China Uses Giant Rail Gun to Shoot a Smart Bomb Nine Miles Into the Sky (futurism.com) 134
"China's navy has apparently tested out a hypersonic rail gun," reports Futurism, describing it as "basically a device that uses a series of electromagnets to accelerate a projectile to incredible speeds."
But "during a demonstration of its power, things didn't go quite as planned." As the South China Morning Post reports, the rail gun test lobbed a precision-guided projectile — or smart bomb — nine miles into the stratosphere. But because it apparently didn't go up as high as it was supposed to, the test was ultimately declared unsuccessful. This conclusion came after an analysis led by Naval Engineering University professor Lu Junyong, whose team found with the help of AI that even though the winged smart bomb exceeded Mach 5 speeds, it didn't perform as well as it could have. This occurred, as Lu's team found, because the projectile was spinning too fast during its ascent, resulting in an "undesirable tilt."
But what's more interesting is the project itself. "Successful or not, news of the test is a pretty big deal given that it was just a few months ago that reports emerged about China's other proposed super-powered rail gun, which is intended to send astronauts on a Boeing 737-size ship into space.... which for the record did not make it all the way to space..." Chinese officials, meanwhile, are paying lip service to the hypersonic rail gun technology's potential to revolutionize civilian travel by creating even faster railways and consumer space launches, too.
Japan and France also have railgun projects, according to a recent article from Defense One. "Yet the nation that has demonstrated the most continuing interest is China," with records of railgun work dating back as far as 2011: The Chinese team claimed that their railgun can fire a projectile 100 to 200 kilometers at Mach 6. Perhaps most importantly, it uses up to 100,000 AI-enabled sensors to identify and fix any problems before critical failure, and can slowly improve itself over time. This, they said, had enabled them to test-fire 120 rounds in a row without failure, which, if true, suggests that they solved a longstanding problem that reportedly bedeviled U.S. researchers. However, the team still has a ways to go before mounting an operational railgun on a ship; according to one Chinese article, the projectiles fired were only 25mm caliber, well below the size of even lightweight naval artillery.
As with many other Chinese defense technology programs, much remains opaque about the program...
While railguns tend to get the headlines, this lab has made advances in a wide range of electric and electromagnetic applications for the PLA Navy's warships. For example, the lab's research on electromagnetic launch technology has also been applied to the development of electromagnetic catapults for the PLAN's growing aircraft carrier fleet...
While it remains to be seen whether the Chinese navy can develop a full-scale railgun, produce it at scale, and integrate it onto its warships, it is obvious that it has made steady advances in recent years on a technology of immense military significance that the US has abandoned.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Tangential for sharing the news.
But "during a demonstration of its power, things didn't go quite as planned." As the South China Morning Post reports, the rail gun test lobbed a precision-guided projectile — or smart bomb — nine miles into the stratosphere. But because it apparently didn't go up as high as it was supposed to, the test was ultimately declared unsuccessful. This conclusion came after an analysis led by Naval Engineering University professor Lu Junyong, whose team found with the help of AI that even though the winged smart bomb exceeded Mach 5 speeds, it didn't perform as well as it could have. This occurred, as Lu's team found, because the projectile was spinning too fast during its ascent, resulting in an "undesirable tilt."
But what's more interesting is the project itself. "Successful or not, news of the test is a pretty big deal given that it was just a few months ago that reports emerged about China's other proposed super-powered rail gun, which is intended to send astronauts on a Boeing 737-size ship into space.... which for the record did not make it all the way to space..." Chinese officials, meanwhile, are paying lip service to the hypersonic rail gun technology's potential to revolutionize civilian travel by creating even faster railways and consumer space launches, too.
