Old Man Posted February 28, 2012 Report Share Posted February 28, 2012 BAE's new 32 MJ railgun test with video: http://defensetech.org/2012/02/28/video-baes-new-railgun-firing-for-first-time/#more-16468 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 28, 2012 Report Share Posted February 28, 2012 Re: More Railgun Cool! As long as all we want it for is firing squads, it's a viable tech now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted February 29, 2012 Report Share Posted February 29, 2012 Re: More Railgun Nice! I thought the Navy had cancelled their railgun and laser projects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neverway Posted February 29, 2012 Report Share Posted February 29, 2012 Re: More Railgun Cool! As long as all we want it for is firing squads' date=' it's a viable tech now![/quote'] All that's left is engineering. Putting the demo gun in a turret with train and elevation abilities presents little in the way of difficulties. The question is how many shots can you get from it before having to replace pretty much everything? Railguns use a ton of electromagnetic energy... ... I'm not thinking we're going to be getting many technical details. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted February 29, 2012 Report Share Posted February 29, 2012 Re: More Railgun Nice! I thought the Navy had cancelled their railgun and laser projects. I only heard that the first draft of this years budget had no money for the railgun project. But that his draft had as much to do with the final version as Schrödingers Cat with driving a car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeropoint Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun Schrödingers Cat . . . driving a car "Quantum junction. Get in both lanes." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Carman Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun "Quantum junction. Get in both lanes." from Brewster Rockit [ATTACH=CONFIG]42002[/ATTACH] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun Nice! I thought the Navy had cancelled their railgun and laser projects. You're right: they cancelled the weapons projects. But they replaced them with much smaller budget, research projects designed to work on improving the tech. Which is what this is about: not so much trying to make a working weapon, as work out how to make a working weapon. I must say though, the new railgun looks 100x cooler than the old "block of iron plates on a railcar" version they had before. Cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun All that's left is engineering. Putting the demo gun in a turret with train and elevation abilities presents little in the way of difficulties. The question is how many shots can you get from it before having to replace pretty much everything? Currently? One, possibly 2, maybe even 3 if you are not fussy about accuracy: since rail guns don't use explosive fuel, that giant fireball coming out behind the projectile you always see with current railguns ... is the internals of the barrel melting and being projected out. So at the moment we have a weapon that weighs as much as a couple of MBTs, packs the punch of light howitzer, and can only be used once. I'm thinking building a turret to put it is is probably a bit of overkill. That's why the actual railgun weapon program was was cancelled and they went back to basic research. The current research program is designed to do two things: Phase I, where they are now, is to get reliable delivery of the power needed. It doesn't matter too much if the gun is trashed after each shot - that goal is not to make a working weapon, but to build reliable power source and delivery systems. It looks like they are getting there: the current gun is much more powerful than anything they have trials before. They have a way to go, though: right now the system has a fraction of the power they need/want Phase II, (which is also going on now, but is considered a much longer-term aim) is to build materials that don't ablate when you run that much juice through them. cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun You're right: they cancelled the weapons projects. But they replaced them with much smaller budget, research projects designed to work on improving the tech. Which is what this is about: not so much trying to make a working weapon, as work out how to make a working weapon. I must say though, the new railgun looks 100x cooler than the old "block of iron plates on a railcar" version they had before. Cheers, Mark Cool! Thanks for the info. And yes, it does look better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun Phase II, (which is also going on now, but is considered a much longer-term aim) is to build materials that don't ablate when you run that much juice through them. cheers, Mark A little lateral thinking suggests that instead of converting (diesel) chemical energy into electrical into kinetic energy at the gun, you could just use a direct conversion directly behind the projectile. By that I mean just oxidise the diesel in a compartment directly behind the projectile. Seat the projectile in an aperture opening up in the direction of the target, and perhaps lengthen the aperture so that the expanding pressure wave of oxidants forces the projectile through the aperture in the direction of the target. Hmm. Although perhaps instead of the diesel, you would want a self-oxidising compound with a reaction product with a relatively high mean particle velocity. (Not too high, or there would be brisance effects.) I'm thinking that there are probably a large number of nitrogen-based chemicals that fit the bill. Clearly there would be problems with the reaction product attacking the material of the gun, but they need not be decisive. While the electromagnetic launcher requires materials and geometries of high conductance and constrained circuit paths, the barrel in my hypothetical chemical launcher need only be made of one of a large number of ferric alloys with a well-proven resistance to chemical attack. A chromium/nickel/iron alloy in a suitable allotropic state, or, in a more complicated implementation, with allotropic state varying depending on exposure to chemical attack, would probably be far more resistant to the degrading effects of launching the projectile than the current electromagnetic design concept. Indeed, it occurs that one have an implementation that could fire repeatedly between rechargings by simply rotating combustion chambers into place behind the aperture. One might even recover some of the waste energy inherent in the system to drive the rotational (or other) mechanism. If I'm not going too far out on a limb of speculation, I can even see the entire mechanism implemented in a human-portable version. Although