. The thumbnail picture and a number of the photos of the gun must have been taken from the royal armouries museum near
Portsmouth on the south coast of England. Most good place to visit with every kinda cannon and large guns you could imagine.
I would love to hear about the metallurgy, machining, tolerances, testing, assembly, etc., of the gun (the Project itself). More tech! More details!
I have loved and hate this channel. It has shown me some many thing and had me spend hours and hours to research so many thing I have learned on here. I have spent so many hours diving deeper into the things I have learned about on here it has really cut into my time for other things. Love this channel!!!
There was a movie made about this back in the 90s that I saw on one of the premium cable channels. They implied heavily that Iraq wanted it exclusively to use against Israel. That never made much sense to me, but it's a popular theory.
Last Time I was this early, this series was just called "Really Big Projects"
Azer Draco
Truth
Lol
BA DA BUM BUM TSHSHSHSHHSHSSH
Simon's different channels uncover for us his faces... My theory is that Simon needs to make 50 active channels. Then connect them and name the big channel : 50 shades of Whistler
lmao
this sounds like mega project ;)
Nice!
Goals
@@megaprojects9649 Ideas for 50SoW: Microprojects (tiny intricate items), Gastro-graphics (national dishes), or Beauty Blaze (failed personal care items/fads/random hairstyles) 🤔🤷🏿♀️
50 _'tones'_ of Whistler
Funnily enough I first learned about this as a kid from a video game I played. The game Conflict: Desert Storm 2 evidently takes place in an alternate universe where the project was completed as the final mission involves you infiltrating the Babylon facility and targeting the guns for an airstrike.
On an unrelated note, the first game ends with you assassinating Saddam himself, so this is actually a step down in terms of alt-history wildness in an otherwise fairly grounded game series.
Wait so that's what it was? I thought I was raiding a pharmaceutical plant.
@@s.sradon9782 Hmmp
I've read the Frederick Forsyth novel "The Fist Of God" which tells this story brilliantly. Well worth picking up a copy and reading if you haven't already Simon, great video please keep them coming.
Suggestion: Snowy Mountains Scheme, Australia's signature post-WW2 infrastructure project that spanned 3 decades, opened vast inland areas to irrigated farming and provided hydro power. It now has a pumped hydro energy storage plan in its early stages. It took snow melt headed out to sea and turned it inland through a series of massive dams in inhospitable terrain, with huge underground power stations on the way.
Simon: "This is Megaprojects, we use weird analogies."
Me: "One of many, _many_ reasons I'm subscribed, dude."
I’ve lost the bleeps, I lost the sweeps, and I lost the creeps.
I knew about it thank to the novel "The Fist of God" by Frederick Forsyth. Amazing book
How about doing a Megaprojects about the Alcan Aluminum Company project of the early 1950's . They Built Dams, built an Aluminum Smelter with a world accessible seaport. Created Lakes . Drilled an eight mile tunnel through the mountains, connected to a Hydro power generating station 1 quarter mile inside a mountain, and built two town sites( Kitimat and Kemano) ,and eighty plus miles of power lines over rugged mountains. and a whole lot more. Start by looking up the history of Kitimat ,British Columbia Canada. My dad was one of the loggers that felled the timber to make way for construction.
This guy is just awesome. I hope he keeps making more channels.
Texas: Go big or go home
Germany and Iraq: Hold my beer and Gerald Bull!
As I recall, the one who was responsible for Project Babylon also was involved with Canada's Avro Arrow as well.
Take care, and all the best.
On the concept of lower cost alternatives for satellite launching, Burt Rutan designed an orbit capable craft that had characteristics similar to a falling leaf. I believe I remember one crashing due to pilot error some time after Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic bought Rutan's company out. Since that crash, it would seem to have disappeared from view, although it looked to be a much less expensive way to get men as well as cargo into space. and it was designed to fall through the atmosphere in a controlled way while shedding the very high speed and landing as a glider, hence reusable, as was the huge double jumbo jet that would get it to 45K feet (13,740 meters) before being detached for it's acceleration burn to orbit. Would love to hear about that one! Thanks for all you and crew do, Simon!