Japan and France also have railgun projects, according to a recent article from Defense One. "Yet the nation that has demonstrated the most continuing interest is China," with records of railgun work dating back as far as 2011: The Chinese team claimed that their railgun can fire a projectile 100 to 200 kilometers at Mach 6. Perhaps most importantly, it uses up to 100,000 AI-enabled sensors to identify and fix any problems before critical failure, and can slowly improve itself over time. This, they said, had enabled them to test-fire 120 rounds in a row without failure, which, if true, suggests that they solved a longstanding problem that reportedly bedeviled U.S. researchers. However, the team still has a ways to go before mounting an operational railgun on a ship; according to one Chinese article, the projectiles fired were only 25mm caliber, well below the size of even lightweight naval artillery.
As with many other Chinese defense technology programs, much remains opaque about the program...
While railguns tend to get the headlines, this lab has made advances in a wide range of electric and electromagnetic applications for the PLA Navy's warships. For example, the lab's research on electromagnetic launch technology has also been applied to the development of electromagnetic catapults for the PLAN's growing aircraft carrier fleet...
While it remains to be seen whether the Chinese navy can develop a full-scale railgun, produce it at scale, and integrate it onto its warships, it is obvious that it has made steady advances in recent years on a technology of immense military significance that the US has abandoned.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Tangential for sharing the news.
Oh my God! (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously guys, the tail is wagging us on China. We have nukes. They have nukes. Everybody has nukes. Nobody's a threat to anyone.
They are, however, a threat to US businesses eyeing cheap minerals in Africa...
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The U.S. was working on this until quite recently. Mid-1950s is a frivolous description.
Re: Oh my God! (Score:2)
And there were too many issues with severe wear and tear on the gun mechanism. Maybe the chinese have solved it but I wont hold my breath.
Also railguns might be cool in sci fi but in reality they have limited use case. You still need a projectile so why not just put propellant in it and stick it in a hollow tube, job done.
What would be far more useful is a properly working laser cannon - no projectiles required and unlimited shots while its got power.
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Perhaps.
Re: Oh my God! (Score:5, Informative)
You still need a projectile so why not just put propellant in it and stick it in a hollow tube, job done.
There are a lot of reasons. If you can use the space that the propellant takes up with shells, then you can obviously go longer between resupply. Modern naval ships rely more on missiles because of range these days. But most ships carry no more than 200 missiles, on the high side. Those launchers can't be rearmed at sea and take weeks to resupply. So they become floating targets. You can carry a hell of a lot more shells than missiles. Plus shells are cheap compared to missiles. Obviously they can also be resupplied at sea as well.
On top of that, carrying propellant is dangerous. It has to be stored in the most armored part of the ship. If it gets hit by a shell or missile, the vessel is gonna sink. That's what happened to the Arizona at Pearl harbor and many other ships during WWII. Even sitting in the harbor it wasn't possible to save the lives of those who had not been killed by the initial bombing aboard the Arizona.
Propellant has to be made. If you can throw a nuclear reactor on a ship and eliminate even some of the need for it, it helps with the need to manufacture, transport, store, safeguard, and resupply it.
What would be far more useful is a properly working laser cannon - no projectiles required and unlimited shots while its got power.
Lasers are great for surface to air, but ground to ground, or specifically ship to ship not so much in comparison to a kinetic weapon. The curvature of the earth causes a drop in the horizon the farther you get from a fixed point. The deck of an aircraft carrier is around 65 feet from the ocean surface. At that height you can't target anything with a direct energy weapon past 10 miles. And at 10 miles you won't be hitting the super structure of any vessels. Current chemically propelled guns have a better range for surface to surface engagements at 12 miles. The 16 inch guns on an Iowa class battleship was double that at 24 miles. The most recent Naval rail guns have a range 10 times that at 250 miles.
Kinetic weapons fire a projectile in a ballistic arc rather than a straight line. So for surface to surface engagements they make a lot more sense. On top of that, we don't have energy weapons that are powerful enough to sink a naval vessel. If you hit the side of a destroyer with any current ship based laser it's unlikely to even cause a scratch compared to hitting it with a kinetic weapon. Our current lasers are good for missile or drone interceptions. You won't be sinking warships with lasers anytime soon.
