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Navy Tests Mach 8 Electromagnetic Railgun
hargrand writes "Wired magazine has a story and publicly released video of the Navy test firing of a 32 megajoule electromagnetic railgun: 'Reporters were invited to watch the test at the Dalghren Naval Surface Warfare Center. A tangle of two-inch thick coaxial cables hooked up to stacks of refrigerator-sized capacitors took five minutes to power juice into a gun the size of a schoolbus built in a warehouse. With a 1.5-million-ampere spark of light and a boom audible in a room 50 feet away, the bullet left the gun at a speed of Mach 8.'"
Sadly I think your joke just hit the nail on the head of one of the things that is seriously fucked up about this country. I mean here we are, factories shuttered all over the place, people losing their homes left and right, over 22,000 factories offshored since 2001, and debt climbing like there is no tomorrow and THIS, this is what we spend our non existent money on? Giant fricking superguns? who in the fuck are we gonna use that stupid thing on? We already have the largest aircraft carrier fleet on the entire planet, our most likely enemies are groups like NK and Iran that would be lucky to come at us with kamikaze speedboats, and THIS is what we add even more debt for?
It just shows old Ike was right all those years ago. Once the military industrial complex got "too big to fail" no matter what is going on with our economy or the state of our enemies we are gonna be handing them ever increasing truckloads of cash. If we had ANY sense at all we'd cancel this crap, along with any new supercarriers being built (we already have 11 carriers for the love of Pete) and cancel that stupid F35 and just stick with the F15,16,18 combo. Oh and kill that stupid Osprey turkey while we are at it. We already have the most tech heavy military on the planet but as we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan all that means exactly jack and squat against the enemies of today. quit blowing money on stupid weapons already, Sheesh.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Summary says the boom was audible in a room 50 feet away? If I tip over a chair, it's audible in a room 50 feet away...
if you're done ranting now... railguns have plenty of non-military uses. The research into how to charge and quickly discharge those huge capacitors alone is very useful. Not to mention the applications for launching stuff into orbit, or in fusion reactors. As weapons they are great for taking down incoming missles. Also, if they were to make portable versions it would eliminate the need to carry dangerous explosives (gun powder, C4, etc..) and the projectile itself wouldn't be a dangerous heavy metal like lead. I'd rather see the military spend their time doing research like this than invading another 3rd world country.