Navy Experimental Rail Gun to Fire GPS-Guided Projectiles - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Glitch360;37072013]"Calculating....calculating..."[/QUOTE] "Now please turn to left." And it never hit the target.

[QUOTE=Chernarus;37064339]I like how everyone is all anti-funding US military in political threads then once someone shows a image of some big ass gun everyone is suddenly far right pro-military spending.[/QUOTE] Because its fucking awesome.

[QUOTE=SpasticPinoy;37064431]I think when people on here are against military funding they're against the money going to the "War on Terror" where they praise this sort of military funding as it can lead to breakthroughs in science once it's perfected. Also this shit contains science. Facepunch gets a hard on for science.[/QUOTE] Also, isn't the military spending something like hundreds of billions a year ? $240 millions over seven years isn't bad at all, there's way worse R&D made by the military in terms of throwing shitloads of money at absolutely nothing.

Uhm... <stupid> can someone link me to a projectile based weapon (/download)??

the soviets have been using guided shells since the 1970s also the US have guided shells for conventional artillery

[QUOTE=trotskygrad;38844727]the soviets have been using guided shells since the 1970s also the US have guided shells for conventional artillery[/QUOTE]Yes, for [I]conventional[/I] artillery. It's a little different when the projectile is hypersonic.

[QUOTE=luavirusfree;38844653]Uhm... <stupid> can someone link me to a projectile based weapon (/download)??[/QUOTE] You bumped this asking for something completely unrelated?

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;38844760]Yes, for [I]conventional[/I] artillery. It's a little different when the projectile is hypersonic.[/QUOTE] only a little different... the doppler shift effect of hypersonic speeds only changes the MHz of a GPS signal by 0.02 MHz. We already possess the technology to guide objects flying at much higher than hypersonic speeds, ICBMs go roughly mach 23.

This is the weapon that, firing level with the ground at a couple inch thick steel plate, sent the projectile through the plate, and then a further 7km before it touched the ground. Right? That is fast as Fuuuuuuuuuck

pew pew pew

[QUOTE=Fueger;37063244]Sir Isaac Newton is one deadly son of a bitch...[/QUOTE] Baddest motherfucker in space and on the high seas.

-snip, don't ban me please-

[QUOTE=Article] Electromagnetic rail guns use powerful magnets lined up in series along the length of a cannon to accelerate projectiles to thousands of miles per hour in an extremely short span, giving them ranges in the hundreds of miles. Next to the Navy’s current capabilities--officers claim the newest surface gun systems, which aren’t even online yet, will be able to reach targets up to 72 miles away--that’s a vast improvement. But thus far, the Navy’s rail gun program has cost $240 million over seven years, and the technology is still very much restricted to the lab.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure that's a coilgun.

[QUOTE=Fueger;37063244]Sir Isaac Newton is one deadly son of a bitch...[/QUOTE] No props to Maxwell/Ampere? :( (Maxwell even killed himself because no one accepted his theories :( )

[QUOTE=Number-41;38845743]No props to Maxwell/Ampere? :( (Maxwell even killed himself because no one accepted his theories :( )[/QUOTE] It's a line from Mass Effect. They were talking about how incredible kinetic weapons were on their spaceships.

Next in line for a system like this, should be finding out how to prevent the rails from melting, and to increase the power further, probably through using ultracapacitors or similar, to dump even more power into the rails, and maybe they'd get to near orbital velocities with it.

Used to work with guys from BAE at Pearl Harbor. You can be assured if this is still moving forward won't see it in use for another ten years at least. They are still using vertical launch systems that were built in the late 70s.

[QUOTE=luavirusfree;38844653]Uhm... <stupid> can someone link me to a projectile based weapon (/download)??[/QUOTE] did you really just bump this 4 month old thread for some stupid fucking unrelated comment? [editline]16th December 2012[/editline] the hell is wrong with you

[img]http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/navy-railgun.jpeg[/img] Wow, that looks futuristic as fuck.