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Oh that's super informative. Never thought of that.
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Re: Oh my God! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Oh my God! (Score:4, Informative)
The current 5" guns on US ships have a duty cycle of 4600 rounds. The Iowa class 16 inch guns needed to be replaced after firing 400ish non-training rounds using black powder back in WWII. But with modern propellant and the newest barrels circa 1980 were good for 1500 to 2200 rounds. Keep in mind, the Iowa Battleships had 3 turrets with 3 16-inch guns on each turret. That's 13,500 rounds, on the low end, before they need new liners. Most of the time those guns can fire well over that that duty cycle.
An Arleigh Burke class destroyer can carry 90-ish missiles. Once fired it must return to port to be rearmed. That will typically take it out of action for 6 weeks, give or take depending on it's closest port. An Arleigh Burke will need to be rearmed 150 times to fire the same number of missiles as shells that can be fired by an Iowa battleship. That's over 17 years of rearming time for an Arleigh Burke's launch cells to fire the same number of missiles as shells from an Iowa battleship.
The Iowa gun liners can also be replaced at sea. So even if a barrel is worn out, it doesn't need to steam back to port. Obviously Missiles have many advantages over guns. But Guns are cheap in comparison. Destroyers cells also carry more than just surface engagement missiles. They use them for surface to air missiles and a variety of other types.
The real issue is that missiles are great for short engagements against an inferior military. Near pier prolonged war becomes a real issue. Missiles are very expensive and many of them take years to build. If the USN ever starts firing off hundreds of missiles per day, they will be depleted and there isn't the capacity to produce them quickly. But like the rest of the US military, the Navy is obsessed with shiny expensive toys.
If you're interested just how accurate those old guns could be, read up on the exploits of Admiral Willis "Ching" Lee.
Re: Oh my God! (Score:2)
Re: Oh my God! (Score:5, Informative)
With railgun there is no real barrel that needs to withstand the explosion of the propellant of the shell, it just glides the projectile, if done right not even touching the lining of the barrel due to it being magnetically forced out.
This isn't quite right.
You are possibly thinking of a gauss gun, which uses a series of coils long the barrel to pull a ferromagnetic slug down the barrel, with the frequency of switching increasing or distance between coils increasing (or both) as the projectile accelerate towards the end of the barrel, and no contact between the projectile and the coils - a bit like a linear electric motor.
With a rail gun, which uses Lenz's law to accelerate the projectile, the projectile has to form a good electrical contact with rails along the length of the "barrel" (which doesn't necessarily need to be an enclosed tube), to prevent arcing and even more wear. The rails and projectile form a conductive loop back to the power supply, which is typically a massive bank of capacitors.
When the circuit is closed, huge amounts of current flow through the loop, creating a magnetic field that wants to expand. The only way it can expand is for the slug to get pushed down the rails, giving it huge acceleration. This also causes a lot of wear on the rails, because the slug needs to have a very tight fit and leaves the rails at about 2000 m/s.
Rail damage is a significant obstacle researchers are still trying to overcome with these systems.
Re: Oh my God! (Score:2)
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"Put propellant in it"? And so reduce the amount of explosive? So, no air force in the world is using bombs, and the armies no longer use artillery, right?
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Not that this is really about fear mongering. This is one of those interest stories, for military nerds. You're supposed to be impressed by all the totally rad things that are being developed and subsequently approve of more money for more weapons.
The pedant in me would also like to point out that a gun which uses a series of electromagnets is a coil gun, not a rail gun.
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Iraq employed engineer.
Re:Oh my God! (Score:4, Insightful)
From the link you posted it appears the guy was more of an illegal arms dealer than an engineer, but whatever.
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Also the arms dealing was done in support of anti-communist forces, so not a reason for Israel to murder him, and it was over by the time of his murder anyway.
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I don't know how you got that impression.
I literally read that wiki page you link to.
The "engineering projects" of this person were a string of failures, which he tried to sell to Middle East dictators for quick cash.
