The US Navy's Railgun Program 321
RougeFive writes "Imagine a warship weapon that can launch projectiles at Mach 10 without explosives (more than three times the muzzle speed of an M16 rifle), that has a range of 220 miles and that uses the enormous speed to destroy the target by causing as much damage as a Tomahawk missile. Meet the U.S. Navy's electromagnetic railgun program."
Is this news? (Score:4, Informative)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/11/046205/navy-tests-mach-8-electromagnetic-railgun [slashdot.org]
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/02/08/152224/us-navy-receives-first-industry-built-railgun-prototype [slashdot.org]
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Because people who have not heard of them would discard it as science fiction or game stuff?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anti-Ship missiles are a bunch of hooey. Yes they are fast and damn hard to shoot down, but if you are are within range of one those with your navy you are doing it wrong. Oh yes, there are people in the USN that think we could engage in Littoral combat, but they are in the extreme minority.
No naval officer ever wants to bring his ship so close to shore that one of those missiles could hit it. And if you are out of range of ground fire the only way to fire is ship based, that exposes the firing ship to submarines which are damn near impossible to detect. The other option is submarine launch, which again on launch exposes the asset and anti-submarine warfare is very well understood at this point. And why launch an anti-ship missile from a submarine when a torpedo can be far more damaging.
The navy is working on a platform for the rail guns that uses current working technology. The systems they are developing will run on top of standard carrier nuclear generation systems. Just like the carriers you have two small nuclear reactors, put them in a large cruiser class ship. There aren't big guns like the old battleships so the ships become multi-role, able to host not only rail gun rounds but missile and radar emplacements. The best part about the rail guns is you do away with explosive munitions, your ammo and firing system are a bunch of wiring, capacitors and a hunk of tungsten for a projectile and you can spread the systems around the ship in a damage control technique (unlike current powder based systems that are a single weak point).
I actually believe the Navy's future plans are more sustainable and build-able than even the air-force's F-35 program. And their time line is even more believable with the first ship construction around 2016.
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The best part about the rail guns is you do away with explosive munitions, your ammo and firing system are a bunch of wiring, capacitors and a hunk of tungsten for a projectile and you can spread the systems around the ship in a damage control technique (unlike current powder based systems that are a single weak point).
Consider the amount of energy that would be stored in those capacitors. If that energy was released in an uncontrolled fashion, it would be just as bad as an ammunition store going off.
Re:Is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
I shouldn't need to point this out as it's a critical aspect of US naval policy since WWII. The point of a US navy carrier grouping is to sit well outside ground fire range and use AIR power. This means planes with ranges that far exceed a missile, and cruise missiles that are nothing more than preprogrammed Kamikaze drones.
Maybe at some point the SunFire's and other supersonic Anti-Ship missiles will have a range equivalent to air power but the further they have to go the easier they are to shoot down.
The first rail guns will be small systems with short ranges of 200 some odd miles, but the future intent is to bring these up to 2 Ton 10,000 mile systems. They will have the ability to throw a hunk of tungsten so fast and so far that it's explosive force will be in the 30K ton of TNT range and it will be capable of penetrating almost a hundred feet of solid rock or reinforced concrete. They will be capable of putting a rod on target within 5 minutes of order. Railguns will revolutionize warfare, probably in a very bad way.
Re:Is this news? (Score:4, Interesting)
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That assumes that your opponent has the same technology as you do. Otherwise, it is fully possible to have longer range weapons on your ship than they do in their land based facilities (and America generally does).
There's also some asymmetry in the importance of accuracy. It's a considerable difference if your projectile can fire 10 miles and is accurate to 1 square meter vs. can fire 11 miles and is accurate to 100 square meters. The latter might be fine for naval ships attacking a base but you might ne
Not a problem (Score:4, Informative)
Doing it from a ship or land based gun will give you problems because the Earth has this curvature, and your hypersonic dart is pretty much going to travel in a straight line. So things that are over the horizon are pretty much out of reach since drilling straight through the Earth is not really practical.
