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USN New Railgun
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 2:06 am
by dales
The Navy has been working on perfecting the nonconventional railgun for more than a decade now. These guns fire non-explosive projectiles through the use of electricity rather than chemical propellants—but what makes them so deadly is how damn fast the projectiles travel after being shot.
How fast, you ask? We’re talking about speeds of up to Mach 6, or around 4,600 mph, according to the Office of Naval Research.
As our friends at Popular Mechanics point out, the railgun was supposed to be tested at sea on the USNS Trenton this year, but that’s been delayed. The futuristic USS Zumwalt, which supposedly is capable of accommodating a gun that powerful, has been having problems of its own with its fancy-pants gun system and outrageously expensive ammunition.
Each Round For The USS Zumwalt Costs $800,000 And The Navy Won't Buy Them
The railgun has been heralded as the future of the Navy’s ship-destroying capabilities, but it comes with tremendous downsides as well. Besides its gargantuan size, there’s also the fact that it could require as much as 25 megawatts of power—which could power almost 19,000 homes—to operate, hence why it has to be on a destroyer in the first place.
That could get better over time, but the railgun’s sheer power, range and the fact that it does not require explosives aboard a ship to use make it apparently worth the Navy investing in.
USN New Railgun
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 2:21 am
by RayThom
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:47 am
by MajGenl.Meade
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 1:59 pm
by Burning Petard
Tell me more about that rail gun. Have they managed to repeal Newton's 3rd Law? Controlling the recoil must be a massive engineering project. Way back when I was introduced to the M1 Garand rifle in basic training, we were carefully informed about equal and opposite. The force coming out the end of the barrel was equal to the force coming back at the shooter. The correct answer was to hold the rifle so that the force moving the rifle back at the shooter had to treat rifle butt and shooter as all one heavy object. More mass meant the same force would be moving much more slowly.
But force adds up according to the square of the velocity so the projectile is moving really fast and it is really big so it will be trying to push that rail gun right through the bottom of the boat.
snailgate
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 4:53 pm
by Crackpot
Do you know the principles a rail gun works on?
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 8:53 pm
by Burning Petard
Well, I certainly do not know the principal that says you can push really big projectiles really fast with no equal force in the other direction.
snailgate.
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 9:03 pm
by Crackpot
Baically works withpercicly timed magnetic bursts along the barrel. In stead of one big push speed is acieved with a bunch of little pushes.
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:21 pm
by MajGenl.Meade
Instead of one big push, speed is achieved with a bunch of little pushes
Oh, like Big Birther?
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 4:34 pm
by Bicycle Bill
MajGenl.Meade wrote:Instead of one big push, speed is achieved with a bunch of little pushes
Oh, like Big Birther?
Well, yeah ... kinda.
A woman doesn't squirt out a 8-pound kid in one direction and propel herself into the labor-room wall in the other.
-"BB"-
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:03 pm
by datsunaholic
The railgun projectiles only weigh 23 lbs. They're accelerated along the rail, rather than "fired" by an explosive charge. Even a full-broadside of 16-inch guns (9 guns) fired from an Iowa-class battleship didn't make the ship move sideways noticeably, and that was 18,000 lbs of ordinance.
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 8:19 pm
by oldr_n_wsr
Why the big flash if there is no burning propellant?
Re: USN New Railgun
Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 11:29 pm
by MGMcAnick
I think the propulsion of the "rail" gun can be likened to that of a mag-lev train. The projectile is pushed and/or pulled along the barrel by electro-magnetic force rather than by an explosion of gun powder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev
USN New Railgun
Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:40 am
by RayThom
MGMcAnick wrote:I think the propulsion of the "rail" gun can be likened to that of a mag-lev train.
A cutaway diagram
