Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

Re:Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier w... by andrewflnr on Sunday August 09, 2026 @01:49PM (#49233662)

> 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.

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Re:Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier w... by MomsAVoxell on Sunday August 09, 2026 @05:48PM (#49236388)

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.

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Re:Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier w... by andrewflnr on Monday August 10, 2026 @02:56AM (#49240224)

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).

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