These projectiles will certainly be guided (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/its-experimental-rail-gun-navy-wants-gps-guided-hypersonic-projectiles) with accuracies at least as good as current ICBM systems, and probably as good as existing precision bombing systems like JDAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition) and others. There are plenty of ways to guide a very fast munition that do not require sticking control surfaces out in a hypersonic air stream.
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Consider t
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"Any country hostile to the USA would need to devote some of its resources, both money and brains, into similar RAD."
Not really, the Chinese will wait for us to sink the money into the tech, then steal the plans.
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"Any country hostile to the USA would need to devote some of its resources, both money and brains, into similar RAD."
Not really, the Chinese will wait for us to sink the money into the tech, then steal the plans.
Except that was essentially what the USSR was doing with the USA's electronic and computer designs. Trouble was that without the necessary R&D, they really didn't even understand what they were copying. That allowed us to slip them designs that didn't work and resulted in things like the Soviet Urengoy–Surgut–Chelyabinsk natural gas pipeline [wikipedia.org].
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Old news... (Score:5, Informative)
In and of itself.. this article is very lacking and at face value is old news. We have been developing railguns for a long time. We have the principles down, but the problem comes with the energy needed to really run a weapons effective version.
Even the linked article just referrences an overview of the technology and it's goals. Why not an update... did they make a breakthrough? SOMETHING...
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What they need is some kind of ship with a nuclear reactor that can generate enormous amounts of power.
Now I wonder who has technology like that in the pipe?
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What they need is some kind of ship with a nuclear reactor that can generate enormous amounts of power.
Actually, what they most likely need is some sort of fast-startup generator for the short peak power periods required by such a weapon, e.g., something like an MHD generator.
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What they need is some kind of ship with a nuclear reactor that can generate enormous amounts of power.
Actually, what they most likely need is some sort of fast-startup generator for the short peak power periods required by such a weapon, e.g., something like an MHD generator.
If they haven't changed plans drastically, the peak power is handled by huge capacitors. So it's a reliable and large capacitor problem, plus a "we need more overall electrical output than we used to" problem. A nuclear power run ship makes a lot of sense if you are going to be using lots of power. For multi-shots, they may have to just add more capacitors and count on some lag time between bursts.
Re:Old news... (Score:5, Interesting)
"They won't be willing to wait and it's not exactly a simple thing to change the power output of a Rankine cycle nuclear power plant at a whim."
Actually, it is, it's called a throttle. When you're in a nuclear submarine puttering along at 5 knots and someone drops a torpedo on you, and you want to get up to 30+ knots as fast as you can, you do it. You take more heat out of the coolant, which cools down the water in the reactor, which increases the reaction rate, which produces more power, this relationship is very tight and the changes can happen very rapidly. Way more rapidly than shoveling in more coal.
The power source is a non-issue. Gas turbine, nuclear, whatever, there's plenty of available power. A single destroyer carries 4 gas turbine engines that are each capable of 40,000+ shaft horsepower. It's generation capacity that's more of an issue, but even that just means "wait for a longer period of time between shots."
The means of delivering electrical power to the projectile without arcing destroying the rails is an issue. Ideally you want all the current in the world at as low a voltage as you can manage it, so capacitors aren't as good as a magnetohomopolar generator. But getting the power to put into the capacitors of MHG is not a complex problem.
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There are already prototype destroyers afloat with series hybrid power. Gas turbines, generators, motors.
No doubt they are intended to carry lasers, rail-guns or both. Whichever system is ready first. Unless we go broke first. I guess I should say, unless we run out of credit first, we are broke.
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Ahead flank, cavitate!
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The US Navy has been evaluating designs of all-electric powered warships for thirty years or more. The main difference with current warships (like the Arleigh Burke) would be electric motor main propulsion instead of reduction gear off gas turbines. Nothing they (or Congress) are quite comfortable with yet. Destroyers and cruisers would be based on gas turbine generators which have been getting 40+% total thermodynamic efficiencies in operation for some time (vs 25-35% for the old steam boiler warships).
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Extra reactors are much safer than carrying around tons of high-explosives, and you get some extra room to carry the inert ordnance.
Re:Old news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Next gen aircraft carries are already putting in an extra reactor in order to run electromagnetic launch catapults instead of the high maintenance hydraulic ones we have now.
