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Gerald Bull: Space Guns, Dictators, and Assassination!
Forget what you learned in school — this is history’s unhinged side!
Welcome to LIFE SPAN, the weekly podcast that digs up the dirt on the most outrageous, chaotic, and downright WTF lives ever lived. All told in a fun and fascinating way. Share, Rate and Follow the show for more wild stories!
Ohhh buckle up — because, according to our testimonies, the life of Gerald Vincent Bull is like if James Bond, Wile E. Coyote, and a Bond villain all got drunk in a Cold War fever dream and decided to build a doomsday cannon. This is the story of the man who tried to shoot satellites (and maybe nukes) into orbit using a giant space gun… and got assassinated at his front door under a cloud of international espionage, arms deals, and political paranoia.
The LIFE SPAN PODCAST digs into the wild life of Gerald Bull, the mad scientist who aimed for space and got shot down. Our testimonies reveal that Gerald Bull was not your average engineer. Born in 1928 in Ontario, Canada, he was a boy genius obsessed with flight, physics, and things that go boom. By his 30s, he was already a rising star in the ultra-secret world of defense research. His big idea? Using artillery — like massive, mile-long guns — to launch objects into space. Not missiles. Not rockets. GUNS. And not just any guns. City-flattening, mountain-sized, Looney-Tunes-on-steroids cannons.
Imagine Wile E. Coyote getting a PhD and teaming up with NASA. That was Gerald Bull. At first, this was legit science. His Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project) in the 1960s — funded by Canada and the U.S. — actually launched projectiles into the edge of space from the beaches of Barbados. He got artillery to blast things 110 miles up. With a gun. One of his shells even reached 112 miles up — technically outer space — using a converted 16-inch battleship cannon.
But soon, the governments pulled the plug — too expensive, too weird, too icky with the space race heating up. That’s when Gerald went rogue, thinking, “If governments won’t fund my genius… maybe dictators will”. And oh boy — they did. The LIFE SPAN PODCAST will take you on this BIZARRE JOURNEY through the Cold War chaos, where dictators with checkbooks and a world on edge were Bull’s new financiers.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lifespanpodcast.substack.com
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By CULTURE FLASHForget what you learned in school — this is history’s unhinged side!
Welcome to LIFE SPAN, the weekly podcast that digs up the dirt on the most outrageous, chaotic, and downright WTF lives ever lived. All told in a fun and fascinating way. Share, Rate and Follow the show for more wild stories!
Ohhh buckle up — because, according to our testimonies, the life of Gerald Vincent Bull is like if James Bond, Wile E. Coyote, and a Bond villain all got drunk in a Cold War fever dream and decided to build a doomsday cannon. This is the story of the man who tried to shoot satellites (and maybe nukes) into orbit using a giant space gun… and got assassinated at his front door under a cloud of international espionage, arms deals, and political paranoia.
The LIFE SPAN PODCAST digs into the wild life of Gerald Bull, the mad scientist who aimed for space and got shot down. Our testimonies reveal that Gerald Bull was not your average engineer. Born in 1928 in Ontario, Canada, he was a boy genius obsessed with flight, physics, and things that go boom. By his 30s, he was already a rising star in the ultra-secret world of defense research. His big idea? Using artillery — like massive, mile-long guns — to launch objects into space. Not missiles. Not rockets. GUNS. And not just any guns. City-flattening, mountain-sized, Looney-Tunes-on-steroids cannons.
Imagine Wile E. Coyote getting a PhD and teaming up with NASA. That was Gerald Bull. At first, this was legit science. His Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project) in the 1960s — funded by Canada and the U.S. — actually launched projectiles into the edge of space from the beaches of Barbados. He got artillery to blast things 110 miles up. With a gun. One of his shells even reached 112 miles up — technically outer space — using a converted 16-inch battleship cannon.
But soon, the governments pulled the plug — too expensive, too weird, too icky with the space race heating up. That’s when Gerald went rogue, thinking, “If governments won’t fund my genius… maybe dictators will”. And oh boy — they did. The LIFE SPAN PODCAST will take you on this BIZARRE JOURNEY through the Cold War chaos, where dictators with checkbooks and a world on edge were Bull’s new financiers.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lifespanpodcast.substack.com