Home >> Games >> Roleplaying >> Genres >> Science Fiction >> Babylon Project, The




Task Babylon was the design licensed per Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War to build a series of superguns, with Gerald Bull supplying the designs for the guns. Although a details come unelaborated, it appears that there were quaternity different hardware within number involved in the program.

The Babylon devices
A number 1, "Baby Babylon", was the horizontally-mounted device which was just the epitome for line 1 text purposes, by having the bore of 35Millimeter (near Xiv inches), & the barrel length of 46 metres (about 170 feet).

A 2nd, "Big Babylon", of which the pair were aforethought (1 to exist as mounted horizontally at least at first, for line 3 text purposes) was an absolute monster. the barrel was to exist as 156 metres (astir Five hundred feet) yearn, using a wore of I metre (ended Trio feet). Originally meant to exist as suspended by cables from either a steel framework, it would stand been assibilate 300 feet high at the tip. A complete device weighed all about 2,100 all about (a barrel alone weighed 1,655 all about). It was purportedly designed to shoot projectiles into orbit, the theme of Bull's function since Project HARP. Neither one equipment can be elevated or even trained, making the children comparatively useless for straight military purposes.

Additionally, there were besides plotted super big cannons which would be capable of existence elevated & trained, & processed from either favorite alloys discovered when you took a functiin on Child Babylon, alloys that were outstandingly hard & weak. the 1st got the wore of 350mm & the barrel length of astir Xxx metres (astir Century feet), & it was required to have the range of as much as 750 kilometres (astir 415 miles); a select few sources imply that there was another (& big) experienced a wore of 600mm & a barrel length of astir 200 feet.

There exists however disagreement all about a precise aims of a plan, there is no doubt a few of it from either confusion between the various different gear. It can be that Large Babylon was arranged to two launch satellites & help as the weapon, however its utility in the latter role would use at times been super limited: additionally to existence incapabable of existence aimed, it would will use the slow rate of fire, & its firing would have produced a super pronounced 'signature', leaving its location & destruction.

Outcome

A lot of the called upon metallic tubes for the barrels were purchased from either house in the United Kingdom; other components like breeches and recoil mechanisms were ordered from either house around Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. Child Babylon was completed, & trial shots were fired from either it, revealing problems by owning a seals between a barrel segments. Notwithstanding, when people were existence worked inside, Bull was assassinated in March, 1990, removing a lead designer, & a task failed.

Virtually all of a barrel sections for Heavy Babylin were delivered, & it was assembled on the places excavated away from the side of a hill, fallowing calculations showed that the trend lines framework would exist as insufficiently rigid. All the same, it was never fully completed.

At a equivalent period, intelligence service in the West got been slowly waking as much as Design Babylon (based on data from 1 source, Bull experienced briefed many of the children, emphasizing that Heavy Babylon was meant entirely to launch satellites), & shortly fallowing Bull's demise it moved around on the plan's provider.

Within early April, 1990, United Kingdom customs officers confiscated several pieces of a barrel (according to one source, for the smaller of the two cannons; another says they were for the second Big Babylon barrel), which were disguised as "petrochemical pipes"; the parts were confiscated at Teesport Docks. Additional pieces were seized around Greece and Turkey as they were existence shipped via truck to Iraq. More components, like slide bearings for Large Babylon, were seized at manufacturers within Spain & Switzerland.

Eventually, in the wake up of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, a Iraqis admitted the being of Task Babylon, & allowed U.N. inspectors to destroy all of the hardware in Iraq as part of the disarmament process after the war.

A barrel sections seized by UK customs officers come presently in display at a Royal Armouries Fort Nelson, Portsmouth site, with there are no entry charge.

Babylon 5 and The Babylon Project
Character sheets, background information, and a B5 image gallery.

The Babylon Project Zone
News, reviews, and game materials.

Babylon 5 Star Stuff
Resource site including a character generator, name creator and GM material.






© 2005 GeneralAnswers.org