When that power isn't being used for launching aircraft, it can be used for launching railgun projectiles.
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The only sticking point is that an aircraft carrier is not a gun cruiser. Or even a destroyer.
Frankly, a CVN is not supposed to get within gun range of anything that can shoot back. That's what its warplanes are for.
Things may be a little different if "gun range" is more than 100 miles, but again... a carrier full of warplanes and unmanned combat air vehicles doesn't need a popgun, even if it's a railgun.
Maybe smaller railguns for point defense... assuming they can be rapid-fire and have better range than c
Re:Old news... (Score:4, Funny)
Put a socket on the side and run a fucking massive(tm) extension cable to the gunboat or whatever the nouveau battlecruiser is called.
Bunch of thickies round here.
Re:Old news... (Score:4, Informative)
Things may be a little different if "gun range" is more than 100 miles
Did you miss the part about 220 mile range?
Old holes... (Score:3)
The power source is now a black hole. Oh wait! Skip the gun and throw the black hole at the target.
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That's not what the Russians are planning. But it has a sort of symmetry.
Re:Old news... (Score:5, Informative)
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I'll bet the rails are cheaper to replace than 3 tomahawk missiles.
Re:Old news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah - but can you replace the rails while underway?
Here's something for you - a DDG carries 56 Tomahawks, but can load up to 96 if they carry nothing but Tomahawks in their VLS. Rate of fire - 1 missile per second.
The real question is, what are you going to shoot at that's only 200mi aways? 200mi might sound "far" but reality is that modern anti ship missiles have range 500-1000 miles.
No DDG is going to sail up to 200mi of a hostile to shoot it with a railgun when then can launch a Tomahawk with it's 800mi range for a Block III or 1500 for Block IIs.
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> The real question is, what are you going to shoot at that's
> only 200mi aways?
Incoming antiship missiles.
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You wouldn't use or need a railgun for that, you'd use a missile (at long range, so it can guide in on the target) or a cannon at short range (so you don't need homing, you just shoot a ton of bullets and hope one hits, which is the system they use now). Lasers, now, those have some potential. Can't go over-the-horizon, but potentially much more efficient than current defense systems, which is why they are developing them.
No, railguns are to hit actual targets. 220mi isn't as long-range as a missile, but i
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a rapid fire rail gun with a 110 m range would be a great for defense.
Unless a highly populated region happens to be on the other side of the missile targets. The current Phalanx ammunition has the virtue that it loses a lot of its velocity quickly. That's why its range is so short. But in compensation one doesn't usually have to worry about massive random collateral damage.
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I'll bet it's easier to swap the rails than to go back and get more missiles. There's a lot of stuff under 200 miles from the coast. In some cases, an entire country.
Re:Old news... (Score:5, Interesting)
No DDG is going to sail up to 200mi of a hostile to shoot it with a railgun when then can launch a Tomahawk with it's 800mi range for a Block III or 1500 for Block IIs.
...at ~$600,000 dollars a shot. That is... expensive, even for the US military, especially when fighting targets that aren't ~1,000 miles away, but which you still don't want to fly a plane over. Also, carrying 56 Tomahawks means you have a shit-ton of explosives on board just waiting to be detonated by a missile or bomb hitting the ship. The thing about railguns is they can be potentially combined with the new laser system the Navy is also developing for defense, meaning you have a platform that can't be hit by enemy missiles and can fire large-scale bombardments for nearly negligible cost (compared to the current cost), over the horizon. Sure, that's a few years or even decades down the line, but when your military operates on the principle of always having the technological upper hand (which is exactly how the US military works), investing in tech that is 10+ years away is a rather sound move. Not to mention the other applications rail technology could have, like space travel.
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Why just things above the horizon? It is a ballistic weapon after all.
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It will travel at 3.4 km/s but orbital speed at sea level is about 8 km/s so it will drop relative to the ground if fired at 0 degrees elevation. The calculations will have to consider the curvature of the Earth and the elevations will be small but existent to hit targets over the horizon.
It is by definition a ballistic projectile and it will necessarily be fired over a curved surface.
