Posted on 02/03/2008 12:12:36 PM PST by traumer
The US Navy's electromagnetic railgun project notched up a successful test yesterday. The radical new protoype weapon, operated by the the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, fired* shot a hypersonic aluminium slug at approximately Mach 7.5 to generate muzzle energy of 10.6 megajoules.
The Office of Naval Research are hoping that they can scale up their electric cannon to 64-megajoule levels, enabling them to fire heavier projectiles at targets two hundred miles away. Whether electrical pulses of the required magnitude can be generated practicably remains to be seen.
Even if they can be, at present railgun barrels only have a life of three or four shots owing to the terrific stresses placed on them - this problem will also need to be solved.
Still, if these and other technical niggles can be ironed out, the Dahlgren railgun's descendants may genuinely change the rules of the killing game. For now, though, all we have is a pleasing video. ®
*Presumably we can't say that, actually, any more than one could speak of "firing" an arrow from a bow. Blitzed, perhaps?
So how many phone books did it go through?
Very. Cool.
Wow, now that’s a vapor trail. Amazing...
I want the hand-held version for home protection.
Nice video
Those joules again...
ping
20 years ago the EMSL program was alive and well, started by a small splinter group of aerospace people. It was a ground based version of the space based KKV, an orbiting electric cannon. The objective was to shoot projectiles directly into LEO. As you may know, one pound in LEO, moving at 5 mps and 100 miles up, is worth all of 4 KWH of electrical energy vs $20,000/# on the shuttle.
The rail gun was one system that was considered but after 3-4 shots the rails have to be refurbished, thus making it an impractical EMSL(ElectroMagnetic Space Launch)concept. A far better concept was the quenched superconducting rings idea. Here you have the sabot/projectile at the base with a series of su-co rings pulling upward on it. Release and then precisely quench(turn off)each ring as it passes(with heating lasars). Accelerations in the 150,000g to 300,000g range, the basic “freight car” to space vs the shuttle’s delicate 3g “passenger car”.
In about 300 ft of length you get the required 5 mps injection velocity of the 10 kg projectile. Movie film chambers at the top to maintain internal vacuum, lithium pore nose in the projectile...this was all worked out 20 years ago but vested interests NASA killed it(competition from a better idea). EMSL could put 2 shuttle loads/day in LEO at a tiny fraction of what NASA charges YOU as an STS.
bump for later reading!
Surely the accelerations involved would limit the types of payloads that could be transported?
quick... someone tell me.. What was the name of that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie whose “bad guys” use this technology? Argh... can’t remember, must check internet......
Technical “niggles”. And I thought I’d heard it all over 3 decades of engineering.
The name ‘hypercannon’ is niftier than ‘electro-cannon.’
Niggles....I like their use of that term. :)
Pretty challenging to keep track of the back drop on those kind of shots
"Eraser"
64.0 Megajoules = 47,203,978 ft/lbs.
Think about it...
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