Also at that speed, there is pretty much no defense to this puppy.

Been using them for years in Quake.

Make your own: Do-It-Yourself/Railgun - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Granted: the cyber threat is very real, and we are collectively not doing enough to defend our nation's infrastructure against international attack.

That said ... this is cool technology, and I suspect very useful to the guys at the front. Despite the high-tech work that goes on, the ability to project force is still the bottom line.

Dan

Isn't this the same technology that moves some train? or was it a roller coaster? The Disney monorail? DC Metro? I know I saw this technology propelling some sort of mass transportation. :confused:

Aurel, I don't disagree with your statement that cyberwarfare has entered onto the scene.

But I am sitting here scratching my head trying to understand why the research is or could be idiotic and what does cyberwarfare have to do with such research.

Can you please elaborate further.

What gives you the impression that troops on the ground (anywhere for that matter) are not terrified of a computer virus?

Somehow cyber-warfare crept into this discussion. I'm not sure how as it appears to have no relevance to the topic of discussion. Nevertheless minimizing its importance and destructive capabilities could be costly and lead to loss of life.

Just saw a special on NatGeo about the Navy's new Rail Gun.. they showed it in detail and fired it a few times.. 5000mph, or mach 8.. uses 5 million amps, dumped in 10ms.. awesome ..

Guidance system or cross-hairs?

How accurate?

Sherwood

Also electromagnetically driven but not a railgun.

Maglev (transport) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I agree, a high density plasma generated by the energy discharge. Remember fire also is a plasma.

Theoretically you could launch something into orbit, but the acceleration that a rail gun delivers would destroy almost anything except the solid projectiles they are using. The reason they arent using explosive shells is because the railgun would destroy them on launch.

A rail gun is every physicist's wet dream, but in terms of military use I am interested in how much energy it delivers to the target 100 miles away. They say 33MJ to launch which is pretty impressive considering that a barrel of oil has approximately 6000MJ of chemical energy. But how enertgy much does air friction take away? 9/10ths? 99/100ths?

I think this is cool, but - I am not totally clear in what situations this would be better than a missile, which has more range, is also guided, can deliver a lot of energy in a variety of forms, can strike at different angles (e.g. objects not line of sight), and have relatively simple launchers which can be deployed in redundant numbers on a wide variety of ships. Admittedly missiles are expensive but the railgun projectiles will need a guidance system (that can survive the acceleration) so that is some of the missile's content right there. Also the railgun projectile gets there faster - but 6 minute flight time and the requirement for a direct hit, means it is still not good for mobile targets.

Missiles are expensive. Particularly guided/smart munitions. Once the initial hardware is installed, these things are dirt cheap - the energy is a non-issue with nuclear reactors. Ability to sit offshore and pummel targets all day long becomes very beneficial versus using the same number of high-dollar guided missiles or smart munitions.

Very cool technology.

As said before, this isn't even close to orbital velocity. Yes, it could be attained but it would be a much bigger apparatus. There was a proposal I remember seeing a long time ago (maybe from "Cosmos" or some such) using a railgun type setup running up a mountainside - the idea being that it would allow the acceleration to be gradual enough to not destroy payloads all the way to orbital velocity to deliver stuff to space-based stations or other facilities/crafts. Theoretically possible with today's technology.

To get people into space would require a much longer run - the Space Shuttle limits acceleration to about 3gs and it takes all the way from FL's east coast to roughly the Indian Ocean to accomplish that. I don't think a rail track that long would be built anytime soon given our current budget situation... Admittedly they might be able to shorten the run by using higher g accelerations but that reaches a practical limit pretty quickly (human physiological limitations).

Could be just another example of technology looking for an application instead of a problem looking for a solution. Lots of examples of that in today's tech-centered world of consumerism.

Sherwood

The LASER is the best example of that. I still remember in grade school Mr. Science came to visit our school. He showed us brand new gadgets like magnetic tape and a funny looking gismo he called a LASER. I still remember his quote that the LASER was invented but at that point they had NO practical application for it. Modern life would be very different without LASER today.

The railgun projectiles will be guided too, won't they? So, not really dirt-cheap.

If they can only be installed on nuclear powered ships (?) then how much does that limit their use? How many nuclear cruisers and destroyers do we have - any? I'm thinking no way you'd bring an aircraft carrier inshore to hit shore targets - the enemy would happily make that trade all day long.

I'm not saying we shouldn't develop the weapon - I think we should develop every interesting weapon, because the goal of R&D is military dominance in 20 and 30 years, and who knows what will happen. I'm just unclear what the application is or will be.

Yeah there are some practical applications but I just don't see fleets of these things being developed or deployed... Most "combat" now is close-quarters urban type warfare against very difficult targets and there is considerable pressure on most operations to avoid ANY collateral damage. Therefore more surgical/precision munitions are relied upon, but as you know those are very, very expensive - and they don't always work either. Yes, the military now can be a lot more surgical than years past but if they surgically hit the wrong target, the casualties are still just as dead and the enemy is still going to use it in the propaganda war...

we have lots of nuke subs and fleet carriers
we built 7 nuke cruisers but high costs led to their being scraped post cold wars end