Ricky Chau

Back in the 60s, the space race, people wanted ways to test reentry nose cones.

Typically, if you have something from space falling back to Earth, it might be 11 kilometers per second.

That gun should have a Chevrolet stamp on it because it was made by General Motors.

Ricky Chow is the execution lead at Jasper.

General Motors, what they've done with these test guns, they donated them to the Department of Energy.

So the guns that we have here were prototypes of the launcher.

In the old days, you could use rough guesses for the data because, well, if you're not sure, we're going to blow one of them up and then we'll just verify our models against the test.

Once you stop being able to do that, and the further you go away from that, then your models have to get better.

Plutonium!

Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?

You hit a fire button.

It sends a fire pulse through the electronics.

And in Jasper's case, it sets off a det, commercial detonator.

The first stage is like a large cannon, like a howitzer or a battleship gun.

It works the same way.

You have a propellant charge.

We wrap it up.

It looks like a giant burrito.

We fill it with priming powder.

We use commercial sporting goods like hunter powder.