There is zero specific evidence that he was "murdered by Israel", as you claim. Even the page you quote (which appears to be a verbatim re-telling of a single biographical book) mentions a whole bunch of other dissatisfied customers that could have offed him.
So, overall, your case that this was an excellent engineer who was murdered b
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Let me say it now: Gerald Bull was an excellent engineer who was the youngest person to ever receive a PhD from the University of Toronto, the largest and arguably the most prestigious university in Canada. He established himself with the development of artillery fins protected by a sabot
Re:Oh my God! (Score:4, Interesting)
Israel murdered a Canadian engineer [wikipedia.org] over a project similar to this one. I wouldn't be so dismissive
No Disrespect intended, but there is a huge difference between a Rail Gun and what Gerald Bull was working on. Gerald was working on Project Babylon, a supergun to shoot projectiles into space. This was a follow on to his work on Project HARP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) which was a VERY successful project to shoot instrumented sub orbital projectiles into space. The last part of that project was to actually try and shoot a projectile into space but the project was terminated before it could be tried. Three HARP guns were created and I actually got to touch the one that is still currently situated in the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Per the HARP article: "On November 18, 1966, the HARP gun operated by BRL at Yuma Proving Ground launched an 84-kg Martlet 2 missile at 2,100 m/s, sending it briefly into space and setting a world altitude record of 179 km. This feat has remained the world altitude record for any fired projectile."
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there is a huge difference between a Rail Gun and what Gerald Bull was working on
A coil gun (not a rail gun) that shoots projectiles into space, vs. a traditional gun that shoots projectiles into space. The summary talks about a manned Boeing 737 sized ship, which is far more than anything Project Babylon was trying to do, but they seem similar enough to me to make that comparison. And if we're going to make a distinction then the new project is a lot more ambitious, which would just be further reason to not dismiss it.
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I have no problem with Mossad (or anyone else) killing this man but to claim it was just because he was working on artillery weapons design is absurd. One might also wonder, with the cold war coming to an end, had he outlived his usefulness?
As part of his work with the Iraqi's, Dr. Bull helped in the development of their long range SCUD Missiles, which was a major concern of the Israelis. Quite a few people believe that was the reason he was assassinated.
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As part of his work with the Iraqi's, Dr. Bull helped in the development of their long range SCUD Missiles
There are no long range SCUD missiles, and neither there have ever been any.
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>"Quick, cold war!"
Some might argue we already are in several.
>"More military spending!"
Based on China working on rail guns? Seems like not a great reason.
>"Let's invade somewhere! Anywhere!"
Let's get serious.
>"We have nukes. They have nukes. Everybody has nukes. Nobody's a threat to anyone."
You are ignoring how nuclear mutually-assured destruction works. You can't use nukes unless you are willing to be nuked yourself. And that can cascade quickly into total destruction of everyone. But you
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I'm sure it's just a coincidence that any post criticizing China gets marked -1 troll.
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Mod down and run away. The 50 cent Pooh bear army at its finest! I love how you defenders of despicable organized evil never fail to prove my point about you or your evil af CCP masters. Thumbs up!
Carry on!
A railgun space launch (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A railgun space launch (Score:5, Insightful)
A railgun launch to orbit from the ground is just not going to happen; it's not even an efficient first stage. For a mostly-ballistic payload, the launch acceleration is too high for anything we'd want to launch (there's no practical way to build a long enough ramp at the right angle anywhere on the planet), and the final launch velocity is too high to deal with anyway... either you're popping out of an evacuated tube and slamming into atmosphere or you're pushing that air from start to finish.
It's a cool sci/fi idea, it is not a practical launch method.
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it's not even an efficient first stage.
To the contrary, it's hard to imagine a more efficient one.
and the final launch velocity is too high to deal with anyway
If only the field of aerodynamics existed.
Now, I'll grant you, there are some major hurdles toward practicality, particularly with making a second stage- much less people, that survives the ballistic launch, but they're probably workable.
