I also loved the video. But I'd think if one wanted to deploy "simple" mechanical projectile weapons at scale, pneumatic launchers would be easier, more compact and more reliable (way less cool-looking and operating, though!).

I think the cycle time on this would be far superior to a pneumatic system: cycling this system effectively means lifting ~100 pounds ~8 feet, which a reasonably fit person (who could reach that high) could do several times a minute for extended periods.

He got an efficiency over 40% (if memory serves, I watched this video yesterday) -- I wonder between pumping and discharge how efficient a pneumatic system would be, but I can't imagine that it's higher.

If the pump were operated by a bicyclist and the projectile feed automated I imagine the pneumatic system would win out by a very wide margin regardless of any reduction in overall efficiency.

I've seen potato guns (obviously much larger bore than this) and inflated bicycle tires to 100psi+

How do you imagine making the cycle time better "by a very wide margin" compared to lifting 100 pounds less than 10 feet?

Isn't it a simple matter of sustained energy output scaled by the overall efficiency? I'm saying that a human cycling can sustain much much higher energy output for much longer than most other forms of exercise. Running probably comes close and swimming likely exceeds both of those but in the latter two cases I'm not clear how you could productively harness energy from the activity with any sort of efficiency so it doesn't apply here.

Once this thing is dialed in, a wind- or stream- rechargeable version is the obvious next step.

like a potato cannon?

I helped design the "reloadable" part of a golf-ball shooter that used acetylene as the accelerant. I don't think it went supersonic, though. There's videos (embarassing ones) on youtube. He eventually designed one that can shoot full cans of monster energy hundreds of yards.

the reason i bring it up is we used to design and build pneumatic ones, that could send C and D batteries thousands of feet if you arced it right. that was with ~125psi, we always wanted to build out to 200+ psi, but instead went into accelerant-based cannons and he got a job doing machine drawing with autocad. the rest is history.

edit: https://nextcloud.projectftm.com/index.php/s/cobra5x we show off the part i designed, toward the end on the "reload" - he designed and built the entire thing.

Sorry to be a bore [that's a firearms joke], but -- while I encourage everyone and their family to experiment with building such devices, with safety in mind of course, it is a lot of fun -- please don't dispose of your old batteries in the natural environment!

Really not trying to call you out here, as a teenager I once had the idea to load up my marble cannon with dead AAs (they're free!) and got a "do you really think that's a good idea?" from an environmentally conscious adult when I went asking for dead batteries.

We moved on to oranges really fast after realizing that batteries coming out of the sky randomly was probably a bad idea, even if there were no apparent people around.

Don't get me wrong, oranges are dangerous too, coming out of the sky at terminal velocity, but at least when they hit the ground they disappeared into a fine, 3 meter wide mist.

oh my god, were it not for your redundant comment I might've gone to the forest to discard my collection of depleted batteries, thank goodness.

Basically anyone can go buy a pellet rifle that will easily and consistently clear 1500fps. They're still pretty cool, and will go through both doors of a car

I dunno, takes a lot of energy to get a pneumatic system up to the same speeds that this trebuchet can accomplish. I see it really as a super-efficient machine requiring very little effort to load ..

But yeah, the fact that it's super cool looking - and sounding - is a key factor in my willingness to play with one too, one day. ;)

Drone defense? :-)

Or we can just accept it as a cool gimmick, we don't have to kill animals with supersonic trebuchets really

Well, depends if killing the animal means having an actual ecosystem functioning again, afterwards. Some animals are living in the wrong place in the world; culling them requires special skills.

I get it - animal murdering is cruelty, mmkay .. but so is a wild boar, ripping up wombats and quokkas and witchetty grub-bearing paperbark trees ..

Anyway, I do see far more peaceful applications of this, if it becomes efficient and deployable. Could be a good way to launch things at sea, for example.

Or even certain forms of glider.

All of these things are thoroughly solved problems with embarrassing levels of cost effectiveness, far from interesting.

Please keep your thinly veiled murder fantasies to yourself

I don’t think this has much practical application as an entire system. Nor is it supposed to. It was built just to achieve and artificial goal with arbitrary constraints. That doesn’t make it any less cool or interesting, but that doesn’t make it useful.

Some of the features he used are pretty cool though, like varying the winding drum diameter to vary the delivered torque over the course of the weight drop.

I could for sure see it being used to launch seeds-bombs, or emergency rations, or make a pressure wave on a snow overhang - if the evolution of this interesting experimentation results in a portable version, it would be immensely useful. As a crop protection device, given some kind of energy-harvesting recharging method, a la wind.

A bit of imagination makes it very useful.

> without requiring fire-arms training.

You'd need trebuchet training instead, which is probably not better in the long run. I bet there's still lots of ways to kill/mangle yourself with one of these, especially once you've been around them long enough to get casual and sloppy.

