Navy Railgun Test and Videos

I thought that Gauss Rifles (coil guns) were the more efficient solution? Apparently, I have something wrong, but it has always been my understanding that a lot of the energy that goes into a rail gun just goes to making a plasma muzzle blast due to friction with the rails.

I still want to see someone with deep pockets build a gauss rifle from superconductors and badass switches.
 
Coilguns are neat too, but I can imagine how you'd have a much harder time scaling one up to something like this railgun. Are the problems with timing the coils properly, or what? I'd imagine that you need a metric buttload of coils to get something up to really high speed, and if they aren't all timed perfectly...

The dudes on the internet who publish plans for hand-held coilguns are downright amazing. Some of their guns are pretty freaking powerful too!
 
Now if they can just make a projectile that doesn't evaporate when fired and rails that can handle more than half a dozen shots before being destroyed....they'll have something that's not nearly as useful as a cruise missile.
 
Yeah, but it will cost $100 per shot instead of over a million, and you can stock enough projectiles on a ship to hit 1000 targets instead of 20, and you can hit your target in practically real-time instead of an hour later, and you can engage any type of target you wish, including other ships, airplanes, and it's impossible to intercept with any current technology. Yeah, I can see how that would be less useful than a cruise missile.
 
What is the projectile itself? Tungsten? Just guessing.

No way lead or steel could survive going mach 7, correct? It would just look like a pretty meteorite and burn up.
 
Probably a fancy tungsten alloy. There are probably a lot of other concerns with making a railgun projectile that I don't understand, like eddy currents and resistance, and god knows what else applies when you're throwing hojillions of amps through something. Theoretically, I don't see any reason why the projectile couldn't be made of mostly ceramic or something, with just a piece of conducting metal in it to bridge the rails.
 
Did you ever get the chance to use superconductors? I ask because without that, the resistance is almost as much of a drain as the rail friction is. Come out with some cool insights.....and pictures if you have them.
 
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