“Twinkie is a simply gorgeous doe with an outstanding mammary system. She has good capacity and a tremendous area of attachment, with a wide, high rear udder and excellent foreudder extension. Twinkie excels in dairy character
while being structurally very strong. She earned her milking star on a one-day test by milking 4.2 pounds at 75 days fresh.”
---Twin Creeks Farm Website
Now this is the sort of Goat we’re looking for.
>> Kalita is a powerful doe with excellent structure, being very wide throughout with a flat and level rump, and good feet and legs, tho she needs a tighter shoulder assembly. Her udder is very capacious, tightly attached and nicely shaped with a good medial and smooth foreudder.
Definitely good material here 
Anyone besides me think sailor has a fetish? 
I once saw my father launched while feeding a goat… off the topic, but interesting nonetheless! He was bent over, pouring food into a trough when a goose (really! No pun intended!) snuck up behind him and nipped him in a sensitive area…
BTW, I, and several others still want to know what the offending goat did to deserve launching! Did he steal your wife or what?
So what is the distance requirement for launching the goat?
The following page http://www.punkinchunkin.com has some interesting, though non-pyrotechnic, designs for launching pumpkins. Seems like a small matter of scaling up one of the more likely candidates would work. Note that the Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator holds the punkinchunkin record of 4026.32 feet. A good distance and the impact would still be visible with bicoculars!
I’ve been away for a few days and this thing has grown legs!
If you are really serious, since I’m a designer and a graphic artist, I’ll put some more thought into this AND I could design a T-shirt/logo for this event. We could sell the T-shirts to pay for the cost of the ‘Goat-gun’. I’m sure they would generate tons of negitive press (the best kind for this sort of thing) spurring sales even higher. Hell, we might make enough to turn this into a first class shindig. I can see Dan Rather now, “And in other news…”.
Small point: A longer barrel in this case would not add velocity. You could never get the goat to spiral, and even if you did because of his shape it wouldn’t help. Further since the goat wouldn’t create a tight fit the propellent gasses would escape around him (her?). A longer barrel would, in this case, just produce more friction (drag).
Anyway, let me know if you are interested in the t-shirt design idea.
Let’s roll with it! I like the idea of the goat with an aviators cap and a silk scarf trailing behind. Ultra darkside. I await your input…
I dont see much discussion about the landing area.
Is the splatter part of the effect, or did you plan to attach a parachute to him ? Either way would be jolly entertainment, but the latter might allow re-using the goat, and perhaps realizing more potential income as the goat develops a following.
Also, somehow shooting him through a flaming hoop would be good - and of course adding some junk cars for him to fly over would be good too.
And if you dont require complete originality, what about lofting him over the fountain at Ceaser’s Palace in Las Vegas, as fireworks go off in the background …
The site you found was specializing in Nigerian Dwarf goats. Those bags looked adequate, but their teats were dwarf-sized If you truly have a need to find goats requiring bras, I’d suggest a search on either the Nubian or La Mancha breeds.
For those of you who are more interested in the ballistics of the enterprise, I suggest Pygmy goats. Their natural conformation is barrel-shaped and with only a small investment in a rich feed, they can attain a very smooth cylindrical shape.
If the spectacle is your main object, try either the Oberhasli or Toggenberg varieties that come in fairly consistent patterns of rich colors. (You could go with Saanens, of course, given that they are pure white, however they are a very tall, leggy breed and would probably be rather hard to fit into your cannon.)
To achieve the ultimate terror in the hearts of your targets, of course, one needs to use Nubians. Their loud braying is capable of drowning out nearby tractor pulls.
I say forget about landing areas - this guy need a parachute. And a woolly scarf, helmet and goggles. Actually, the whole thing should be self-financing - advertising space on the helmet (close up shots) and the parachute. I’m writing to Bill Goats - he’s bought everything else, why not this baby.
For a more substantial media event, I’d suggest attaching steel springs to his hoofs and disconnecting him from the 'chute at about 100 feet.
Remember Design Team, the longer in the air, the bigger the media event. Think: Big Bang, Big Bucks - get this goat close to charcoal.
I’m on it - I’ll keep you posted.
Anybody on this board ever work at a circus, or know how those human canonballs work? I’m sure that would be the perfect way to launch this goat.
Oh, and a parachute or net would be necessary to avoid too much bad publicity. Splattered goat remains across hundreds of spectators sure is funny, but it can also get you in a lot of trouble. Just a thought.