In the 30's and 40's, Robert Heinlein had space launch facilities buried in Pike's Peak, among other places, that used magnetic rail launch systems as a "first stage" before rockets would take over well up into the atmosphere. Lone horizontal track that curved up into the center of the mountain and exited near the peak. He was also using a shuttle-type craft that was resusable. Been a while since I've read those stories, so memory is a bit fuzzy. RAH also, very early on, came up with the concept of "step rockets", which we now call "stages". Again, in the 30's. So, the Navy is now using rail guns on some smaller craft and mag-rail catapults on the newest carriers. :-)
This MegaProject had it all! Congrats.
Might I recommend Denver International Airport?
It's the second largest airport in the world by land, fifth busiest in the USA, and among the top 20 in the world I think.
It's an interesting story for sure, and also surrounded by conspiracy theories and a devil-ish horse.
Sweet nice to see this Simon as I requested it a while back. I’m sure others did too. Thank you!
Cool! I would love to see the Madrid Metro it's a pretty cool project that managed to do well with their budget.
Someone liked it this time! Amazing!
This is amazing. I have watched every MP video and this is by far my favorite. Fascinating.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Need to check your unit conversions. 16 inchs is not 1000mm and 130 meters is not 155 feet.
Mark_Wotney99 and the plural of “inch” is “inches”. ;) But yeah, something went horribly wrong with their unit conversions!
This is not the only fucked up thing about this vedio... But yeah, whatever.
And the correct spelling of "meters" is metres
@@Nick-ye5kk bzzzzt, wrong. Both are correct.
@@drghaamhussain what else? I’m curious?
for the interestred there is a bestseller thriller : The Fist of God by Frederick Forsyth
I love these videos, but this one is especially blessed with the enthusiasm with which you say "giant gun" each time. I'm learning and laughing. Many thumbs up :D
I remember watching a movie starting Frank Langella called ''Doomsday Gun" that was made for tv about this story.
I have an idea. How about the PRR GG1, America's largest electric locomotive. That thing was a _beast_ !
The GG1 wasn't the largest US electric locomotive. That would be either the Milwaukee's Little Joe or the Great Northern's W-1.
@@NorfKhazad True, but the GG1's story is still awesome.
Not the largest, but the most successful. The fleet covered more miles than anything else short of NASA spacecraft. 🤣
How does someone calling themselves 'Trainfan' get that one so wrong?
Presentation and graphics quality are excellent. The story of the subject you weave very well. Thank you.
Megaproject suggestion: Human Genome Project
*which led to CRISPR...and the bio genetic augmentation Pandora's box that has opened up*
Greetings from Sweden.
I love the concept of this channel!
Keep up tbe awesome work you and your crew do.
I wonder how Sheffield Steelworks explained why their pharmaceutical tubes had rifling on the inside
Yay! I've been asking for a project HARP video for ages, so I'm really glad you did one!
I remember reading about this back when I was a kid. It always sounded like a James Bond story and I wonder still why this was never made into a movie.
It was made into an HBO movie back in the 90s. Doomsday Gun it was called. Starred Frank Langella, Alan Arkin & Kevin Spacey...
Gerald Bull was said to have sold the technology needed by South African arms firm Denel to build the G5 and G6 cannons. Denel, in turn, then sold these to Iraq due to said embargo mentioned in the video. These were weapons that special forces were sent in to destroy prior to the main invasion during Operation Desert Storm. The G5 can fire a shell 30 km and it played a decisive role in the Angolan Civil War, the outcome of which was determined more by politicians than by the fighting itself.
As a kid I grew up in Highgate, Vermont in the early 90's. Small town just across the boarder from Quebec. And our neighbor was a old guy that looked a little bit like Albert Einstein, and my dad said he "made guns for Saddam".... I guess that was this?....
As someone from quebec i'm sad i never heard this story before.
@@MmeHyraelle he had a place in the eastern townships. His house had a bunker going down 10 stories.
He lived in Quebec no ?
@@patrickk6331 "he" did, but my neighbor I must assume worked for the same company.
@@Theggman83 ah ok makes sense.
Not sure if it's been mentioned but, the "space elevator" is indeed a MASSIVE project idea, they are still trying to figure out how to make the tether. If it gets created, it could greatly increase our ability to colonize and launch and build more powerful ships.
@11:10, "We fire the whole bullet! That's 65% more bullet per bullet!" - Cave Johnson
they should fire Potatoes!