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It's certainly possible, but considering that the rails are subjected to the same force the projectile is and the tolerances are probably fairly important to prevent arcing and maintaining accuracy you may end up with a fairly heavy fixture that needs replacing. Replaceable strips might be possible, but I'd wager that part of the problem in producing replacable parts in a railgun is that pretty much everything apart from the projectile will end up welded into one piece.
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The argument "I can't think of it, so it must be impossible" is the most given argument I see on Slashdot that doesn't have a name (strawmen, ad hominems being the most popular, but having names).
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Rail erosion problem. Power is hardly the only issue. Last I heard (which I admit has been a long time, I don't follow this) getting 100 shots on a rail at full power was a distant dream.
Technology improving warfare! (Score:5, Funny)
Say it ain't so!
Hey look Ugg. Your club hurts, but I added a rock to the end of mine. Oh yea, well I have made a thinner club with a pointy edge to it so I can throw it at a distance. Oh yea. I put a sharp stone at the end of it so it will cut into my enemy further (and yes it has hunting applications too).
oh yea. Well I now can launch it with an other stick.
Heck I beat you with a more compact stick on a string.
By the way I have found to put sharper rocks at the end of sticks...
Hey check this out I found out how to melt rocks into this shiny stuff that doesn't shatter like a rock does, and I can grind it to make it sharper.
Yea I took your idea and made mine longer.
Yea, Well mine is sharper and better balanced.
Hey I just came back from China, I found this neat stuff that explodes.
Yea. I found I could make the direction better if I encase it metal that can contain and direct the explosion.
Well mine is bigger.
Well mine is more portable.
Well mine is more accurate.
Well mine can reload faster.
Well mine I can mass produce.
Well my big ones explode more.....
Re:Technology improving warfare! (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed one. (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed one MAJOR feature: cost.
New warfare is going to be all about cost. Nations/organizations battling on a ROI factor.
Case in point - Al Qu--whatever. They got a lot of dipshits who will die for Allah or whatever and they're giving the US a run for their money in those shitholes they're fighting in.
The US has all this high tech hardware that's been proven almost useless - the DRONES are being proven USEFULL.
You got a $190,000,000 aircraft? I got a 10 $10,000,000 aircraft that has a BETTER chance of shooting down the entire squadron of the $190M aircraft. You got ONE F-22 and a bunch of F-15s? So? I got 20+ Migs with assholes who'll die at any means to take YOU out.
And live to see another day.
President Eisenhower wasn't so far off (military industrial complex stuff), but he missed the fact of many many very poor people pissed off at the US for various reasons - and they'll die to hurt us.
People don't get it. They don't. Mitt RMoney is a moron. Obama sort of gets it.
Re:You missed one. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think so. I don't know for sure that the $190M F-22 is six times better than a $30M F-15, but it's a lot more than 19 times better than the MiGs it's likely to face. Oh, maybe not the MiG-29, where it's perhaps only eight or ten times better, but the F-22 has the ability to knock you down from 60 miles out (around 100 miles when the AMRAAM-D comes along). Even one F-22 and a few F-15s would make short work of 20+ MiGs at $10M each since at that price, you're using comparatively ancient MiG-23s and not even MiG-29s, which cost three times as much.
Besides, the factor you missed is AWACS. That's a force multiplier of unbelievable proportion. Iraq learned that the hard way twice. When you have someone watching your back for missiles and aircraft from that far away who isn't likely going to get distracted because someone took a shot at him, it's a powerful ally. Knowing which group of enemy aircraft to target, where SAM sites are, how long an enemy aircraft has been flying (and thus how much fuel they might have left), and other tactical information helps enormously, and anyone fielding F-22s is going to have one or two AWACS planes up there guiding things.
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When you do that caveman-speak thing you're supposed to put more grammatical errors in than when you're writing normally.
Side-track. (Score:2)
Wonderful! First our video games are on rails. Now our guns are.
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Wonderful! First our video games are on rails. Now our guns are.
The difference is, with our guns you can choose the target.
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Wonderful! First our video games are on rails. Now our guns are.
Just as long as it's not Ruby...