I’m up for this but we will have to make sure that PETA terrorists (Petans) do not compromise the event with their presence…
Waitaminute, why harm a perfectly good goat when you will have Petans lining up all over the place in protest. I can see them jumping into the cannon to prevent the launch so why not go with the free ammo instead?
Hmmmm… I can see it now…
The cannon is all set up and aimed for optimum launch, all is quiet and one can hear the goat in the barrel of the cannon. A petan comes out of the crowd and jumps into the cannon to save the goat only to find that it is merely a tape recording. “What the hell?” he thinks to himself before he realizes that he has just become ammunition.
BOOM!!!
But then again we would have P.E.T.P. (People for the ethical treatment of PETANS) on our collective asses.
By channeling the ghost of Werner Von Braun, I have become certain: ROCKETS ARE THE WAY TO GO!
“Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Straight Dope Cecilprise. Our five year mission: to boldly go where no goat has gone before.”
This just in: Tom Brokaw has expressed interest in the story. But, not as an animal abuse story, apparently he think’s we’re shooting a film called " The Legend of Goatie Vance", and wishes two tickets to the screening
Love the T-Shirt idea. I think that it would be a smashing thing to own. But, some semi-serious questions:
Manny- can we do this? If we really get a cool-assed " Great Goato Pepper" art work going, could we have T-shirts made?
Could we/would we wanna include the S.D. Banner on it?
Would Cecil model said T-shirt for the annual Pagan Holiday Card?
Cartooniverse
I think that if the goat was wearing rollerskates it would slide out of the barrel with less chance of jamming. Spiral tracks could be incororated into the barrel that the skate wheels ride in to impart the desired spin.
That would be “incorporated”
What about an aircraft carrier steam cannon to impart acceleration?
One of my fraternity brothers made a potato canon out of PVC and an ingitor for a gas grill. Basically it was capped off at one end with a chamber that would hold the propellant and a screw-on cap to seal the propellant in. The propellant of choice: cheap hairspray (Aqua Net if I recall correctly). It was as fun as it was dangerous and it sure kept the pledges on their toes.
One particularly horrid incident involved pushing a potato far down the barrel and then filling it with crawfish heads and firing this onto a rival fraternity’s roof. Imagine the smell after a few hot southern days…
ahhh…how I miss college
Before we start counting our goats before they’re launched, we need to make a working prototype. Something smaller, designed for, say, chickens.
But as far as the goat goes, I think “safety first” should be our ever-present motto. A helmet is therefore required for the rocketing ruminant, and we shouldn’t stop there. I think a shiny metallic asbestos goat suit with a large stars-and-stripes pattern embroidered on it - a la Evel Knieval - would give the whole enterprise a panache it might otherwise lack, and bring in a more refined stamp of observer than the usual hoi-poloi, this in turn giving the event social respectability. An added engineering advantage would be that, if reinforced with the proper material, the suit would help hold the ungulate athlete together against the explosive effects of the launch.
Another issue is whether we want to use a whole goat. We might get a better barrel fit if we remove the legs first, but some may feel that the purity of the whole endeavor is diluted by the use of a truncated animal. Or, perhaps we could encase the legs in some sort of silicone mass that fits snugly against the belly, thus removing the offending air spaces. On the other hand, sufficient wadding should allow a very satisfactory launch even with the unavoidable spaces between the appendages. Besides, removing or encasing the legs might be seen as inhumane in some circles, and nobody wants that.
One question I have is, why exactly do we need rifling anyway? I was under the impression that height was the principle concern, not accuracy vis-a-vis the landing site. Do we really care where the plummeting perissodactyl returns to this speck of dust? As long as we are in a sufficiently rural area and legal liability is solidly assigned to our sponsors, I foresee no problems. Even if a human dwelling or even, by some act of God, a human should happen to be at the bull’s eye of the, well, “heavenly butt” if you will, I think the notoriety (after which all men hunger) and potential story right profits should negate any incipient unfriendly impulses.
Furthermore, I must object that this is the sort of weapon that would need to be smuggled through an airport only if we intended to use it for terrorist purposes. If that is the case, I will have nothing to do with it. If this power is not to be used ethically, it should not be created in the first place. If, on the other hand, it is to be used only within the full apparatus of our society’s decision-making processes, and our duly-elected commander in chief is the one with his finger on the button, then I feel a working goat cannon can only strengthen the nation. If that is the case, then the device could be mounted on a Navy destroyer or even, perhaps, a submarine. Sneaking it through an airport is both unnecessary and the very debate bespeaks a questionable moral character. Let’s try to keep goat-launching clean.
Without rifling or airport-security concerns, the problem becomes much simpler. The next major questions are, as I see it:
