Laser Guns or Rail Gun

Who has ever seen a rail gun before???

My uncle is russian and works at a military base in sibereia. they have built a large railgun and are now miniturizing it.

rail guns dony have recoil. thats an advantage if one is mounted on a tank.

[Edited on 27-4-2004 by DJDOHBOY]

You guys want railgun facts: My best friend helped build one- 1 meter long - for his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Auburn University in 2002.

for a 1 meter gun, this thing ate upwards of...15,000 volts DC. to reach that much voltage, his class had to use 4 capacitors the size of a milk crate.

It fired a slug of .5"x .5" titanium stock just over 1" long at over 2 miles per second. it had an aluminum foil on the back of the slug for the rails to launch it with, which was vaporized as a 4 foot plasma blast when it fired.

the gun ALSO had to be bolted down in 16 places to a table. It STILL tried to push the table into the corner where it was placed.

now if you think you can build one using a car battery, I'll be sure to pass it along. I'm sure that would qualify for a nobel prize for science, like cold fusion.

I think on a large scale, for a tank, battleship, long range artilery, a rail gun would be excellent. I think the power for a tank could be one of those small reactor things I've read about. A battleship has plenty of power. Artilery could have a large portable generator.

Laser could turn out to be excellent in close combat arms, special forces, ect. With the move to incompacitate instead of destroy your foe, a laser could be used to slectivly take off limbs while carterizing the wound at the same time. I'm not sure if the power needed to peirce armor could be moved, nor that we have a laser like that in Real Genius, then again I'm a oblvious so who knows.

Either way, a neat walking tank with both would kick. Like in Metal Gear or something.

-The Big O

Originally posted by SARTek
You guys want railgun facts: My best friend helped build one- 1 meter long - for his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Auburn University in 2002.

for a 1 meter gun, this thing ate upwards of...15,000 volts DC. to reach that much voltage, his class had to use 4 capacitors the size of a milk crate.

It fired a slug of .5"x .5" titanium stock just over 1" long at over 2 miles per second. it had an aluminum foil on the back of the slug for the rails to launch it with, which was vaporized as a 4 foot plasma blast when it fired.

the gun ALSO had to be bolted down in 16 places to a table. It STILL tried to push the table into the corner where it was placed.

now if you think you can build one using a car battery, I'll be sure to pass it along. I'm sure that would qualify for a nobel prize for science, like cold fusion.

mate im planning on sending it at like 1 km a sec not fking 2 miles per sec how the fk did u get it to do that!
anyway it really depends on the metal on how conductive it is
also check out that powerlabs site! full of stuff scary stuff likes

[Edited on 12-5-2004 by devilwasp]

Both are of equal and vital use to a superb advanced and well equiped army.

A rail gun(a giant one at that) can be defended by mobil infantry armed with lasers, a Rail Gun cannot fire repeditly at an enemy, that would be physically impossible.

Shattered OUT...

Originally posted by Vanguard
rail gun artilery?? imagine the trajectory on something travelling 6km per second - range 3500 km - considering earth escape velocity is maybe 11km/s it will be just unfeasable - its basically a line of sight weapon.

For standard artillery, as in gun and howitzer style, the round does not leave the atmosphere. Therefore escape velocity would not be at all necessary. Only with ballistic missiles do you shoot them above escape velocity, as they go into space, where if the SDI had been built, it would have destroyed them (just by coincidence, with lasers)

A rail gun(a giant one at that) can be defended by mobil infantry armed with lasers, a Rail Gun cannot fire repeditly at an enemy, that would be physically impossible.

Shattered OUT...
why cant rail guns fire repedity as long as it has ammo and electircity it should still fire

Neither has a particularily useful role in current military structure, the rail gun is an excellent long range line of sight weapon, but we have no places for that in our armies, airforce or even navy. Most combat that has the power capabilities to support such a weapon happens beyond visual range therefor your naval rail gun or laser would have to shoot through the water. I could see the rail gun as the first weapons system in orbit though, near instant hit with a powerful weapon so long as it has ammo, and the ammo will be much smaller then conventional weapons due to the lack of combustibles to get it going.

Originally posted by Amur_Tiger
Neither has a particularily useful role in current military structure, the rail gun is an excellent long range line of sight weapon, but we have no places for that in our armies, airforce or even navy.

huh? why u say that a rail gun would be an excellnt defense weapon place it on/in a mountain and u have a great artiller piece

i can understand ur navy and airforce bit but the army bit?
ha ha imagine the recoil if it was on a 747
a sub marine would be handy having it no countermesures against that!

It fired a slug of .5"x .5" titanium stock just over 1" long at over 2 miles per second. it had an aluminum foil on the back of the slug for the rails to launch it with, which was vaporized as a 4 foot plasma blast when it fired.

i would love to see your plans, any videos/documentation you have. the fastest one ever was 4 km/sec and that one was 30 feet long and built by the government for the star wars project. forgive me if i don't beleive you slug went 2mi/sec. were you wearing eraplugs becuase the sonic boom must have been pretty loud....

