Feb 1 2008Navy Tests New Railgun, It Looks Promising

My personal railgun has the impacting force of a Ford Festiva slamming into a target at 10-15 miles an hour. Shock and awe!

a watt, and by extension a gigawatt (it was mispronounced in the film) is an expression of joules over time. For example if: W = watt, j = joule, s = second; then, 1 W = 1 j/s. That being said, hell no its not enough power.. your stuck in the present .

They should use Yugos as the ammo. A Ford Taurus is way too valuable.

mine goes boom more better...

Ah yes, the US Armed forces...always spending taxpayer's money wisely.

OMGOGMOGMG AFTERMATH

America......f*** yeah!

its not better that my Railgun from Quake 3 Arena

I wondered why there was fire coming out of the gun when it's supposed to be magnetic rather than chemical propulsion. Having investigated it appears that that the air catching fire due to the speed of the projectile. Like space craft entering the atmosphere.

@2 mat -
sorry mat, but Doc Brown is still smarter than you. Not only did he invent something that you haven't, but he pronounces words better than you.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gigawatts
both pronounciations are acceptable.

hell, even the imdb "goofs" page for the movie lists that little tidbit as "Incorrectly regarded as goofs"

and among scientists (the real ones, not the ones from your video games) the "jiga" pronounciation is often preferred.

yay! now we can win the war, and my parents will get back together and my dog will come back to life! america the beautiful!

Great Stuff! Aside from the destructive benefits (not quite politically correct I know) there appear to be other benefits from using a device like this, no chance of littering the fields with unexploded live rounds for one.......plus you saw the vid's this thing is truly brilliant!

@10

yea, doc brown is smarter than me, and yes there are two pronunciations for there word. i was talking more about how its actually spelled gigawatt and the pronunciation in the film leads people to spell it incorrectly.

I will argue that you are wrong in saying that 'jiga' is the preferred pronunciation. unless there was a 'real scientist' convention, and they came to a consensus on the issue. 'giga' is preferred in many fields, particularly chemistry, electrical engineering, and electronics. think about it, when was the last time someone talked about their 60 'jig' ipod.

also, i don't play video games, and i'm not aware of any video game scientists, but it doesn't sound interesting. if that was your attempt to make me seem like a little kid then i'd say you might have a career in writing. comedic gems like that you don't see too often.

all in all, my statement was lighthearted and i think yours was too, so i don't want to have any problems.

Aaaaaaahhhh... finally another way to kill people. I was getting really tired of the old ones. Really... man is the most disgusting animal on the planet. No offence, I'm a man too, you know. Or maybe a trained monkey... lets keep the mistery for now.

We love peace. We hate wars.

I hope they leave a spiral trail behind them.

Are these things any more effective than normal ship based artillery shells other than the range? You don't have to worry about your ammo stockpile exploding anymore but these things seem to take so much electricity to fire. (I think?)

Rail guns rock. When I say rock I mean like Everest as a rock.

I think that the power is not muchof a problem as it is an instantaneous discharge like the flash on your camera. I love the idea ofshooting a 5m target 200n miles away. Give it another year and we'll have the american "Supergun" a la Saddam Hussein where we'll be able to drop ballistic shells from the other side of the planet. Anyone remember tanks on the Amiga? more power, angle up, damn villagers, less power angle down wohoo KABOOM.

Any chance of deflecting these with a magnetic field then?

@ 16. tmhs - "seem to take so much electricity to fire. (I think?)"
you think correctly. an older article mentions that "peak power outputs are measured in millions of amperes".
http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_RailGuns,,00.html

@ 17. Daveatfernie - "Any chance of deflecting these with a magnetic field then?"
a joke? no, you can't deflect them with a magnetic field. the magnetic field is used to launch the projectile.

@9

Thanks - that was bugging me too!

what's that little Hadji why no thats not the wrath of god thats america, but i suppose those two can get confusing you little rascal you

#2 and #10 wasted a minute of my life....fuch you both

#21 SEEL - nobody forced you to read our postings, so it would seem that YOU wasted a minute of your life all by yourself. now get a dictionary, and look up "fuch".

My Ford Pinto hatch back explodes at 0 miles per hour with more force just by giving it a quick kick in the rear bumper.

FAKE
this is just footage of Chuck Norris' toaster

@9:

I'm guessing that the fire is actually due to the friction created between the barrel and the sabot. I'd say that the debris coming out is also from a sabot. A sabot is likely required due to the speed that the projectile is moving, to maintain accuracy and reduce bore erosion.

