Future weapons: Rail gun

Ah..Jon..it was a cover story to tell the yobs something, instead of the fact the Yanks were using VT fuses.

Gunner

"Deep in her heart, every moslem woman yearns to show us her t*ts" John Griffin

Wilber and Oville's airplane could only fly 500 some feet.

Now look at airplanes....

"Deep in her heart, every moslem woman yearns to show us her t*ts" John Griffin

Years ago, during my very short experiment in law enforcement..the new Bullet Proof Vests were being hyped by various manufactures. The Blankenship guy came out, set up some panels hanging from a target cable and any all all comers were invited to shoot them up with their personal weapons. I suggested he do a better "real world" demo by draping them over 55 gallon drums..which he really didnt want to do..but when some other cops got hinky..he did so. Some really impressive dents in the drums. He almost cried when I went out to the truck, got my Oneida Eagle compound bow and some good old fashion Bear Razorheads and pinned the vest panels to the drums. Mostly the only thing showng was some feathers and the nocks...

Gunner

"Deep in her heart, every moslem woman yearns to show us her t*ts" John Griffin

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:46:46 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner quickly quoth:

Yeah, just _think_ how fast that rail gun will cycle 104 years from now!

--- -If thy poster offends thee, *PLONK* it out.-

No, it was obvious this was the proximity fuze, otherwise they'd fire 100+ rounds to get one good hit. My tongue-in-cheek style of writing may not make it clear, I did get the point.

Jon

I guess t'was I that "didn't get it"!

Years ago I thought about making a doppler radar (like a police speed gun) to detect incoming ducks while concealed in a blind, but I never did anything with it.

I have a vision of the ducks deploying.... duck decoys.

Please do. He was an interesting guy, though I don't think I'd want him for a neighbor.

Ned Simmons

Gunner

"Deep in her heart, every moslem woman yearns to show us her t*ts" John Griffin

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:31:14 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner quickly quoth:

The exposed cockpits leave a bit to be desired for cross-country travel. Propulsion was the greatest improvement there.

But the Lewis guns in WWI planes were a real tech jump. Didja see Tom Selleck (and Bess Armstrong, hubba hubba) in High Road to China? Fun flick.

True enough..but the interval between the Wright Flyer, with a range of some quarter mile and a Spad, was only 12 yrs.

Once the technology is proven feasable...improvements always come fast and furious.

Gunner

"Deep in her heart, every moslem woman yearns to show us her t*ts" John Griffin

It's nothing new. The railsgun have been tested for a rather long time.. The most serious problem is that the rails are damaged after not-so-many shots so much that they need to be replaced. Perhaps modern materials will solve this.

One interesting property is that it is possible to fire NONconductive projectiles, like ceramics, as the arc between rails will "push" the projectile in front of it as it travels along the rails..

The powersupplys for these guns used to be large capasitor banks but they are too slow for high-firing-rate designs, and rather bulky/heavy. The modern designs use, for example, rotating supplys which dump the rotational energy of rotor to electrical energy - compulsators. The firing rate is rather high with these.

There are lots of hybrid-designs with firing of the projectile to space between rails with chemical propellant or pressurized gas, for lots of speed before the acceleration in the railgun part, and feeding combustible gas to between rails for extra push by (burn) pressure rise. The latter becomes rather like improvised powder propelled gun, only the energy comes from both chemical source (especially at beginning, before projectile reaches rails it IS like a normal cannon) and electrical source (especially at end of acceleration).

One nice source for information is IEEE Transactions on magnetics. Lots of railgun and other magnetic acceleration research there.

IMHO Railguns will never replace chemical energy based weapons.

Kristian Ukkonen.

The fastest land speed, according to Wikipedia, was achieved by a rocket sled riding on rails. The rails and rocket are enclosed in a very long tube made of light, clear plastic. This tube is inflated with helium. The sled reached the fantastic speed of 6,462 mph. I wonder just how much faster a hybrid rocket sled could go. ERS

Okay, so I'm late and catching up, but Gunner wrote on Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:35:30 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking :

The "easy ones" come quickly. There comes a point of maturity, when the easy improvements are done, and from there on in, it's tweaks for minor percentage improvements. Steam is one example, machine guns are another (ob metal working). Same goes with Internal combustion Engines. Although I recall reading of a serious improvement in IC efficiency resulting from simply grooving the cylinder head around the spark plug. "But that's too simple" seems to be the response, and of course "Not Invented Here."

tschus pyotr

--FWIW I spent a looong time trying to find out how compulsators worked but nobody seemed to know boo, other than that they had a monster flywheel ran really fast and came to a screeching halt when the gun is fired. Maybe there's more info now that the web exists?