Space Guns – A history of the least subtle way of getting into orbit (2014)

Project Orion is another contender for "least subtle way of getting into orbit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

Dug up this link because of a casual interest I had into Iraq's Project Babylon [1] that was deemed by the UN to be a weapon, even though it wouldn't have been able to aim at anything. It would have just been useful to put payloads into orbit.

Officially, the ambitions of the project were unknown, but the man, Gerald Bull, [2] Iraq asked to develop the program was purely interested in building an inexpensive way to economically launch satellites into orbit.

Gerald Bull was assassinated by unknown parties in 1990.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull