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[Sir Pseudonymous]

Last I read, the railguns work fine, the barrels are just more or less destroyed after a single shot. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what they're thinking to fight with them, given that they'd still be grossly inferior to missiles in just about every way, and there aren't really any other navies with the scale that would make railguns make a damn lick of sense...

Well, aside from the sheer awesome factor, which I am half-convinced is the driving motivation behind 90% of what military engineers come up with. "Fuck practicality, LETS MAKE SOME FUCKING RAILGUNS!"

[Il Palazzo]

It's supposed to be cheaper to fling a metal slug than to launch a rocket.

[Aqizzar]

Wait wait wait, some Navy is developing railguns?  Admittedly, the US at least does still use cannons for bombardment, and it's not like they're not accurate.  A railgun would be the next logical step up by minimizing the stored ammunition and extending the range and variability.  But I thought they were all gung-ho about missiles now.  I suppose it would be a Navy working on railguns, since only a ship would be able to carry one given modern battery technology.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Last I read, the railguns work fine, the barrels are just more or less destroyed after a single shot. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what they're thinking to fight with them, given that they'd still be grossly inferior to missiles in just about every way, and there aren't really any other navies with the scale that would make railguns make a damn lick of sense...

The thing about railguns is that they can function as a weapon of mass destruction, without lasting side effects. The energy released can level buildings with ease, but dosen't leave any radiological or chemical remains. In addition, rail guns don't have recoil. With current naval cannons, their size is limited by what would knock the ship over, but rail guns are only limited by what level of weight will sink the ship.

[Il Palazzo]

? No recoil?
But how?
(calling BS here)

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Last I read, the railguns work fine, the barrels are just more or less destroyed after a single shot. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what they're thinking to fight with them, given that they'd still be grossly inferior to missiles in just about every way, and there aren't really any other navies with the scale that would make railguns make a damn lick of sense...

The thing about railguns is that they can function as a weapon of mass destruction, without lasting side effects. The energy released can level buildings with ease, but dosen't leave any radiological or chemical remains. In addition, rail guns don't have recoil. With current naval cannons, their size is limited by what would knock the ship over, but rail guns are only limited by what level of weight will sink the ship.

You fail physics forever. To propel a slug with a given force means taking an equivalent amount in the opposite direction.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You fail physics forever. To propel a slug with a given force means taking an equivalent amount in the opposite direction.

I could have sworn I read that, because the rail gun uses magnetic forces to propel the slug, there is no recoil.

EDIT: Nevermind, Wikipedia indcates that there is indeed massive recoil to a railgun. Although, it also says that problems with the railgun surviving being shot stem from the seat of said recoil not being known.

[HAMMERMILL]

Thing is, the US Navy is 60% of the world's naval power. A super-awesome new gun on the already super-awesome ships and crew isn't going to change the paradigm much when the rest of the world still has its naval assets the way it is.

Most countries don't have the inclination or the budget for such super-science insanity and they are content with small boats with small guns and small boats with large anti-shipping missiles.

The "ROTW" naval powers are developed to combat other nations that are not the USA. The USA is developing systems to counter the navy the entire world could muster or some atagonistic nation's navy that might come about 30 years from now.

[RedWarrior0]

The railguns, IIRC, simply have a distributed recoil along the barrel, perpendicular to the rails because of some f'd up magnetics. Though there is some in parallel to the rails

[Aqizzar]

Ah but see, railguns wouldn't be about ship-to-ship combat, because the US already subs and airpower and cruise missiles to do that with.  Railguns would be about extending the operational capacity of cannon-armed destroyers to provide artillery support for ground troops near shorelines.  They already do that all the time, and anything that gives them more range without having to carry more shell-charge or big expensive missiles is an improvement.  Besides, railguns have plenty of other uses (launching satellites maybe) and spinoff possibilities, so it's the Navy's job to develop them since they could actually use them and always looking for new things to throw tons of money at.

[Footkerchief]

Last I read, the railguns work fine, the barrels are just more or less destroyed after a single shot. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what they're thinking to fight with them, given that they'd still be grossly inferior to missiles in just about every way, and there aren't really any other navies with the scale that would make railguns make a damn lick of sense...

I'd guess that one of the advantages is over missiles is that it's much harder to shoot down a railgun projectile with point-defense weapons, e.g. other missiles or CIWS.

[RedWarrior0]

I think it would be awesome if railguns replaced ordinary hydrogen-burning launch techniques. Get large enough capacitators, a fucktonne of power, and a satellite with no living things on it, and you can launch more efficiently: current launches have a huge amount of fuel. Have you seen the Space Shuttle's launching rocket? Yeah, that. Imagine if you only had the weight of the Shuttle to deal with.

[Il Palazzo]

(thread changing direction again)

The problem is that, if you want to launch a satelite using a railgun, you're facing some serious inertial forces trying to crush the packet. There might be no squishable humans inside, but anything getting accelerated from 0 to 7km/s over a short distance(lenght of rails) needs to be really sturdy to survive. I wouldn't exactly expect Hubble telescope to be in working shape after such a launch.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Last I read, the railguns work fine, the barrels are just more or less destroyed after a single shot. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what they're thinking to fight with them, given that they'd still be grossly inferior to missiles in just about every way, and there aren't really any other navies with the scale that would make railguns make a damn lick of sense...

I'd guess that one of the advantages is over missiles is that it's much harder to shoot down a railgun projectile with point-defense weapons, e.g. other missiles or CIWS.

Yes, that's the only one I can think of, since the cost of the slug versus a missile isn't all that good given the one-or-two-shot nature of current railguns.

I think it would be awesome if railguns replaced ordinary hydrogen-burning launch techniques. Get large enough capacitators, a fucktonne of power, and a satellite with no living things on it, and you can launch more efficiently: current launches have a huge amount of fuel. Have you seen the Space Shuttle's launching rocket? Yeah, that. Imagine if you only had the weight of the Shuttle to deal with.

It's a magnetic cannon. It would fry any electronics onboard (unless you're just hurling, say, raw materials into an orbital net of some kind, which could theoretically work...), not to mention the heat stress on the projectile, given that you're running a massive electrical current through it...

You fail physics forever. To propel a slug with a given force means taking an equivalent amount in the opposite direction.

I could have sworn I read that, because the rail gun uses magnetic forces to propel the slug, there is no recoil.

EDIT: Nevermind, Wikipedia indcates that there is indeed massive recoil to a railgun. Although, it also says that problems with the railgun surviving being shot stem from the seat of said recoil not being known.

The railguns, IIRC, simply have a distributed recoil along the barrel, perpendicular to the rails because of some f'd up magnetics. Though there is some in parallel to the rails

There would be a lot of perpendicular force on the rails, wouldn't there... Thinking about the way magnetic fields... move, for lack of a better word, that makes sense. I can see that causing problems, but I believe the main problem is the heat from/chemical effects of running a powerful electrical current through the rails/projectile/air around projectile causing excessive wear and tear.

[Aqizzar]

I wouldn't exactly expect Hubble telescope to be in working shape after such a launch.

Not that Hubble was in working shape after its rocket launch anyway, ba-zing.  But anyway, yeah I don't hold a lot of hope for getting delicate satellites into orbit with a cannon, but building large orbital structures (since we do that), could be easier with a rail-launcher for hurling the sturdier, massive sections up.  I expect the Navy's interest is more in the "shells you can't interdict" and "more range with smaller ammo" applications.