U.S. Navy: Railgun Tests to “Blow the Top Off a Mountain”
While the U.S. Navy had announced last year that it would take a prototype railgun to sea onboard the expeditionary fast transport USNS Trenton (JHSV-5) in 2016, the service may have to scupper those plans.
If the Navy does take the railgun out to sea on a fast transport, it will be in 2017 at the earliest. In lieu of testing the prototype rail gun in an at-sea environment, the Navy might instead proceed directly to developing an operational weapon system.
Its not definitely off but its not definitely going ahead, Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, the Navys director of surface warfare, told Defense News during a Dec. 30 interview.
Primarily because it will slow the engineering work that I have to do to get that power transference that I need to get multiple repeatable shots that I can now install in a ship. And I would frankly rather have an operational unit faster than have to take the nine months to a year it will take to set up the demo and install the systems, take the one operational [railgun] unit I have, put it on a ship, take it to sea, do a dozen shots, turn around, take it off, reinstall it into a test bed.
http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/us-navy-railgun-tests-%E2%80%9Cblow-the-top-mountain%E2%80%9D-14869
jonno99
(2,620 posts)mikehiggins
(5,614 posts)a ship mounted rail-gun blew up a pyramid. Okay, it was a silly scene in a silly movie but the science is not. An operational rail-gun system could blow an ICBM out of the sky.
Ain't science wonderful?
Now, if we could only cure that pesky cancer thing, maybe we'd still have a Bowie.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Which does not really come from bigger explosions. You rapidly run into the law of diminishing returns when it comes ot making explosions bigger. Blowing things up is just not that tricky, but the cost goes up exponentially, and you still get nothing but rubble.
I was looking at that picture in the OP, going really fasssssst, and it just doesn't look very efficient, does it?