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It's not an efficient first stage due to the installation requirements conflicting with craft and cargo requirements.
I can't count something as 'efficient' until it's actually practical for the intended purpose.
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It's not an efficient first stage due to the installation requirements conflicting with craft and cargo requirements.
You mean including the difficulties posed by the high velocity launch, and mitigations required for them, etc?
I'd say that's fair, to a point. We're not really sure what workarounds are available. It's not like a lot of brain power has been spent trying to solve the problem.
I'd think this would serve a far more likely purpose of a "rapid-fire" (comparatively speaking) suborbital launch mechanism, say for ballistic reentry vehicles- nuclear-tipped or otherwise.
Re: A railgun space launch (Score:2)
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They are not proposing getting to orbit with just the railgun. It will accelerate the vehicle to between Mach 1.6 and Mach 5, depending on the vehicle and payload. Once it reaches some altitude, it will switch to rockets to get it the rest of the way.
It's more like what Virgin were doing with taking a space plane up to altitude on a conventional aircraft, releasing it, and letting its own rockets take it to orbit. The advantage of a railgun is potentially larger payloads. They are talking about it being ten
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Your argument doesn't work on the moon, but that's not a consideration this decade.
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I doubt that a railgun would ever launch people, given the G-forces. But for resupply missions - food, water, fuel - it would be ideal.
Re: A railgun space launch (Score:3)
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The G-force depends how long the acceleration period is.
For small payloads there is a US company that is working on a system that spins a small vehicle up to speed and then releases it, but here they are talking about a track that is very long and straight so the average acceleration is much lower.
Not sure what the point of lobbing a "smart bomb" is, but that could just be some BS that the journalist made up. I realized years ago that they just make shit up when it comes to countries in that region. About 8
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Very likely they read that the projectile was self-steering and, since the Western press corpse can't imagine any non-military R&D spending outside the US/EU, assumed "smart bomb".
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Yeah, something like that. It's not clear exactly what kind of vehicle they are planning to use, if they intend to send a space plane that can land like the Shuttle, or if they envision it having a more conventional parachute landing. Probably the latter because it's so much easier to do, at least for the first version.
It would neatly sidestep the need for reusable boosters, which are replaced by the railgun. Super cheap mass to orbit.
We Will Watch & Laugh Until We Kneel. (Score:2)
I've seen this story before.
Rail Gun (Score:2)
Will work as well as their high speed rail. No worries. Just hype from the CCP trying to look impressive again. I say Pooh to that.
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I don't know what you are talking about. Chinese high speed rail carried a lot of passengers every day. It is true that some of the lines to smaller cities are operating in the red, but in a Communist state I am not sure they count even that as a failure.
But as a rail line, they seem to be working very well
Nine Miles (Score:2)
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The entire concept is a joke. Even the Chinese said it was a failure.
But oh wait, no, they figured out how to make rail guns work with ... AI!
Yes, that's right the latest hot buzzword has fixed the numerous problems with production quality rail guns.
Chinese subs are trash. Their carriers are trash. Their Air Force is trash. They have some nukes, some of which probably still have enough fuel to launch, and they have a LOT of people. Nothing else they have is a military threat in a real shooting war.
Re: Nine Miles (Score:2)
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They're a paper tiger with water fueled missiles and tofu military.
Oh no! There is a hypersonics gap!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21... [cnn.com].
The difference is when we announce a weapon it's because it works. There is no evidence they have war quality hypersonics. The Russians claimed hypersonics too. Then our patriots started shooting them down in Ukraine.
Are you believing the nonsense about a hypersonic destroying a US carrier from a zillion miles away at sea?
1) they lie about everything else but not this?
2)
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Dishonest comment about US researchers (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, the main issue with the railgun was power and heat; it required a ton of power to operate, and the heat was so intense it melted the rails over time requiring a gun replacement. The Chinese Navy probably needs this, as they will need a lot of anti-missile defense, but it doesn't give a tactical tool that can't be filled by existing technology.
