Laser Guns or Rail Gun

NothingMakesSense:

here's the documentation on the railgun from Auburn University: www.eng.auburn.edu...

The project page was not updated after February of 2002, but 2mi/sec was passed in March.

an Optical chronograph was used for determining the speed.

also, someone had mentioned building one that only went a little over 1km/sec.. you might as well fire a gun then. NATO 5.56 ammo has a muzzle velocity of ~2560 FPS, or about a half mile/sec.

The rule of thumb is that the more power you pour into a railgun, teh igher your velocity, the bigger teh gun, the more power required to attain that same velocity.

Lockheed Martin has tests underway to arm the JSF fighter with a 100 Kilowatt infrared laser. LockheedMartin doesn't expect any airborn testing to be done until 2015 though. (google search 100kilowatt laser)

SAR i thought it was same power but all u need is longer rails
any way give a JSF some rail guns do the job fine

Is it not possible to then collect energy with a satellite in space via solar energy, and then launch an attack with a laser from space? (007 Movies come to mind). Well... I know very little about the subject... so I'll just stop here.

Laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emmission of Radiation... just wanted that to be common knowledge around here...

this describes it all.

top'o'the line RG's projectile can travel over 8km/s There wouldn't be a hole in a tank, that kind of force would cause the tank to buckle in on itself like a tin can.

give man another 10 years we might be able to control this power....

Originally posted by kogigaiden
this describes it all.

top'o'the line RG's projectile can travel over 8km/s There wouldn't be a hole in a tank, that kind of force would cause the tank to buckle in on itself like a tin can.

give man another 10 years we might be able to control this power....

But the projectile would most likely vaporize before reaching the target.

not if u can make the thing out of a very hihg temprature standing metal

found another type of energy weapon..

www.americanantigravity.com...

underneith the story there are some links with video's

one of them tech.tv end its about the guy creating this weapons..

on the end of the video they use a disk with electronics to blow up a

doll with mayor force..

oh yeah some links more...

www.glubco.com...

www.powerlabs.org...

www.powerlabs.org...

[Edited on 31-5-2004 by MarkLuitzen]

WIH do you need a 25mm projectile on a rail gun? They've already done a 4 gramme Lexan projectile at 4 kilometres per second or better (IIRC - can dig it out for later discussion if anyone wants).
Insane speed of a railgun??? WTF a laser goes at light speed, how damn fast do you want it? But a laser loses about a third of its power per mile of range in atmosphere, and yes they do attenuate, the spread at target will vary with frequency and focussing mirror, again, I can can dig out or calculate if anybody really wants to know.
Yeah, a car battery will power a rail gun. But to any worthwhile speed
Oli

Originally posted by longbow
But the projectile would most likely vaporize before reaching the target.

No, not really. So far they haven't had any real troubles with it. Yes, some materials would, but whatever materials they are using now has more than withstood the friction.

Also someone made mention of a laser being light speed. Yes that is true but a laser is rather useless against tanks and the like. There aren't impact forces with lasers, they do a different kind of damage all together. Lasers would be great for such things as attacking electronic targets, but it's not going to do any kind of mass destruction. Also, laser follow a straight path. You can't lob a laser over a mountain range and when your talking Transcontinental distanced attacks you need an arc because as we all know the earth is round. Now it would be sweet if you had a lazer that would reduce a tank to molten steel in mere seconds and was the size of a rifle oh and had a life time battery. But I'm guessing we are for off from those days.

>but a laser is rather useless against tanks and the like. There aren't >impact forces with lasers, they do a different kind of damage all together.

Not true. E=hf, lasers, particularly X-Ray or Gamma Ray (Grasers) are capable of spalling damage, think about it. Someone said earlier that what counts is penetration. Rot. What counts is delivered energy. Local heating (explosively so with enough power) let alone anything else should do the trick. But personally I prefer railguns, there's something sexy about them

why not just have both? I can't really see a downside besides weight.