@25 you are correct in what you are guessing. There are parts of the rail gun that come apart and catch fire on use. I've actually witnessed what happens when overything isn't secured and you get a voltage 'leak'. Dissapating that much power to one spot on the railgun instantaeniously (yeah I think I spelled that wrong) is an even more impressive sight than watching these things fire. EVERYTHING melts and all kinds of arcs and flames happen.

The power on the ships is not a problem as some are asking because with the nuclear generators you can get about as much power as you want and they're being used on ships right now because they have plenty of room for the power plant. They are however 'trying' to make a vehicle mounted one but that won't be any time soon at all.

and the american navy needs this for what? peace will never occur with these 10 jigosomething machine guns being created by the us all the time

@27
John, do you really thing that peace will occur if we don't make these things? Now I'm not saying that these things will bring about peace, but I am saying that I don't see how their existence will prevent peace, nor do I see how peace is more likely to occur with less weapons. Let's face it, there was no peace before these, or before nukes, or before cannons, or before bows and arrows, etc, etc.

So ... Is that smoke and debris flying all over the place when they fire that thing? Wonder what THAT's doing to the environment...? Good thing this whole GREENHOUSE EFFECT is a myth huh?

Stupid.

@RCA
yeah, cause the regular missles and bombs don't make any smoke or debris

There are some side benefits to this kind of progress. NASA is actually developing this type of propulsion as a cheaper way to get things into space. They get the container or shuttle going around a giant loop until it reaches a fast enough speed, then it launches it up a giant ramp that throws it out of the gravitational pull of the earth.

While I do agree that we don't need more weapons, the technology is quite often used in more peaceful ways.

I wonder if anyone would say anything if we "accidentally" launched a couple of these in the direction of the Iranian Navy? Payback for that stupid plan they did on our boys a couple months ago.

Yeah, Johny, that was quite a plan they did on them. They did that plan on them good. That plan was done on them and they couldn't get it off! they were like, "Hey! what is this plan doing on me?! Get this plan off!"

Maybe you don't pay attention to stories after you get your xenophobic and racist rush, but there's a good chance that it was a hoax. Gulf of Tonkin? Operation Northwoods?

Give war a chance.
Some day, we'll have peace, but only after we bomb all the brown people, then paint the French brown (including the French canadians) and bomb them. Then eat the hippies, starting with Dave Matthews and his band of insurgents. THEN we'll have peace. Until then, gi-normous rail guns firing ACTUAL ford tauruses will be the only thing that could possibly save us from the terrorists that are trying to rape our children and marry our pets.

god i love naive little "progressives"

' oh America sux, America causes all problems, America is bad,'

' if you believe in protecting yourself then you are a racist and a bigot and not as "open-minded" as me, you are a little eichman'

LOL! you go ahead and be all progressive and I will go ahead and live in the real world

@35 - AMEN Brother!

my cat's breath smells like cat food..

that's nice Ralph

34/35
way to go

this gus the shit

how many jigas/ gigas would the death star's cannon be?

My breath smells like cat food.

This is a classic 'space pen' and the Russian pencil is a simple guided missle.

How fast does the Ford Tarus have to go to have the equivilent energy of 500 kilos of Semtex crashing down on the deck?

@42. clearly you don't understand what a rail gun is. it's not a pencil vs space pen comparison. it's Gutenberg press vs high speed digital printer comparison. it's all about killing faster and cheaper.

http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_RailGuns,,00.html

"A proper-sized round could provide missile-like capability. Take your standard Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile -- for the same amount of time it takes a Tomahawk to reach a target, an EM gun can deliver twice the destructive power to the same target, while operating at about 6-12 rounds per minute. At a fraction of the cost per round, tremendous volume fires could be delivered."

#43 I know what a railgun is and what government pork programs are - this is both.

Clearly you bite the bubbles.

#35. Yup!
#34. News flash my little mushbrainwashed leftist wannabe, little brown (and yellow btw) people, CURRENTLY and in the past are and have killed MORE of other little brown and yellow people than we can dream of. Europeans tend to slaughter each other with more glee than they ever reserved for others. But hey nice try maybe next year you can sit at the big people table.

alot of rail guns become useless after a few shots because they vaporize the rails , and that makes then a pain in the a$$ to use repeatedly due to having to repair or swap out rails

They should use Yugos as the ammo. A Ford Taurus is way too valuable.