All such weaponized technology carries the weight of danger, but de-weaponized technologies - which is what this represents to me - could mean some break-throughs, too. There are a lot of peaceful applications for a trebuchet.

And yes, it'd need training, but its not the training part of explosives training that I think needs to be rendered obsolete, but rather the explosives manufacture and distribution network, or in other words: peaceful applications for a trebuchet.

Peaceful use of weapons is cool. But that's exactly what avalanche-triggering guns already are, in full. They and trebuchets are both military artillery at heart. As far as I know they still need explosives at the terminal end, too, even when dropped by helicopter, so that part is also not going away (ignoring explosives needed for mining, etc).

I think the only real advantage of this, compared to gas driven projectiles, is the lack of need for gas sealing and explosion resistance of the projectile. The projectile is accelerated much more gently. You can launch combustible, rather fragile and irregularly shaped projectiles. That said, I don't think there is much need for supersonic exit velocities for most scenarios. Maybe you could use it for impact testing without introducing a gas blast or the need of a gas sealing delivery vehicle. But I don't think you would opt for a gravity powered, purely mechanical device then.

Could it be built using medieval (or earlier) technology? One wouldn’t be worth anything on a battlefield but a few hundred of them would be interesting. I don’t know if steel that a blacksmith makes would be uniform or strong enough for that spinning arm though.

I suppose the string is even worse, though.

I think, if you scale it up a bit and adjust the weight for increased friction losses, you may be able to do it considering available materials, but the required knowledge would be anachronistic. I mean, they could also have built compound bows and repeating, lever operated crossbows, but weren't smart enough.

For the string you could use a chain, or just a thicker rope. A presume a bow string has similar requirements and was available tech. For the frame, spindel/shaft and string, I don't see a problem as they appear to be scalable, not restricted by dimensions/weight much. Wood, natural fibers and steel would do. In theory, medieval people in "The East" had readily access (as in no advanced processing required etc.) to everything needed to make highly elastic rubber (for the original supersonic trebuchet), but it would be an anachronistic material AFAIK. You may conceive a variant using maybe an array of bows for quick release energy storage.

Wood is plenty strong (in relation to weight), but the arm may critically depend on modern materials, as both supersonic trebuchets use specifically advanced materials there (structured titanium and carbon fiber composites IIRC). For a heavier arm, you would probably need a prolonged acceleration phase, which would be doable (for Stanton's trebuchet), but I am not sure the forces wouldn't tear lower strength:weight materials apart, or if a more voluminous arm may be able to overcome the drag. I could see the fat compressed part of the arm being aerodynamically shaped wood (like a wooden propeller; although "aerodynamic" anything may be considered anachronistic), and the thin tensioned part made from a thin band of steel/bow string.

I think, another potential show stopper may be bearings. Not sure you could have the rotational speeds of the arm without precision (ball) bearings and modern lubricants. 2342 RPM would probably the fastest spinning thing at the time. (I wanna see a washing machine gone trebuchet-y, now.)

But really, it would be just a curiosity in medieval times too. What's the point of supersonic speeds in a device you can hardly aim precisely? You could deliver the same or more energy by throwing a heavier projectile at slower speeds, without excessive aerodynamic losses.

> deal with avalanche conditions

Swiss solution: chuck some explosives out of a helicopter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H519qhLnRtM (start at 1:20)

(In the image at https://swisshelicopter.ch/de/aktuelles/721-lawinensprengen-... the explosive pack says "do not eat". I'm not reassured that we need this warning for people allowed to handle that.

> I'm not reassured that we need this warning for people allowed to handle that.

Not sure what type of explosive that is but the rumour is that C4 when ingested gives a high similar to alcohol. Or at least that is what some troops believe.

“Amongst field troops in Vietnam it became common knowledge that ingestion of a small amount of C-4 would produce a ‘high’ similar to that of ethanol, and it is possible that this was the reason for this episode.” From the clinical description of a c4 poisoning case.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1279680/

If the trebuchet is breaking the sound barrier, a small fleet of trebuchets set in place on the snowfield and set off in an appropriate wave beam, could provide less explosive-manufacture-distribution-usage solutions to the problem.

I could imagine this thing gets even more efficient and resilient, attains some kind of wind or sun-based auto-recharging mechanism, and then deployed on mounted areas to shock-wave snow layers. Yes, its possible, no its not real until someone does it. I could imagine it being done.

Note: I also like the idea of not having to use explosives, is the starting base. If you would prefer to blow stuff up, that's not what I'm talking about.

The evolution of this technology towards an automated, resilient, field-portable version would be interesting. Imagine having a 6-pack of them.

Some parks in Utah use a howitzer.