Spent a few days on Barbados a while back. A test site for the HARP gun was listed as an "attraction." When I went to enquire about possibly taking a look, I found out that the local military base had expanded recently - the "off limits territory" now included the test site, with no publicly accessible area. Oh well. One of the fellows who ran an inland sporting club/range (shoot one of the club's guns at an average fee of $1.10 a round!) told me someone in his family had worked on it, and saw someone get killed in a construction accident.
You have so many channels, you could be your own Mega Project.
Do you think you could do a video on the Nevada-Class Battleships as both ships had interesting careers. One of which USS Nevada tried to escape Pearl Harbor, fought at D-Day , Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and survived 2 atomic bombs. I would say that's a mega ship. Awesome video. Hope more videos are coming.
We need a compilation of your bloopers at some point, please and thank you.
Bloopers are 99.9% really boring.
@@megaprojects9649 would still watch, like I have for most your videos on this and your other channels
I personally love these videos.. getting me through these crazy times
Gee, thanks for the advise Simon. I smashed that like button per your recommendation and now there is a whole in my computer screen and my hammer is wedged in it.
The nazis had a battery of super guns in Eastern France, capable of hitting London. Each barrel was made up of multiple sections, each with perpendicular side chambers with more propellant. As the projectile wooshed past, the added charges would ignite, further accelerating the projectile.
And definitely read “the Fist of God” by Frederick Forsyth. A cracking yarn all about the Babylon Gun.
Exploding something full of shrapnel near a spy satellite would have certainly destroyed it.
I need more playlists for this channel
I've been waiting for months to binge this channel
Frederick Forsyth's book Fist of God was about this.. Qubt ut Allah...!!! 🤔🤔🤔
If you want to know a lot more about Gerald Bull and HARP, Polyus has a great video called "HARP Space Gun: Gerald Bull's High Altitude Research Project and the Martlet Launch Vehicles".
04:55 "The South African government in the 1970s was becoming deeply POPULAR thanks to apartheid..."
I really love Simon's attention to detail.
It actually was in some parts of the world ... like the American South.
@@jonnunn4196 Yes, that's what I was referring to ;)
@@megaprojects9649 Pull the other one! The cliche is 'deeply UNpopular' and this channel loves cliches.
Besides, why build a gun to defend yourself from popularity? To make more fans?
Ok, a bit of insider information here.. I was in engineering at the time, and TI Matrix Churchill, as they were known at the time, the TI being "Tube Investments", were boasting about a huge order to Iraq. They said they were pipeline tubes, but the interior finish was far, far better than needed.. I got this info from a trade magazine at the time and thought it was fishy. Three months later the lorry driver was arrested, and you really should have mentioned him, a true innocent victim!
Now I know why they skipped over project Babylon when covering Gerald Bull last week.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us all together opening up our minds
3:12 130m =/= 155ft
Was looking for exactly this comment.
142 yards, so not even getting yards and feet mixed up.
0:00 Have you ever heard Simon saying "everybody" crisp and clear? He speaks so quickly when he says it, it's like "Hello every°^•|` welcome ..." But his videos are amazing, really.
Whenever i think WW1 Big Bertha gun, i think of the movie "The Great Dictator" with Chaplin where they are aiming for Paris and hit an outhouse in the middle of nowhere.. :D
The whole story was the basis for Freddie Forsyth’s novel “the Fist of God”.
"I'm not gonna spoil it by doing any chit chat at the beginning"
I'm gonna spoil it in the title instead.
Smash that dislike button.
A big gun a cloak and dagger execution an evil Super-villian, Damn man, this could be the next James Bond movie!
Hmm, looks like the Korean People's Army should acquire this kind of weapons.... Thanks for the inspiration, Simon😀😀🔥💣☢️☠️⚰️💀🚀
@Pedro Cunha Korea has enough money, sanctions are the main restriction
@michi hofer They have freedom of speech
@@kimjongun6746 ...but they have no guarantee of freedom after their speech. Right?
@@OldieBugger They should be loyal to their country, that's it.
They have freedom to agree with everything you say don't they.
Thank you for another amazing project. Would be interesting if you did a mega projects about the V3 at Mimoyecques, or for that matter either the blockhouse V2 site at Eperlecques or the Coupole near Wizernes. All would make a great video! Plus there is a phenomenal spitfire recon photo of the Coupole taken during its construction which is phenomenal! The pilot dropped into the valley and buzzed it at such low level that the photo shows he was at a lower altitude than the bunker itself!