Challenges (Score:2)
Explosives (Score:5, Funny)
""Imagine a warship weapon that can launch projectiles at Mach 10 without explosives..."
Well, that's not counting the railgun itself, I guess.
They tend to fail spectacularly.
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Spectacular for the defense contractors, yes. It's fucking fantastic.
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> They tend to fail spectacularly.
When guns fail they do so spectacularly, yes.
It must be real. (Score:2)
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I'm trying desperately to forget that movie ever existed.
And it'll be practical... (Score:2)
Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
No reflection at all about the deep problems that our obsession with inflicting violence on other people has got us into.
If all-holy technology is used to build a bigger, faster something - even if it's a terrifying weapon in the hands of a murderous empire like the US - then slaver over it on Slashdot. Because its about technology, and its about the gunz, and it has to be cool.
So what now? Build a new Bismarck? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or another Hood? Or new Dreadnoughts?
See the problem? You're just reviving an old paradigma with all its old weaknesses - plus lack of any visual confirmation of hits whatsoever because you're firing way beyond the horizon, plus much longer time of flight due to distance. Accuracy just won't materialize in any way whatever, so you'll end up blanketing an area hoping to hit something sooner or later. If it's a moving target - forget about it.
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Battleships became useless because they couldn't get in range of their targets before they were sunk by aircraft. There are two options to fix this - extend their range, or make them impervious to aircraft. This is a step towards option 1. This doesn't mean we're going to go back to old dreadnought battles, since planes and anti-ship missiles a
Over the horizon rail guns? (Score:3)
You can't hit an object 220 miles away surface to surface by firing in a straight line. There's a big ball of rock and water in the way. If you have to fire in a balistic arc, is the high velocity of a rail gun of much use?
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Sure. Frictional losses aside, its speed when it hits the ground is the muzzle velocity it was launched with - even on a lob shot. And twice as fast means four times the energy.
What I wonder is how much wind is needed to make a hit into a not-near-enough miss.
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.. i'd assume that whatever they were firing would have some kind of guidance control.
It's 2012. Why would you create a dumb ballistic projectile over that kind of distance?
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You can't hit an object 20 miles away surface to surface by firing in a straight line either, and yet battleships have been hitting each other for a hundred years.
Yes, the high velocity lets you toss something on a ballistic flight 220 miles in the first place, and the thing arrives at it's target with quite a bit of that speed.
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Battleship shells still have to penetrate battleship armour kinetically when they arrive. They're designed to explode inside the target. Neglecting air resistance, an object travels at the same speed at the end of a ballistic trajectory as it does at the beginning. With air resistance, somewhat slower. A 200 nm ballistic trajectory would deliver a projectile with more speed than a flat trajectory, if such a thing were possible. The ballistic shell will spend much of it's time in thinner air at high al
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Well... they need to drive interest since they just laid off some 160 people from their West Chester, Ohio plant.
http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/region_north_cincinnati/west_chester/bae-systems-to-lay-off-about-160-employees-at-west-chester-site [wcpo.com]
I know about this since I live very close by.
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BAE doesn't give a fuck, they have more than enough government connections.
"Railgun" pieces, however redundant, get page hits.
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No, one half of speed^2 * mass = kinetic energy.
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Two problems I see with all this.
First is that in order to hit something 220 miles away you are going to have to shoot the projectile in a ballistic arc over the horizon. Air resistance will be a serious issue at this distance if you take the low path because Mach 10 at the gun will be significantly lower 110 seconds later when the projectile is still in flight. I'm guessing you would be advised to not depend on kinetic energy for all your damage at long ranges.
Second, where the projectile came from wil
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You keep using that word. I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Not talking about rail as in railroad...
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vs. Railroad Gun [wikipedia.org]
Really?
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If you want it to stay in space it needs a rocket engine. Launching rockets off rail guns is a bit more complicated than launching pointy bits of metal.
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Speed of sound: about 1100 feet per second.
Muzzle velocity of an M16: about 3200 feet per second. So, close enough to Mach 3 to call it that, with rounding.
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5.56 NATO rounds (typical for an AR-15 or M-16) top out at around 2,900 feet per second for standard pressures and barrels. Most are somewhat under that for various reasons. At sea level, speed of sound is about 1,100 feet per second.
