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?
(I'm not asking to be smarmy, I just can't think of one.)
Tank of frozen water. Lots of energy in space---make rocket fuel, or air to breath.
.............MOLY !!!!
The first payload would be WATER, cryogenically frozen of course because of the superconducting temperatures(90 deg K for HTS). Water for solar steam engines, drinking, bathing, hydroponics, solar flare shield, etc...water, the most useful thing in LEO. So the projectile would be a long stiletto with a lithium pore in the nose, 10 kg minimum, 8 deg min nose angle. Your basic frozen beer can if you will.
This whole EMSL concept/system was worked out by aerospace experts 20 years ago : min vs max projectile mass-range, injection angles(15 deg to 90 deg w/small rocket motors), the technical problems w/rail guns, homopolar generators, quenched suco cannon, etc, etc. Just one EMSL cannon would have put VAST amounts of mass into LEO for less than postage prices(40 cents/oz). Many, many technical papers were written on the subject, O’Neill at MIT was the pioneer of course.
But NASA saw EMSL as a direct threat to their MONEY supply, who wants $20,000/# rockets when EMSL gets it there(LEO)at less than 40 cents/oz? Once again, the love of MONEY is the root of all evil....
>2520 meters per second.<
1609.344 meters in a mile. 2520, Yup, that’s fast.
This was all very well designed by aerospace experts 20 years ago, they knew exactly how to do it; the cannon, the projectile, the power loads, elevation angles, mountain sites on the equator, etc, etc; only one thing stood in the way : NASA. Heck, there was even a sea launch tube concept, ever heard of Jarvis Island? As to high g accelerations, all the possible components were tested up to 300,000 g; only a clockwork mechanism failed, all others passed.
Now all the admirals have to do is figure out how to get the damn thing in range of a target before the ship gets creamed by a airborne or static missile.
These guys are still fighting the last big war (WWII) in their bathtubs. Give us a break.
You may be on to something...
I had to smile when I saw the picture. That’s exactly what I designed 20 years ago : a 1/2 mile diameter ring EMSL cannon. It was basically a bicycle wheel structure on an incline. Track was made of silver(best conductor and HTS metal for mag-lev). Outer rim was like a highway lane w/steel rebar. Hi density concrete between Ag track and rim. Short Q tail w/15 chambers separated by movie film(advance one frame after projectile punches thru, to maintain internal vacuum)for 1 psi differentials.
The projectile(10kg)had a flat diamond cross section(stiletto)and was basically a frozen beer can. 13.75 minutes at 1g acceleration to reach 5 mps injection velocity. Lithium pore or cast-in Li beads in the nose(3 seconds ablation heating at hypersonic speed). Several projectiles at once in the ring = machine gun burst.
I figured about 2 shuttle loads to LEO every day. Since 1# = 4 KW in LEO and with between 1% to 10% system efficiency, it would be about postage rates(40 cents/oz)to put mass into LEO. I had it all thought out 20 years ago(1988)but NASA wanted nothing to do with EMSL, it would have shown them up as bumbling oafs instead of ROCKET SCIENTISTS with their horribly inefficient chemical rockets.
So, Reagan’s plan of bankrupting the USSR by trying to keep up with star wars development funding WORKED, thus SDI funding all but disappeared, as did EMSL as a superior idea. Once again...vested interests....
Okay, but how long... 
for the beer to unfreeze?
Good question : how long from sling-a-thing to chug-a-lug?
damn!!!
Where can I get one?
Hummmmmmmm.... 
Let us see--
Sx+(Lxfb10)2 =( (sqrt(LSD3)+24)xS) -((sqrt(Sltz)-2))xT and--
That should come out to... 
a week from next Thursday around 7:31 PM CST if not a leap year and Sharpton and the Reverend are not around.
You’d make a good living as a stand-up comic...drunk or sober.
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