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Of course the country that makes games, anime and manga full of giant mechs with railguns does it first
Nanomachines, son!
Stop asking for a grey goo incident or we're going to have a grey goo incident
wake me.... when you have railguns
I hear that there is no other way to kill Godzilla.
They fired a certain scientific railgun. Nice.
Hey look out for a certain scientific accelerator and a magical index as well.
I could have sworn that the US navy has had experimental railguns on carriers for a while. I don't think they ever intended them as actual functional weapons, but I was pretty sure they had at least done some tests with them.
The U.S. Navy hasn't declassified their tests so there is no official record. Japan was the first to openly do it.
Uhh, I dunno how much declassification you're looking for but here's the US Navy's Youtube channel with a video of some test firings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk
IIRC, the problem wasn't that it didn't work but that the barrels wore out too quickly to be useful. I suppose they could have put this on a Zumwault like originally intended but that would just be a PR stunt when the main problem was throwing the gun away after 10 shots.
I think there was an episode of Evangelion where they posed the same problem and solved by having multiple guns to switch to. I guess it's common knowledge of thermal dynamics? IDK
This is talking about firing from an off shore vessel though. They declassified the test firing on land years ago.
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From what I see, it looks like they never actually put the thing on a boat. All the testing was on land.
And after years of R&D the US Navy put the project on ice recently. Apparently they don’t think it’s worth the cost.
We have on land. They just suck up a lot of power and missiles do the same job but better
I think I've only ever seen tests from land, but I'd be shocked if a ship didn't have one, but I wouldn't be if they were quiet about it
yeah transformers rise of the fallen featured a navy ship with an EM gun... but none that we have today are unclassified. Japan's was first!
It was classified there too
You're thinking of EMALS. It's a catapult for aircraft, not a gun. Pretty close in concept though. Had some teething issues, turned out larger than expected, but works just fine now.
The GAO says it still has reliability issues that won’t likely be ironed out for about a decade.
Sad Zumwalt noises.
My mate in high school used to make these. He'd wind his own electromagnetic little tunnel thing, apply current, and the little metal projectile used to shoot through walls. Was pretty amazing.
That’s a gauss gun, not a railgun. Still cool, though.
I assumed they were synonyms ? how do they differ ?
They're pretty similar, in that both use electromagnetic forces to launch a projectile.
Gaus cannons use a field around the projectile, applied by wires wrapped around a tube, whereas railguns use two rails touching the projectile to conduct the magnetic field through the projectile.
From a video someone posted in this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTDcFxTq1Fw&t=127
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Ahhh ok. He'd do them with the capacitors from disposable cameras that the local camera store would give him.
That's pretty cool, and dangerous
The Venn diagram for those two things is just a single circle
They should try getting info on whatever they can about MARAUDER. Might be better at intercepting missiles than a railgun that fires physical projectiles.
