From LiveScience:
The U.S. Navy yesterday test fired an incredibly powerful new big gun designed to replace conventional weaponry aboard ships. Sci-fi fans will recognize its awesome power and futuristic technology.
The big gun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun, as it is called, will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact.
The test-firing, captured on video, took place Jan. 31 in Dahlgren, Va., and Navy officials called it the "world's most powerful electromagnetic railgun."
The Navy's current MK 45 five-inch gun, by contrast, has a range of less than 23 miles (37 kilometers).
The railgun has been a featured weapon in many science fiction universes, such as the new "Battlestar Galactic" series. It has also achieved newfound popularity among the 20-something-and-under generation for its devastating ability to instantaneously shoot a "slug" through walls and through multiple enemies in video games such as the "Quake" series of first person shooters.
The Navy's motivation? Simple destruction.
The railgun's high-velocity projectile will destroy targets with sheer kinetic energy rather than with conventional explosives.
Video here.
1 comment:
Hooray! First post from Miko! No, wait... second one! I totally missed that was you on the legogoogle thing.
Yeah, railguns. The magnet-propelled bullet has been a feature in sci-fi for a while. In the William Gibson book Count Zero someone uses a blimp-mounted railgun to erase evidence of a black ops gone bad in the desert. It creates an explosion like unto an A-bomb's, but without the radiation. Later on a character says with a railgun, the projectile could just be a fifty pound bag of ice.
Crazy stuff. I love that the dudes testing the gun are just a bunch of shlubs like at the model shop.
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