VERA: another video!

What does the world's largest, most powerful "potato cannon" look like? It's bright yellow and sits on the back of a truck trailer, of course. If you've been reading this blog since the very early days (over a year ago now! missed my own blog's cake day, whoops!), you may remember the initial testing video of project "VERA" or "Variable Energy Research Accelerator". This was only a video of the testing stage and was eventually taken down, so I removed the post the other day when I found out there was to be updated details.

Basically, VERA is a research tool developed to test projectiles that are of an odd shape with less violent acceleration forces. It uses the same technology used by hybrid potato cannons, that is, compressed flammable gas and air ignited by electrical arc, which in turn expands and builds pressure in the combustion chamber until the burst disc ruptures, unleashing the burning pressurized gasses upon the projectile. It's 19" bore x 40 foot long barrel might be a bit large for a potato though, so as in this video, other projectiles are launched with the aid of a sabot (a shell to guide it out the barrel) which is caught by a sabot catcher after the projectile has left the barrel.

Anyway, since this video was posted on the spudfiles forum today, I thought I should share it. After all, potato cannons can be park of this blog too, and I promise you, you will be stunned.