if you want low cost and portable, chemistry (i.e. gunpowder) always wins over gravity powered.
Honestly, what the hell. Where do you think gunpowder comes from, thin air? Oh, is gravity a subscription service in your country?
Come on, try to at least be sensible about your response.
And yes, people who do avalanche control typically fire explosives out of a cannon or drop them from a helicopter. Getting a machine supply all the energy is the whole idea instead of climbing mountains yourself.
The point is to avoid that entirely and harvest gravity.
Re-wilding teams already climb far and wide, and this would extend their reach without increasing their dependencies.
Ammo is a dependency.
And if you INSIST on making everything completely low-tech and renewable, build a potato gun and use high-proof alcohol as fuel. It'll weigh less and last longer than whatever rube-Goldberg trebuchet design you have.
It's not obvious whether a trebuchet is better than compressed air, like a BB gun.
All harvesting requires some secondary-energy source.
Gravity is a resource, it takes effort to convert it to a form that can be applied - just like wheat, photons, air guns, etc.
> It's not obvious whether a trebuchet is better than compressed air, like a BB gun.
True, it’s not obvious yet, but it sure is fun following along and imagining the final, highly optimal version making its way through the process. I’d use it for some seed bombing hijinks, anyway. Green up the place, I would.