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And setting aside the military applications, Gerald Bull had wanted to use his cannon to launch satellites. I'm sure you can see the utility in t
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A cannon which can put something into orbit has effectively infinite range and is much cheaper than using missiles.
Orbital weapons that are designed to damage by re-entry aren't terribly effective. They're too easy to shoot down, and require way too much energy to de-orbit in a reasonable timeframe. Since there's no such thing as a ballistic single-stage-to-orbit, your "payload" must have a rocket... if this is your strategy, it simply makes far more sense to pre-launch and have these things just hanging out up there. But then again- see: ease of shooting them down.
Suborbital (like ICBMs) makes a lot more sense, and t
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A kinetic chunk of metal travelling at many times the speed of sound is NOT easy to shoot down and whats more even hitting it doesn't guarentee stopping it as the momentum of the pieces can do almost as much damage.
Nonsense. Easy as fuck to shoot down when it's in a predictable orbit.
You seem to be confused about what orbital vs. suborbital means.
Shooting down something that is suborbital is indeed difficult, for the reasons you mentioned- it's already on a path that intersects with the atmosphere, and there's little you can do to stop that. You can only hope to destroy the reentry vehicle.
An object in orbit though, must be intact enough to de-orbit.
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Easy as fuck to shoot down when it's in a predictable orbit.
IF you know beforehand that is what is actually in that orbit, and you have something up there ahead of time which can intercept that orbit, and that something's timing of the intercept with its own orbit is correct, and it's not protected or shielded, and it doesn't have the ability to maneuver, etc. It really is rocket science, but the first point is the most important. When the US and USSR put nukes in orbit in the '70s they were apparently specifically designed to mimic the radiation signature of a l
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ground-based ASAT weapons are tested and easy.
There's no protection or shielding from something intersecting your orbit with a delta-v of kilometers-per-second.
To sum up, you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.
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Ground-based ASAT weapons kind of work, for things in LEO. That's only useful if you don't mind creating a Kessler Syndrome situation, which in LEO is becoming an increasingly bad idea as the world is increasingly relying on satellite constellations for everything from Internet access to synchronizing electrical grids across continents.
The only ground-based ASAT weapons that won't create an expanding cloud of debris are the lasers to blind surveillance satellites, which have been around since the '70s. O
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Ground-based ASAT weapons kind of work, for things in LEO.
Wrong.
That's only useful if you don't mind creating a Kessler Syndrome situation
Um, what? You're really fucking reaching.
The scenario is that there is a FOBS weapon in orbit waiting to de-orbit. Who the fuck cares about Kessler in that situation?
which in LEO is becoming an increasingly bad idea as the world is increasingly relying on satellite constellations for everything from Internet access to synchronizing electrical grids across continents.
What's your game? This comment is too stupid to consider.
We're talking about countering a FOBS weapon.
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You don't know what orbit is.
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That'd odd because the relevant railgun that the US abandoned was to launching aircraft, not weapons. They already have catapults on aircraft carriers to get the planes up to speed before they run out of runway, and the idea was to replace it with a railgun for even higher speeds and more mechanical robustness.
The power requirement was the issue in the end. But the Chinese system is very different. For a start it will be 10s of kilometres long, so doesn't need such massive acceleration. More like a souped u
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It was scrapped because it wasn't needed for the mission profile any more [navalnews.com], and when they backed off building more Zumwalt ships they needed much fewer shells for the gun, which made the cost of the shells so astronomical that it was more economical to just use a missile instead. It's now just sitting in storage as they refit the Zumwalts for VLMS.
You're referring to EMALS [wikipedia.org]. EMALS is deployed on the USS Gerald For
Lunar Escape? (Score:2)
Is this enough energy for lunar escape velocity?
Chinese are very Interested in material return from the moon.
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Is this enough energy for lunar escape velocity?
Chinese are very Interested in material return from the moon.
