Electromagnetic Railgun

They twist their arm when they shoot it so it gets some spin on it to curve it around the earth.

I'm actually guessing this isn't going to be over the horizon technology, or will have controllable fins or similar?
 
Well, until it has the cool, blue double helix from Quake2 when it fires. I'm less than impressed.
 
How do they shoot it around the curvature of the earth?

I would assume the gravity of earth would affect the projectile over distance. Because this is fired straight like a gun instead of arcing like artillery it should fall as it flies.

Tbh I'm suprised these kind of things have taken so long to come about. Simple rails guns can be homemade with little difficulty so something on a much larger scale shouldnt be too hard in principle :p


[sillyidea] Could we use a huge one of these to launch stuff into space? [/sillyidea]


Yes

Works on similar principles.
 
The 32-megajoule prototype demonstrator, built by BAE Systems, arrived at NSWCDD on Jan. 30. One megajoule of energy is equivalent to a 1-ton car being thrust at 100 mph

32 megajoules, great scott! :eek:

The Navy’s near-term goal is a 20- to 32-megajoule weapon that shoots a distance of 50 to 100 nautical miles.

Sounds like a serious piece of kit!
 
What is also impressive is the speed of the camera and the speed of the mount to track it coming out!

EDIT: It's not actually in that video.. i'll find what I'm talking about...

This one:

 
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The gun has 2 rails, and a massive current (supplied by discharging a capacitor bank) flows from one rail, through the conductive projectile, and returns through the other rail. This generates a huge magnetic force which tries to push the rails apart, but as they are constrained, this instead pushes the projectile out the end.

In theory this is all that happens, in practise, the resistive heating from the huge current melts some of the projectile and the rails each shot. The "explosion" is these metal fragments igniting and burning in the surrounding air. A practical railgun takes a whole lot of maintenance!

Maybe just a hell of a lot of heat from friction from accelerating a projectile so fast. Think spacecraft re-entering atmosphere but not quite as badass.

Edit: or what he said ^^

Thanks chaps. :)
 
They twist their arm when they shoot it so it gets some spin on it to curve it around the earth.

I'm actually guessing this isn't going to be over the horizon technology, or will have controllable fins or similar?

I would imagine once they've got the basic propulsion tech working they will be able to add fins/fine (in flight) controls, even if it means making the actual projectile at launch a "sabot" type round.
 
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