[NeoHunter]

Sorry about my ignorance but how does a railgun actually work anyway? I know you can shoot something so fast that it leaves behind a spiral trail of the bullet. But is that much energy needed?

[Turnsky]

it uses electromagnets to drive a projectile at extremely high velocity... sorta how a maglev train works... the problem is with rail guns that thier powersource would be too big to be really effective on the battlefield.

[NeoHunter]

So what you're saying is that the projectile is actually being floated out of the barrel at very high velocities? Reduce friction with the inside surfaces of the barrel?

[Stryke 9]

Er... no. That's a coil gun, aka gauss gun, aka electromagnetic catapult- a series accelerator that is quite efficient and could make a very effective weapon. A railgun uses a single piece of conductive metal to... ****, I'll just get the diagram.

[SKYNET-011]

Sweet:yes:

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Lasers fine, it's reasonably likely that you could at some point get a laser in the hundreds of terawatts without blowing it out with an overcharge, but railguns are such a crappy design for a weapon that it's pretty much guaranteed that as a weapon they'll do more damage to whoever was shooting it than the target.

I mean, ****, the very design calls for running enough energy through the barrel to melt steel... and that's for a small one.

I'll try and dig up the articles where I read about these things being mounted on ships.  From what I could tell...the technology in 25-30 years will be sufficient.

[Mr Carrot]

They have already mounted it on a ship..... a very large ship which weighs a lot..... they put it on one of the decommisioned Iowa test bed battleship jobbies, according to Janes it was test fired several times in the 80s but they dont give any details about the effectiveness of the weapon.

[Stryke 9]

Icefire: You see that little part of the accelerator marked "plasma"? Yeah. That used to be a piece of solid metal, then it got fired. It's still in direct contact with a lot of the same sort of metal.

You work it out.