So, yeah, 3 times is a rounding point "ballpark" number for 2.7 times the speed of sound or so.
So, "since forever"
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Since the muzzle velocity with standard issue ammo is ~950 m/s which is within spitting distance of 1,021 m/s.
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If you're thinking about launch technology, keep an eye on that 6000g acceleration. Smoosh.
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Not 6000g. 60,000g. WWII guns managed more than 6000g firing shells with clockwork inside.
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Pretty high, but not into orbit. Orbital velocity is about Mach 23, and escape velocity is about Mach 33. The imaginary railgun only goes to Mach 10.
Re:How high can it shoot? (Score:5, Informative)
You can't put anything in orbit with any gun, acting by itself. You must apply some thrust after the projectile reaches the desired height. If you don't do that, no matter how powerful the gun is, no matter how high the muzzle velocity is, no matter where you point it, one of two things will happen: it will hit the earth before completing one orbit, or it will fly away and never come back.
If you want to launch to orbit from a gun, you have to provide a rocket motor on the projectile that starts up at the appropriate point in the trajectory.
Here's another way to express it: you cannot achieve a repeating orbit whose low point (perigee) is higher than the last point at which thrust was applied. For a simple gun, that point is the muzzle.
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Here's another way to express it: you cannot achieve a repeating orbit whose low point (perigee) is higher than the last point at which thrust was applied. For a simple gun, that point is the muzzle.
Wow... Excellent point! Rail guns are pretty worthless on their own when trying to achieve a useful orbit. I suppose you could do some tricks with aerodynamics to help adjust the perigee up, but you are only going to be able to adjust the perigee (best case) to a point where enough air exists to apply the necessary force. This perigee will still be in the atmosphere, meaning the orbit will not be lasting due to air resistance.
Mod Parent UP!!
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Technically that is not accurate.
You could (theoretically) fire a ballistic projectile at an escape velocity and at such an angle that the atmosphere will slow it down to be an orbital velocity. You could also fire and use a gravitational slingshot to put an object in orbit.
Thrust is not the only means of changing a ballistic trajectory into an orbit, both drag and gravity work as well.
The first point here also means you cannot really have a perfect ballistic trajectory inside an atmosphere.
Re:How high can it shoot? (Score:5, Interesting)
wrong. there are trajectories in a multi-bodied system such as the earth-moon one where orbit can be achieved. your teacher or urban-legend websource was only considering the earth as a lone body.
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your teacher or urban-legend websource was only considering the earth as a lone body.
No, *I* was considering this as a pure two-body problem because any three-body solution to getting a projectile into LEO would involve a ridiculous amount of energy.
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Your railgun may only go to Mach 10, but mine goes to eleven.
really ? (Score:2)
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since the last several wars if collateral damage were not a factor the entire Mideast would probably be radioactive molten slag right now.
Re:really ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure if GP was serious or not, but looks to me like the modern US Army and other armed forces go to an unbelievable and completely unprecedented amount of effort to avoid collateral damage compared to every other military force that has ever existed. Those who seriously complain about it either have no idea what they're talking about, or are pursuing an anti-American agenda and don't have the courage to be straightforward about it.
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Who needs nukes when you can hurl big rocks at an enemy through a mass accelerator.
it's not really clear if you are saying this is a good or bad thing. it's good in that there's no radiation, so it damages the target and the target only (if it hits), not the rest of the world for decades. the bad thing is that fact might make it see a lot more use than nuclear weapons.
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Its called politic when you are in charge of a superpower, trolling when your on a forum kidding around. go figure
Re:Fear it Iran (Score:5, Funny)
Better than speaking big and carrying soft sticks.
Re:Needs a name (Score:4, Insightful)
... they are, after all, just a bunch of weirdly drawn cartoons... I know the white man-toddlers... like to call it "anime"... they are cartoons. For kids.
You do know that it is the Japanese who call it anime and that anime is short for animation so yes... by definition of the word "anime" they are cartoons. Good attempt to try and attribute the anime term to white fanboys.
Oh, I don't even watch anime, but people enjoy it so why be a douche about it.