Heres the deal on railguns. I build one so i should know ok.

A. The is recoil
B. For hypervelocity too be achive you usually need a vacuume too be maintained in the barrel.
C. When the slug exists the railgun at hypervelocites it blows the end of the barrel off, as when it hits air its like a car hitting a brick wall. You can get around this by having a disposable barrel end a new one is fixed on for each firing.
D. The power source you need it huge. big capactor bank, some sort of fuel cell set up or a holopole generator is needed.
E. You need a injector too get the slug moving initally usually.
F. Railguns have already been mounted on battleships, check around the internet you can find videos of them firing from one.

Anymore questions?

Originally posted by themaninblack
Heres the deal on railguns. I build one so i should know ok.

A. The is recoil
B. For hypervelocity too be achive you usually need a vacuume too be maintained in the barrel.
C. When the slug exists the railgun at hypervelocites it blows the end of the barrel off, as when it hits air its like a car hitting a brick wall. You can get around this by having a disposable barrel end a new one is fixed on for each firing.
D. The power source you need it huge. big capactor bank, some sort of fuel cell set up or a holopole generator is needed.
E. You need a injector too get the slug moving initally usually.
F. Railguns have already been mounted on battleships, check around the internet you can find videos of them firing from one.

Anymore questions?

yes what barrel are you talking about on point C.
yeah i heard about the fact that it makes plasma behind the slug.
also with point B i dont reallly think you need a vacume to reach good speeds and u can solve that by just building it in space

What barrel? Any railgun barrel that the slug exists at hyper velocity and crosses from a vacume to air.

Why would you build a railgun in space? thats a stupid idea.

yes plasma amature which arks slug can add additional velocity to the projectile, also the projectile is usually injected into the rails by some sort of mechanism the instant before firing.

a rail gun has no barrel its just 2 rails and a power source and a slug thats it its not . think about it. your not consticted by size of the rifle and it would make a great anti asteroid weapon

[edit on 14-6-2004 by devilwasp]

Eerr yes you are constricted by the size if the barrel is too sort the slug will liquify from the G-Force. The is also explosive sabot rounds for railguns which if this happened to, the would be problems.

You need in a railgun, rails, pulsed power source, something heavy duty to switch that power source (thats the main problem) SCR's are best but getting them with the high amps and volt rating is so hard. not for the mil though.

The barrel is two metal rails and above and below and surrounding it is a non conductive material. So its not just rails on there own, its a barrel.


[edit on 14-6-2004 by themaninblack]

Originally posted by themaninblack
Eerr yes you are constricted by the size if the barrel is too sort the slug will liquify from the G-Force. The is also explosive sabot rounds for railguns which if this happened to, the would be problems


The barrel is two metal rails and above and below and surrounding it is a non conductive material. So its not just rails on there own, its a barrel.

the slug, or as i like 2 call it the round , would not liquify cause of the g forces IF you used the right metal.also why do u need a bloody barrel? the em feild would keep the slug straight. hell at most u could use 2 other rails to direct the slug. also what type of slug are u on about , i mean slug shape.

Originally posted by devilwasp

the slug, or as i like 2 call it the round , would not liquify cause of the g forces IF you used the right metal.also why do u need a bloody barrel? the em feild would keep the slug straight. hell at most u could use 2 other rails to direct the slug. also what type of slug are u on about , i mean slug shape.

The Railgun needs and barrel to keep the rails from being torn apart because the rails repel each other.

"the slug, or as i like 2 call it the round , would not liquify cause of the g forces IF you used the right metal.also why do u need a bloody barrel? the em feild would keep the slug straight. hell at most u could use 2 other rails to direct the slug. also what type of slug are u on about , i mean slug shape."


Lets say you acclerate a metal slug from 0 km/s too 7 km/s in the space of one metre. Do you know what kind of G-Force is at work there? What metal can withstand those kind of forces?