if one were to recover enough of the waste energy to implement a self-sustaining cycle, it might be wise to weight the end of the aperture and stabilise it, perhaps by placing it in some kind of (detachable) tripod or bipod stand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun A little lateral thinking suggests that instead of converting (diesel) chemical energy into electrical into kinetic energy at the gun, you could just use a direct conversion directly behind the projectile. By that I mean just oxidise the diesel in a compartment directly behind the projectile. Seat the projectile in an aperture opening up in the direction of the target, and perhaps lengthen the aperture so that the expanding pressure wave of oxidants forces the projectile through the aperture in the direction of the target. That sounds like a simple, normal gun for me. What is really relevant for any type of gun propellant, is the speed of sound in the resulting gas - that is the absolute limit for projectile speed in a convetional gun. The entire points of a Railgun is that you don't need a propellant and thus have no "upper limit" for the projectiles energy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeropoint Posted March 1, 2012 Report Share Posted March 1, 2012 Re: More Railgun What is really relevant for any type of gun propellant, is the speed of sound in the resulting gas - that is the absolute limit for projectile speed in a convetional gun. The entire points of a Railgun is that you don't need a propellant and thus have no "upper limit" for the projectiles energy. Ding ding ding! We have a winner! I was going to rep you for this, but it seems I can't. That same fact is the driving force behind the development of "light gas" guns, which use a propellant charge to compress an intermediate working gas such as hydrogen, in which the speed of sound is higher, which then acts on the projectile. That yields a higher cap on the muzzle velocity, but the cap is still there, albeit significantly higher. As Christopher points out, the theoretical maximum muzzle velocity for a railgun is . . . light speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted March 2, 2012 Report Share Posted March 2, 2012 Re: More Railgun That sounds like a simple, normal gun for me. What is really relevant for any type of gun propellant, is the speed of sound in the resulting gas - that is the absolute limit for projectile speed in a convetional gun. The entire points of a Railgun is that you don't need a propellant and thus have no "upper limit" for the projectiles energy. Remind me to pm you my concept of propulsion by a direct transfer of mechanical energy to a projectile from either a biological manipulator or a girder in which it might be stored by torsion, compression, tension, or all three. Potentially, by the way, this girder could be very light, as analysis suggests that one flange could be solely under torsion, implying no need for rigidity in compression or shear at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 2, 2012 Report Share Posted March 2, 2012 Re: More Railgun Hmm...I wonder who wins in the end, Weaponry wise of course since I think Railguns have a lot of non weaponry uses down the road, but the Gas Guns... Some interesting developments there as well..... ~Rex.... Gas Gun vs Rail Gun ....*cue Music, goes to dig up video* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted March 2, 2012 Report Share Posted March 2, 2012 Re: More Railgun That sounds like a simple' date=' normal gun for me.[/quote'] I think you need to retune your sarcasm meter In particular I recommend a high-gain setting marked "Lawnmower Boy" cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted March 2, 2012 Report Share Posted March 2, 2012 Re: More Railgun My meter melted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted March 2, 2012 Report Share Posted March 2, 2012 Re: More Railgun Hmm...I wonder who wins in the end, Weaponry wise of course since I think Railguns have a lot of non weaponry uses down the road, but the Gas Guns... Some interesting developments there as well..... ~Rex.... Gas Gun vs Rail Gun ....*cue Music, goes to dig up video* Do you mean the ultimative end? (something in 100-1.000 Years) Railguns, unless we stumble upon something better No matter how faster the sonic moves in your gas, it's still going to be slower than the speed of light. It's slower in the densest solid materials we know, no gas can even get close to that. In a short term the gas gun can win and propably will, simply because we know a lot more about gas-expansion weapons than about railguns. And it might have applications in other areas (like torpedo launch, industry). Our best railgun is the quivalent of a one shoot beta version of the cannon. While our best guns have this phase behind them for around 900 Years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted March 2, 2012 Report Share Posted March 2, 2012 Re: More Railgun Still curious though comparison wise. Most of the Light Gas Guns are coming in around 6 to 7 KM/s, One of the two stage ones the Air Force plays around with for impact testing has an 8 inch to 3.3 inch capability is 4.5 KM/s to 7 KM/s and the Electro Thermal LGG's look like they are providing even more... Rail Gun seems to come in around 2-3 KM/s (give or take)..... Either way, a fan of both systems. Some interesting Indirect Artillery options on paper for the LGG's as well... All good stuff though. ~Rex...and then, we get MetalStorm! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeropoint Posted June 14, 2012 Report Share Posted June 14, 2012 Re: More Railgun As I understand it, the light gas guns are a more mature technology, but they've been developed mainly for exploring high-velocity impact science. Neither light gas guns nor railguns (to say nothing of coilguns, which seem to be more of a hobbyist thing at the moment) are ready for deployment as weapon systems yet, so I would think that it's premature to declare one technology as "better" than the other. I'm tempted to say that the electromagnetic weapons will win in the end by virtue of being simpler, with fewer moving parts and no need for a working gas and burst disk to be replaced after every shot. On the other hand, you've got rail replacement to worry about, and it would certainly be possible to package the powder charge, gas, and burst disk into a simple cartridge. One of the two stage ones the Air Force plays around with for impact testing has an 8 inch to 3.3 inch capability is 4.5 KM/s to 7 KM/s Holy bleeping bleep, that's scary! . . . I'd be very interested in reading about penetration vs. splashing at those velocities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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