I liked the movie "Doomsday Gun" but it didnt really depict how illicit Gerald Bull really was especially between HARP and Babylon.
He screwed over everybody.
Suggestion for a video: The New Dutch Water Line (Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie). A very big undertaking involving a lot of fortifications and the possibility to inundate large stretches of land to hold off an enemy invasion.
I'm lucky 57 on the comments. I remember learning about this through a movie. Although part of the plot of the movie was Saddam wanted to shell Israel and Bull just wanted to build his gun
husein had means and will to fulfill a dream to a dangerous immoral child. bull didn't care about what his creation would be used for.
@@sleepingbackbone7581 what's that going to do with the movie that I watched?
You've done the American moon rocket, the Saturn V. You've done the Soviet moon rocket, the N-1. How about doing an episode on the British moon rocket from the 50s, the BIS Lunar Lander? It was around a thousand solid rocket motors strapped together and a capsule that looked like something out of Jules Verne.
The US Army is developing a super gun right now!!! Look up Strategic Long Range Cannon (or something like that) and please see if you can make a video on it.
Hi! Great vid! How about a video that goes through the process and effects of a nuclear explosion? For example , after so many milliseconds the atmosphere at ground zero will heat up to x degrees etc etc? Would love to see something like that. Keep up the good work! Really interesting!
They should have said they were for an oil refinery, Pharma Industry indeed!
they couldn't think fast. panic button pressed too late. lol
They stopped a truck loaded with leather in Ireland. It was for the holster.
To my knowledge, they did say it was for oil. I don't know where they writer of this video found the thing about it being for pharmaceutical use. But if you see the parts of the gun on display at the Royal Armouries in Portsmouth it says there that the companies thought they were building parts for an oil pipeline. Something also not covered in the video is how Bull tried to sell his idea first to the USA, Canada, UK and Italy before taking it to the Middle East.
To my knowledge the order was for pipework that was destined for the petroleum industry. Sheffield Forgemasters always had their doubts about this because the degree of honing specified was only used for smooth bore guns. However, what caused the uncertainty was that such guns would have a wall thickness far in excess of what was ordered. Just how much the Government knew about these forgings is open to conjecture.
Yes, stated as equipment for petroleum plant, not meds manufacture.
I read somewhere that someone repeatedly broke into Bulls apartment and rearranged his furniture but didn't take anything.
Simon: big guns
me: you had my interest now you have my attention
Megaprojects, you have one more chapter to do, to take in the follow-on to Quicklaunch, by a company called Greenlaunch. Both are the private spinoffs of an SDI program called SHARP (Super High Altitude Research Program) that was begun after the US found out what Bull was doing for Saddam. SHARP built a 4" test-bed launcher powered by pure hydrogen compressed rapidly by an explosion driven piston. It achieved mach nine and was designed to allow rebuilding at a 45 degree angle to reach into space. Using pure H2 it could have reached much higher speeds. When the SU and Iraq no longer worried the US, SHARP too, was discarded.
My interpreter in Iraq in 2003 could smell people from Iran . he was held captive there for 13 years. To hear these people's stories and the bloodshed they witnessed was quite the eye opener.
Simon is my favourite TH-camr. I watch his videos every day and they always entertain me
Suggestion: Hungarian Parliament building.
Brought to us by Babel... I love the symmetry, guys!
I'm too hung over from the weekend to care about Simon's lack of videos in the last few days
The claim was that the pipe segments were for petrochemical use, not pharmaceutical.
Not that I’m complaining, but why is everyone talking about Project Babylon all of the sudden? This is the third video I’ve seen about this in a week.
1) You should look up the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon 2) TH-cam is dishing more videos because it believes you are more likely to click on them :)
Synchronicity
Great thing is its free to go and look at part of this and loads of other cool guns at Fort Nelson.
This guns purpose was anti satellite, It was to create a field of shrapnel in multiple orbits
Nice photo from Fort Nelson of the bits of the gun on display! 😀
"133 meters, which is 155 feet in length."
Um, a single meter is over 3 feet long. (39.37 inches long.)
That gun has BIG feet! (About 1 yard per foot.)
(Simon, you SURE you don't want a proofreader?)
steve
5 Bluewahls