Debut of Navy railgun

[A pause for the COZ]

Very cool stuff! Should give us a temporary edge for a year or two.
At least until the Chinese come out with a copy from the R&D we paid for.

 

[gbc123]

Laser HD is on the cards if you fiddle with your blue Ray players lenses!

 

[carguychris]

So whats causing the giant fireball coming out of the muzzle following the projectile in the video??

Sheer unbridled awesomeness.

 

[Dashunde]

Ah, so you have had my homemade enchiladas.

 

[Uncle Buck]

http://www.economist.com/news/techn...hers-hurling-objects-electrical-energy-giving

^^ This is another interesting article on the Navy rail gun project and applications/capabilities.

The Chinese have been working on this project for a few years also and will have one out for show very shortly.

Who will steal whose plans? Who really knows. This type of espionage has been going on for year. For quite awhile, we only worried about the Russian and the Soviet Block countries stealing the technology and the Chinese got an almost free pass. People wrongly assumed the Chinese would never become a threat to US "Interests".

Amazing stuff to read in the press, imagining what they are not telling us.

 

[wogpotter]

One other interesting thing besides the big unexplained fireball is how a straight square barrel is putting a spin on the projectile.
Theres a lot to this thing than meets the eye, or thats well described in a google search.

The "muzzle flash" is easily explained. The aluminum sabot hits ionized air at mach 7+. That's in excess of 4795 Kts with STP for mach 1 @ 1108 ft/second, 658 knots, 1215 km/hour. Even Stainless steel & Titanium burn at those velocities Aluminum just ignites.

Spin?
What spin?
The sabot is rectangular & the projectile is fin stabilized not spin stabilized.

AS for "barrel" temperature you're confusing heat & temperature. Gas engines combustion temperatures are way higher than motors can stand when applied continuously, but like gas engines the temperature isn't constant, but intermittent. That makes cooling way easier.

 

[Dashunde]

I'll buy into aluminum not doing well at Mach 7.

Watch the video.. the projectile is rotating like a bullet or football.

I'm not talking about the actual barrel temps, I'm talking about the temps of the electrical wire that runs along the barrel.

 

[wogpotter]

Angled fins like the Grand Slam & Tallboy?

 

[4V50 Gary]

Can't have a domestic (home) model. It would suck up too much juice.

 

[barnbwt]

"This thing is all electric, right?
So whats causing the giant fireball coming out of the muzzle following the projectile in the video??"
Once out of the gun, it reacts with and is ablated by the atmosphere like a flaming meteor. The fireball at the muzzle is due to ablation of the sabot against the rails. Maybe they've improved on this, but early HV railguns were single shots since the rail/barrel was destroyed with each shot (the interior vaporized into plasma).

TCB

 

[Blue Grass]

A few years ago,my nephew built a rail gun for a project for his masters degree in electrical enginering. IIRC, it would stick a nail in board. The basic technology is pretty simple but you'd have to have a LOT of power. I'll ask him about it next time I see him.