If Trump supported science rather than firing most of the people involved in it, we would at least be able to stop China from installing one there during his upcoming term.
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What "science" will prevent China from deploying a rail gun on the moon?
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TDS.
Trump Derangement Science
It is the hyper focused study of everything Trump.
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He's living rent free in these crack brained idiot's heads. It's so bad that, like the poster above, they're making entirely implausible connections between irrelevancies.
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What "science" will prevent China from deploying a rail gun on the moon?
In this case, sharing of information among NASA, the Pentagon and academic physicists. Trump does not have a good record of supporting science/tech, because he just doesn't personally understand it. Biden would vaguely support such an effort, but such a large percentage of his supporters are outright Luddites that our response literally wouldn't get off the ground.
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You're response doesn't make sense. If China intends to put things on the moon, NASA, the Pentagon and academic physicists in the West have no say in the matter: China doesn't care about what "sharing of information" takes place in the US government. NASA the Pentagon and whatever physicists you can name can "share" all the information they want to and China will or won't put things on the moon as it will.
You're claim is that somehow "supporting science" is going to prevent China from doing one thing or
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They probably don't believe that China has actual scientists and engineers and need to copy everything because they have no ability to invent anything on their own. They need to update their view of the world from the 1980s to the modern day, but many people seem utterly unable to do that.
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Placed on the moon, it's also a fucking terrifying weapon.
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Why? Anything launched from the moon will be detected and tracked for days as it travels a quarter of a million miles through mostly unoccupied space.
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Seeing the thing isn't the problem. Stopping its mass from intersecting with the atmosphere at silly-high velocity is.
The moon is the ultimate high ground in the Earth orbital system.
Once anything is 28,000km from the moon, it will then fall toward Earth with zero drag. You could put something in between the Earth and it, but after just a small time falling, whatever you put in front of it is just going to be obliterated by it (assuming an optimal payload of "highly dense
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Go ahead and toss your 100 kilo bar of tungsten or whatever at the Earth, and if in the next few days it hits a couple of (for example) steel ball bearings it will happily destroy them. In the process it will have a change of velocity and is now on a different course landing at an entirely different location which will probably be a minimum of several kilometers away. Go ahead and spend billions creating a rail gun weapon on the Moon, your enemy will launch a satellite with the equivalent of a 17th centur
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Go ahead and toss your 100 kilo bar of tungsten or whatever at the Earth, and if in the next few days it hits a couple of (for example) steel ball bearings it will happily destroy them.
Except that it takes a shit ton of energy to put up ball bearings, and a small amount of energy to launch a rod.
In the process it will have a change of velocity and is now on a different course landing at an entirely different location which will probably be a minimum of several kilometers away.
Yup.
So you fire another.
Go ahead and spend billions creating a rail gun weapon on the Moon, your enemy will launch a satellite with the equivalent of a 17th century blunderbuss and your investment is now useless.
lolwut?
The rail gun can't possibly be matched by ground launch cadence. We literally cannot produce satellites and rockets quick enough.
Rail gun? No. (Score:3)
Yawn (Score:2)
Wake me up once they've bred a giant shark and mounted the railgun on THAT.
Which I would necessarily not put past them...
They have reached German WW I tech (Score:2)
Good.. (Score:2)
Now all you need to do is build a bipedal giant robot to hold it that can be deployed anywhere on the planet, and have some weirdos with animal names guarding it.
Also a bunch of soldiers that are clones of the best soldier you know off guarding the thing while walking in weird predictable patterns would go a long way making it very safe.
Re: Good.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
the scale would be impossible to construct (Score:1)
a 737 PLANE weighs between 90-155K lbs.... a craft designed to be in the vacuum and hopefully return in one piece would be much heavier... add into it humans? to survive the G forces of acceleration, even if they could build a mechanism powerful enough to launch this much mass, and the electricity to power such a device... how long would this thing need to be to provide enough length/runway to accelerate at a regular enough rate that the people inside aren't pancaked... you can't just accelerate a living b
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I don't see the problem with human launches. You just need to think bigger.
