what is a magnetic acceleration cannon ???

hi there, can anyone explain what a "magnetic acceleration cannon " is?

does it exist?

in what way does this have anything to do with space travel?

i read a short line about this somewhere but could not find any good info on it?

does anyone know much about it?

cheers, G

Soudns like you're talking about a Railgun?

My guess would be, as the projectile is being ejected from the cannon, powerful magnets are ran up along the sides and magnetically attract the projectile to further increase speed and momentum.

Thats my assumption any way.

It was designed as a weapon, and is now being considered as a way to launch payloads into orbit without the massive chemical rockets currently used. Here is some information:

Rail Gun Description:
en.wikipedia.org...

Weapon delivered to Navy:
www.military.com...

A Rail gun depending on its length and power of EMagnets can (theoretically) push a object to 99.999...999% of the speed of light. the brilliant thing about it is anything that is effected by magnets can be used, be it nails or Rails (hence the term btw) hell you could shove a tennis ball with a tiny little piece of iron there and launch it so fast the ball would catch fire and melt at the same time (unless it was fired in a vaccum)

I seen where the next generation air craft carriers will use Electromagnetic catapult launcher for aircraft.

www.defensetech.org...

future weapons segment on the rail gun:

thanks for the info people. awesome stuff!! wow... what a cool toy!!!

reply to post by grantbeed


Using a magnetic field powered by electricity, a rail gun can accelerate a projectile up to 52,493 feet (16,000 meters) per second. And while current Navy guns have a maximum range of 12 miles, rail guns can hit a target 250 miles away in six minutes.

A MAC is the only weapon powerful enough to deplete the Covenant's shield for a follow up round by another MAC to breach the hull. W/out timely use of the MAC entire fleets of the UNSC would be destroyed. Luckily we don't have to worry about that anymore since Sep 25, 2007.

[edit on 31-3-2009 by Protostellar]

[edit on 31-3-2009 by Protostellar]

reply to post by johnstnpilot


It all suddenly makes perfect sense now, thanks!

Originally posted by johnstnpilot

The UCD guy was the fake jail guy , he tried to jail me for using marijuana for a disability I had a license legal to posses and carry marijuana fer . Now because UCD sells jars of canadian stolen marijuana we can no longer produce the plant.

I think that was the key paragraph in whatever you just said.

until time the elf is the boss of canada planet and terra aka your enemy solar , who is laughing now ?

That line was good too, though.

A magnetic accelerator cannon is, quite obviously, and sort of device that accelerates a slug using magnetism.

There are, of course, quite a few methods of doing this, and all are, as far as I know, hideously inefficient.

There are solenoid guns or coilguns, sometimes called "gauss rifles", which involve one or more coils of wire used as an electromagnet to pull a ferromagnetic slug through a barrel. This takes very accurate timing to get any real power out, especially with multiple coils.

A variation on this is the induction coilgun. It uses non-ferromagnetic slugs, sometimes ring-shaped, as projectiles. This variant induces a current in the slug, and repels the induced magnetic field, pushing the slug through the barrel, instead of pulling it.

Coilguns do not scale up easily. imparting a force on the projectile imparts a force on the coils, and it's hard to make a coil tough compared to a regular cannon barrel.


Then there are the ever popular railguns, which use the lorentz force to accelerate projectiles. These are generally easier to build than large coilguns, and don't require fancy timing electronics, just huge quantites of electrical power. At high powers, the contact between the projectile and the rails causes problems. If the projectile moves too slowly, it can become welded to the rails, and even it moves quickly enough, the rails can be eroded. The rails themselves are subjected to a great deal of force and have to be built very tough.

There are also silly things that fit the criteria, like using a constrained pair of permanent magnets end to end as a way of storing potential energy, and then letting them go.