[QUOTE=janky;38857796][img]http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/navy-railgun.jpeg[/img] Wow, that looks futuristic as fuck.[/QUOTE] It looks like something you might expect to see in an industrial workshop. Looks pretty standard to me.

Hopefully it's not fired using Apple Maps' GPS.

I really can't see why people suddenly make articles of this. I made a report on this one year ago, and this stuff is just lying there on different webpages already. The railgun is based on a linear motor, after a German scientist took the idea into theoretical use during World War Two. They worked up on the theoretical stuff, but it was too late into the war. When US scientists studied it, they found out that one gun, that would replace a normal Flak anti-air gun (Flak 38, if I remember correctly), would need as much power as it took to illuminate Chicago. The way it works, is that when the projectile is inserted, you send the power trough the rail, over the projectile/the part holding the projectile, and down the other rail. This creates a great magnetic field on the rails, pushing the projectile down the rails. When the projectile is shot out, no device is guiding it. It first goes up high in the atmosphere, so high that there's almost no resistance in the air. The projectile falls down, and gets guided on the way. There are no explosives in this weapon, it's only the brute force of the Kinetic Energy that destroys the targets. Illustration: [img]http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_Rail_Gun_Slide_pic.jpg[/img] The part about having it on ships isn't really hard. They can stop the ship, direct most/all power to the railgun, and fire it. The engines mostly use about 70% of the ships power, so it would just be to shut them off to fire the gun. Everyone who says the description is of a coilgun: That's also wrong. Coils aren't magnets. They said "magnets" It's electromagnets in both, but this one is built with rails, while the coilgun is built with coils. The railguns can also be used to launch canisters with supplies out into space too, but the rails will have to be a couple of kilometers long. And when the article says about 72 miles, the real range is of 230 miles (200 Neutical miles)

[QUOTE=Chernarus;37064339]I like how everyone is all anti-funding US military in political threads then once someone shows a image of some big ass gun everyone is suddenly far right pro-military spending.[/QUOTE]Railguns can have other applications in the future within cargo transportation, more commonly known as a mass driver. Better power sources and all that jazz is within everyone's interests. [editline]17th December 2012[/editline] I suppose you could use a railgun to help launch a rocket up to speed so it can be lighter and not have to carry so much fuel. Replace the start boosters on a shuttle etc.

[QUOTE=Lizzrd;38863080]Railguns can have other applications in the future within cargo transportation, more commonly known as a mass driver. Better power sources and all that jazz is within everyone's interests. [editline]17th December 2012[/editline] I suppose you could use a railgun to help launch a rocket up to speed so it can be lighter and not have to carry so much fuel. Replace the start boosters on a shuttle etc.[/QUOTE] They can be used to launch spacecrafts, but not with humans. Currently it would only be for sending supplies of different sorts into space. It needs some really long rails, and the power would have to be supplied at several locations.

Yes, but if it can be adapted for military purposes power source wise and so on wouldn't a space faring one be more realistic.

[QUOTE=Lizzrd;38863278]Yes, but if it can be adapted for military purposes power source wise and so on wouldn't a space faring one be more realistic.[/QUOTE] Not really. It's much more technology that is needed for these. The normal railguns still needs a way to be cooled down, as the frictional force makes so much thermal energy that both the rails and the projectile can expand, increasing it even more. When it comes to the space launchers, if you can call it that, you will need much larger and longer rails. Because of that, they need much more power, and they need to distribute it evenly so that the railgun will function all the way down the rails. To make it possible for human transportation, they would first need to get a big enough speed, so that they won't die of the acceleration. That is the main problem if the other things are already done.

[QUOTE=Atlascore;38845452]So since this was bumped.. anyone have an update on this, is it still being worked on?[/QUOTE] Of course it is. Do you honestly think the US navy with its love of oversized aircraft carriers an lasers would even consider taking it offline, no matter what the Congressional budget says?