Give them extra squishy pillows.
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They accelerate people from 0-11 kps in a few tens of miles already on rockets, which not coincidentally is how long they expect this thing to be.
not sure I get how this helps human travel (Score:3)
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Doing this with any sort of human in it would turn them to an Ex-human that would require a mop to remove
Ok bob, we got another one, your turn to mop up the air ducts and pick the bits stuck on every conceivable and some inconceivable surface.
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The railgun is interesting... (Score:2)
Its so funny.. (Score:1)
To see all my engineering school ideas from 20 years ago come to life today.
Is NASA just full of mediocrity?
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NASA relies on a herd of lawyers in Congress for its funding and can only work on projects that those lawyers will approve. Look at the Voyager spacecraft, currently in interstellar space. Congress would only approve a mission to Jupiter, and then later Saturn. NASA engineers made sure the missions were launched in the **only** time period in (IIRC) 200 years which would allow the Grand Tour to take place, and then have had to go back to Congress hat in hand year after year for "mission extensions". Bus
Compare to WW2 Battleship (Score:1)
A WW2 Battleship can accurately place a projectile 100-200km away using only analog fire computers and high explosives, and no AI.
revolutionize civilian travel (Score:2)
They only promise to get you there, nothing about in what condition.
I bet Ryanair will be all over this.
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TikTok is trash and I think shutting it down for national security is as good an excuse as any.
Taiwan is an ally and makes most of the world's advanced chips. We don't need the CCP to own that.
China is not producing advanced weaponry. They're years behind and by 2030 will be a full generation behind without a hope in hell of catching up.
They're pretty fucked. We only need to contain them for a few years and their errors will handle the rest for us.
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"China is ranked 3 of 145 out of the countries considered for the annual Global Firepower review. "
https://www.globalfirepower.co... [globalfirepower.com]
Re: Interesting how people feel... (Score:2)
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Actually it is the same as IG, a lot worse than FB and waaaay worse than YT which actually does have some amazingly good content for free but you need to look for it rather than spin over the trash.
But you make a general point I agree with. Shut them all down. At this point, any excuse will do; I don't care why. Normally I am very opposed to the ends justifies the means but in this case I'll go full bore hypocrite and say yes shut them all down, reason be damned.
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TikTok is a corporation. I do not believe corporations should have human rights, no. Especially not foreign corporations. There is no 1A issue here at all.
Your Israel comment is idiotic. I'll see you on the next "Poor Hamas are getting beat up by evil Jews after their mass rape and murder on October 7, please save poor Hamas" article.
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Hey way to super strawman me. You're an idiot. We're done here.
You Jew haters are really boring. It is insane that you claim nothing happened in October 7th. Fucking nuts. Or your Jew hatred is so extreme you'll believe any Hamas propaganda. Even the Jew haters at the UN admitted there was sexual violence and other bad shit. What's the source of your debunked lies?
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Way to reverse reality. 95% of Jews are zionists according to surveys. Israel is a Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East. Literally the only one. Which also has an Arab party with seats in the Knesset. How many Arab states have any Jews in government? Nice try at gas lighting. You Jew haters are so ignorant and transparent.
The rest of your post is Hamas propaganda. No need to address it as even the Jew hating UN report says you're a liar. But you do you and keep hating Jews and spr
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Unread. But I want you to know you wrote a long rant that I was aware of but left unread.
Nothing is more painful to a Nazi troll like you than to be dismissed.
You are dismissed.
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Hi Nazi Jew hater blood libel spewing scum bag Hamas terrorist propaganda loving liar!
You're loving this. You post at zero so I'm the only person on /. who even knows you exist yet I'm not actually reading your Jew hating crap now that I know why you post at zero.
You're a pariah for good reason. I'm a fucking idiot and an asshole yet I post with a karma bonus. Think about that for a bit.