New World Record with Electromagnetic Railgun

[Pilgor]

a bit off topic but here is what I was referring too Project Babylon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[HIMNL9]

The old "babylon" project can be considered dangerous only as "mass driver" cannon (or "kinetic cannon", if you prefer the old denomination) ..... if, for any luck, you can shoot a similar mass in the higher orbit, and if you can place on the mass some active system for guide it in the reenter orbit, then you can have some decent terminal effect (try to calculate the energy released from a mass of iron large 1 meter that hit the ground coming from the orbit in free-fall speed from 36000 Km, or also better, accelerated from the control rockets, guided on a specific target, if you don't trust this :umbrella: ..... )

 

[Pilgor]

2.54571429 ×10 to the 11th newtons if projectile is 1mX3m
Is all wrong
I more then likely made stupid mistakes

I did make a mistake but do not feel like correcting right now, instead of punching in 36000000m I punched in 36000km.

 

[HIMNL9]

I know, i know, it's not easy, sorry ..... you need initial speed, distance, air resistance coefficent, aerodynamic coefficent of the object, gravitational attraction curve from orbit to ground, and so on ..... let make it more easy, taking off all the extras (it's called "spannometric calculation", like, when you say "it's 100 meters, more or less some meters" ), you can consider a terminal converted energy as approximatively 0,8 Kilotons (the equivalent of energy released from 800 tons of TNT exploding all together) ..... not in megaton range, but enough for blow up a discrete part of a city, with almost the same effect of a portable atomic bomb, but with almost no radiations

 

[Pilgor]

I was doing psychics land calculations. Just the basics, MGH, etc, doing all the real world calculations would be insane. Lots of energy and if Saddam actually complete a functioning version it would be scary.

 

[HIMNL9]

Well, it's already scary, if you think about it ..... we already have "working" space expeditions, and it's easy enough to get a small iron-nickel asteroid (or an old broken satellite), place some guidance rockets on it with a small computer, and make the needed calculation for alter the orbital coourse, in the way that it drop on a discretely precise place of the earth surface ..... and without left any track, too

 

[pullbangdead]

BTW, does they say how much hours are needed for recharge the cap bank, between two shots ? .....

In another article, it says that in the next 15 years they hope to double the power and increase the rate to 6 to 10 shots per minute.

Lets put that into scale...33 megajoules now, 66 megajoules then...6 times a minute is every 10 seconds...that's 6.6megajoules per second, aka 6.6 megawatts. So a MINIMUM constant 6.6 megawatts of electricity generation to fire that that thing every 10 seconds.

 

[Flaminpyro]

6.6 megawatts, where's that big laser diode I want to hook it up to that power supply for one big blast :crackup:

 

[millirad]

Incredibly spendy to generate that much power(6.6 megawatts/second) to thrust a projectile. I'm wondering what the cost increase would be over the old fashioned propellant driven projectile.

 

[pullbangdead]

Incredibly spendy to generate that much power(6.6 megawatts/second) to thrust a projectile. I'm wondering what the cost increase would be over the old fashioned propellant driven projectile.

Considering a railgun projectile travels an order of magnitude farther than currently possibly with a cannon, such a comparison is difficult (modern cannons fire tens of miles, they're talking about a 200+ mile range with this thing)

The better comparison is comparing railguns to cruise missiles, which are hella expensive. And even then, the railgun has advantages over the cruise missile, like time-to-target since cruise missiles often travel at subsonic speeds.

Also, it's just megawatts, which is equivalent to megajoules/second. I'm sure it was a simple slip, but just making sure we have our units straight.

 

[Razako]

Awesomeness. Instant death out of nowhere without a trace from hundreds of miles away. These weapons have incredible military potential.

 

[HIMNL9]

Uhm, if i recall correctly, also one of the "ballistic" missiles had a similar working principle, ..... travelling to the top of the atmosphere, then invert the path, point the target and accelerate at full speed til the impact ..... hard to detect and stop, with a similar incoming speed .

Also, i've seen a GPS guided artillery bullet that use the vertical "free-fall" principle (i think the first ones was called "excalibur" and built from Raytheon, but not 100% sure) ..... it's shooted at the highest possible quote in direction of the target, then when is at the top of the curve, it extend small wings and "glide" til over the target guided from the GPS, then drop the path and fall down in vertical ..... first ones had around 50Km shoot range with 20 meters precision, but i'm sure they improved them, in the meantime (well, if none used windows as operative system for the guidance unit, at least ..... "blue screen of DEATH", literally )

 

[millirad]

Ah yes, you are correct not megawatts/second it's megajoules/second which becomes the megawatt. I see what you are saying about out-distancing the standard cannon fodder. Cannons don't generally launch projectiles 200+ miles. And then there's that speed issue that makes the rail-gun the winner.

Considering a railgun projectile travels an order of magnitude farther than currently possibly with a cannon, such a comparison is difficult (modern cannons fire tens of miles, they're talking about a 200+ mile range with this thing)

The better comparison is comparing railguns to cruise missiles, which are hella expensive. And even then, the railgun has advantages over the cruise missile, like time-to-target since cruise missiles often travel at subsonic speeds.

Also, it's just megawatts, which is equivalent to megajoules/second. I'm sure it was a simple slip, but just making sure we have our units straight.

 

[Blord]

In the movie Clear and Present Danger you see an example of a laser-guided airial bomb. The CIA just dropped a bomb from very high altitude. And it was guided by a laserdot on the ground. Just point the dot and the bomb will hit it. Silent and deadly assault.

Also, i've seen a GPS guided artillery bullet that use the vertical "free-fall" principle (i think the first ones was called "excalibur" and built from Raytheon, but not 100% sure) ..... it's shooted at the highest possible quote in direction of the target, then when is at the top of the curve, it extend small wings and "glide" til over the target guided from the GPS, then drop the path and fall down in vertical ..... first ones had around 50Km shoot range with 20 meters precision, but i'm sure they improved them, in the meantime (well, if none used windows as operative system for the guidance unit, at least ..... "blue screen of DEATH", literally )