[Edited on 5/13/04 by NothingMakesSense]

Originally posted by NothingMakesSense

It fired a slug of .5"x .5" titanium stock just over 1" long at over 2 miles per second. it had an aluminum foil on the back of the slug for the rails to launch it with, which was vaporized as a 4 foot plasma blast when it fired.

i would love to see your plans, any videos/documentation you have. the fastest one ever was 4 km/sec and that one was 30 feet long and built by the government for the star wars project. forgive me if i don't beleive you slug went 2mi/sec. were you wearing eraplugs becuase the sonic boom must have been pretty loud....

[Edited on 5/13/04 by NothingMakesSense]

what are u on about the largest was 30 m ?

Top rail gun designs currently can launch a 2kg projectile with a muzzle velocity of close to 4km/s on roughly 6 meter rails. To reach this kind of velocity, the power source must provide roughly 6.5 million Amps

look about my last post i had a whole paragraph above that and it got erased. here is the location of the 10 meter rail gun i mentioned. www.rit.edu...

Do you guys mind if a "girl" chimes into the conversation?

Admittedly I am no expert on rail guns but I do know just a little about laser applications in the battlefield.

Originally posted by longbow
Lasers cannot go through the clouds and smoke so they are not especially big deal except shooting down enemy misiles. They can be also used against the soft target but there is nothing that laser can do and 20 mm gatling cannot.

Regarding lasers not being able to go through clouds and smoke on the battlefield...

The chemical lasers currently being developed by Northrop-Grumman and Raytheon for battlefield use are COIL & CO2 infrared short-pulse lasers that emit an amplified energy on the far-infrared spectrum, in the 8-14 micron range. Because of this wavelength the energy of these lasers is only minimally diminished in certain vapors (fogs) and smoke generated by hydrocarbon fuel.

In other words if you hide behind the smoke of an oil fire and think you're safe from a megawatt CO2 laser you will likely become nothing more than a wisp of vapor very quickly.

Obscurants that are most effective in blocking battlefield lasers are dust (thick clouds of dust) and smoke produced by white and red phosphorous.

Obscurants that are mildly effective at thwarting the energy of a high power laser are water vapor clouds and fog. Again, don't think you have it made hiding in a fog bank when there is a megawatt laser a few kilometers away as you will get cooked like a holiday turkey.

Can a laser be used for more than shooting down enemy missiles and artillery rounds?
Definitely!
a 4,000 watt CO2 pulse laser can cut through a 12 inch block of steel in a little over 60 seconds.
What would a laser in the megawatt (1 million watts) range do?
What could a 4-10 million watt laser do to an M-1 Abrams or even a T-90 tank?
The phrase "hot knife through butter" comes to mind...

I said all that just to give you something to consider - the actual application of these lasers are for the foreseeable future defense against missiles and artillery rounds.

Also regarding Longbow's gatling gun comment..."there is nothing that laser can do and 20 mm gatling cannot." ...
I don't see any gatling guns with a 300+ mile range of effectiveness...







[Edited on 13-5-2004 by intelgurl]

i heard about the plasma bit behind it ma mate talks about it all the time
just wonderin what would plasma look like
its not the first 3 states of matter but the 4th so what is it?

Originally posted by devilwasp
i heard about the plasma bit behind it ma mate talks about it all the time
just wonderin what would plasma look like
its not the first 3 states of matter but the 4th so what is it?

Short answer:
Plasma will look like a neon or flourescent glow.

Long Answer (but not the longest answer):
Plasma is an ionized gas and one of the phenomena associated with plasma is that it emits light. It can look like fire or the glow inside a flourescent or neon light. The color of the light generated by the plasma is dependent on the amount of energy expended by the electrons joining the ions. A little energy will give off a red glow and a high amount of energy will give off a blue glow - the entire color spectrum can be represented in between...

nice posts
but i thought that it was the 4th state of matter if that is so then how can it be a gas?
i mean it aint a solid
aint a liquid
aint a gas
so what is it?

Originally posted by devilwasp
nice posts
but i thought that it was the 4th state of matter if that is so then how can it be a gas?
i mean it aint a solid
aint a liquid
aint a gas
so what is it?

It is most like a gas that has fluid cohesive-like interactions to it's surroundings. It's generally ionized atoms of an element found in a gaseous state...

I was only attempting to express it in layman's terms, I could get technical but then I would spend 10 minutes writing something it would take you 45 seconds to find somewhere on the internet....

I must say intelgurl, it's nice to see you chime in on little ol' muzz's thread, I have a lot of respect for you and your research. Now on to my question, have you ever seen plasma and is the depiction of it in space shuttle re-entry films accurate, that it look like water that is floating around? -Muzz

Originally posted by muzz
I must say intelgurl, it's nice to see you chime in on little ol' muzz's thread, I have a lot of respect for you and your research. Now on to my question, have you ever seen plasma and is the depiction of it in space shuttle re-entry films accurate, that it look like water that is floating around? -Muzz

Yes I have seen plasma but not as a liquid floating around... more like fire and sparks or an aural glow...



[Edited on 14-5-2004 by intelgurl]

thanks for clearing that up for me intergul
i think i will research this it sounds very intreging