Bottle Rocketing to Outer Space?

Okay, I read the whole article, and I'm still trying to figure out why we aren't doing this... seems like the way to go... Launch Space Shuttle Like Bottle Rocket by Joseph Archer...

With the advent of cost-limited space flight, the need to think outside the box has never been greater. Space programs simply accept that space flight begins on a launch pad. However, physics suggests that Jules Verne was perhaps more clever than Wernher von Braun. It is time to launch space shuttles like bottle
rockets.

The smartest way to access space is by use of a launch tube. A few grams of explosive can launch an equal mass of projectile to supersonic velocities by virtue of the contained expansion of combustion products. By launching a rocket from a several-mile-long hole in the ground or concrete tube in the ocean, a space bound projectile can be afforded a considerable amount of forward velocity which allows for significantly simpler, cheaper, and safer launch vehicles.

A rocket launched from a pad uses nearly half of its fuel reaching a velocity of around 1300 mph. Firing a rocket out of a tube at that velocity automatically halves the cost of the rocket’s fuel. Further, a rocket launched from a tube does not require nearly as much thrust, so it requires just one engine to burn fuel as opposed to the five-engine system of the shuttle. Also, a less powerful rocket engine is used to put a more massive rocket into space....

(more details- see article)

...Launching rockets from a launch pad is a waste of money and not affordable in today’s economy. When you consider that it takes 100 pounds of rocket to put 1 pound of payload into space, it is clear that basic physics does not endorse our current launch pad system. It is time for our nation’s “rocket scientists” to get creative and live up to their name.

Go ahead 'rocket scientists'- poke holes in this argument for me. Or someone go ahead and build a scaled down version of a launcher and test the technologies and get some data, because I think there is something here.

UPDATE: Ask a rocket scientist to 'poke holes' and of course I get emails graphs and charts and math! Seriously though, thank you Bob for your email- Bob points out that a tunnel gun approach to launching a projectile (like a spacecraft) into outer space would have to be accelerated by a series of explosions behind the spacecraft, which would provide a bit of initial velocity for the spacecraft, but then it would have to have an additional motor kick in to continue the thrust until the spacecraft achieves orbit. There would be considerable issues for this- massive amounts of drag, crushing G forces, and complicated hybrid launching mechanisms.

Still, even looking over the math, I think that with all the money that NASA is throwing around and all the various crazy things that have been built and experimented with for launching items into outer space, I'm surprised that no one has experimented with building a tunnel gun as I described above to some sort of size to test out how feasible this idea really is.