Originally posted by: DanTMWTMP
I worked with a bunch of others on a technology trade study for a DD-X ship that will employ a rail gun. The main cool thing about these ships is that it will deploy a true all-electric warship. Power systems will all be rerouted to various functions of the ship. As in that wiki article, it's called the IPS (integrated power system). Think of x-wing vs tie-fighter where you would balance power to guns, propulsion, and shields. The new DDX will employ the same system (except shields lol). The entire ship will be using liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductors to route power throughout the ship, and use advanced flywheel-based capacitors to provide instantaneous power to the main rail gun.
Originally posted by: MaxDepth
Hmmm...checking with Google maps...dammit! I'm within the 220 mile range of Dahlgren, Va.
Time to beef up my tin foil defense shield!
Originally posted by: Nyati13
Originally posted by: destrekor
Originally posted by: Queasy
Originally posted by: ConstipatedVigilante
"What the fuck was that?! No explosion; everything just flew apart! Hey, where's Ahkmed?!"
Over here. And over here. And over there. And a little over there. A little more over that way.
the pure bullet-style projectile is going to limit the effectiveness I'd say, but then again I have no clue how large these projectiles are. Can they be used to bring down hell on troops on a mountain side? At maybe a couple rounds per minute from a single cannon, is it going to be simply hitting individual people? Or aiming for the vehicle, the tank, the building, etc etc? I guess not knowing the projectile size limits my understanding of the usage of this gun system.
Originally posted by: Nyati13
Originally posted by: ConstipatedVigilante
Awesome. I can just imagine the look on the terrorists' faces:
"What the fuck was that?! No explosion; everything just flew apart! Hey, where's Ahkmed?!"
The shell launched will still need an explosive charge to do it's work on the other end. This just replaces the propellant on the firing end, and allows much greater range.
For an equal diameter shell, the terminal velocity would be the same as a normally fired shell.
regular-fired shells can reach Mach 8? and they clearly state "nonexplosive projectiles", and no danger of carrying explosive shells on board the ship.
Yeah, they can claim that all they like, but to get a 200 mile range the shell must travel in a ballistic arc, not line of sight, and to get it to come back down where they want it, it's going to end up moving at about the same impacting velocity as a regular shell. So they will end up needing explosive filler in order to get the job done.
For targets that are within line of sight, solid shells can be used just like tank guns today.
Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
i'd like to know whether the rail slugs contain any explosive charges or not. sure nailing a tank with a giant block of metal works well, but how well does it work for anti infantry fire support and area of effect?
Originally posted by: Nyati13
Originally posted by: ConstipatedVigilante
Awesome. I can just imagine the look on the terrorists' faces:
"What the fuck was that?! No explosion; everything just flew apart! Hey, where's Ahkmed?!"
The shell launched will still need an explosive charge to do it's work on the other end. This just replaces the propellant on the firing end, and allows much greater range.
For an equal diameter shell, the terminal velocity would be the same as a normally fired shell.
Originally posted by: adairusmc
Originally posted by: eaj0010
No BFG = Fail
We have had BFG's for a long time.
Originally posted by: Imaginer
This news is great! It also means that possibly in the hopefully near future this railgun concept can be applied to other things such as a space launch catapult mechanism. Or at least to help it alleviate the expenditures in rocket propellant.
Originally posted by: FoBoT
"More to the point, they're cool-sounding, just like lasers. "
maybe they can make a small one, to mount on sharks or bears
Originally posted by: Wag
This is like an episode of Justice League I saw where the villians built a operating rail gun mounted on a satellite in orbit and started launching metors at the Earth.
Originally posted by: Jahee
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction".
What do you think will happen when you accelerate a projectile to Mach 7 in the length of the barrel..?
Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
i'd like to know whether the rail slugs contain any explosive charges or not. sure nailing a tank with a giant block of metal works well, but how well does it work for anti infantry fire support and area of effect?