Rail guns: the future?

Caspian

Caspian

Active member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt_class_destroyer
This is a link to the zumwalt class destroyer, currently being designed by the us navy to be equipped with a rail gun. The rail gun prototype currently working can fire 220 miles and requires 32 Mega-joules of electrical energy.
So, my though was:
given the nature of a rail gun (a projectile propelled by incredibly strong alternating electromagnets), would these one day be used in space warfare?
Discuss.
 
That would be it's most practical application. I still think the species is going to fuck itself over before we make it to space (in a habitable sense)
 
Thats a logical argument
Heres another though: orbital bombardment through satellites with rail guns.
 
perfect-dark-xbla-rare-rail-gun.jpg


such a fun game especially the rail gun or farsight i think they called it.
 
Heres a similie/metephore...
its similar to the sw 10 and the double cork and now the trippleflip.
people are going to be so afriad of them because they think that they will ruin everything but in the end its all about progression. ya dig?

 
Good comparison. either way though the progression of military technology is a lot more frightening.
 
Just imagine what it would be like to see one of those in action. Just a city there one minute, and then dust and a deep ass skinny (not perfectly shaped like the rod but you know what I mean) crater there the next.
 
All the countries who have ever had space programs have signed multiple treaties prohibiting the installation of weapons in space.

I'm not saying that treaties are never broken, just saying there are currently a lot of extremely serious political ramifications that come with militarizing space.
 
theres a treaty to prevent that. space is supposed to be a dmz basically. 220 miles though... holy fuck!
 
Pretty much. Unfortunately, Pakistan has nuclear weapons so if they lose to the Taliban we are totally fucked as well.
 
that one wasn't so much out of fear of militarizing space as it was from the fear of a problem with space weapons.

Ever seen space cowboys? That sort of thing.

They were afraid of wars unintentionally being started due to malfunctioning equipment, or having problems with the weapons in space, which leads to nothing good. If a satellite covered in nukes fails, and starts to drop out of orbit...you are going to have a lot of problems.

overall, as much as they want to put weapons up there, for the time being, it's just not worth the risk.
 
Space cowboys was on amc but i didnt record it. I will make a note to watch that.
What about the moon?
 
the moon is basically impractical in every sense of the word for humans. We can do research there, maybe figure out a bit about what our planet is composed of and how it came to be, but otherwise....it's desolate nothingness.

the odds that anyone ever fights over the moon are probably minimal. And mounting weapons on it is horribly stupid. Going something like 25,000 miles an hour it still took a rocket days to reach earth from the moon. Imagine having days to detect, and shoot down a missile...
 
whole variety of ways...

shoot another missile at it. Not easy, but feasible. And if you miss, you have a larger window to fire another. And another. And keep in mind you don't need to score a direct hit. If you can detonate it in the path of the incoming missile, the debris should be enough to alter the course or even destroy it.

Bunch up satellites already in orbit that have their own means of propulsion to get in the way.

 
Tungsten as in, armor piercing round tungsten shell?

if that's the case, then yea, wherever that thing is headed is fucked. But why would you armor pierce a missile? There'd be no need for it.

and ok, simple solution.

China launches nuke at US from the moon, it'll hit DC in 2 days. Evacuate DC/surrounding areas, and retaliate. By the time that missile is close to hitting, china will be called "asia's radioactive dump formerly known as china."
 
Tungsten as in high density alloy, not armor piercing. It creates such a large impact it obliterates everything.
And that assumes prior knowledge of incoming missiles.
 
ah ok. well in that case....super fucked. not sure how you can stop that exactly. With that, you'd most likely have to get the direct hit to stop it.

and spotting a launch wouldn't be too difficult. If it was a big launch, you could probably even see it with a telescope. And if someone has nukes on the moon, unless they miraculously did it secretly, someone would be watching those bases up there at all times, so a launch would be spotted. And NASA is constantly taking pictures up there. I'm sure somehow it would be realized.

or they could do like with the old apollo rockets. The rocket would need to be controlled in some way, and that would most likely give off some sort of signal. Radio signals perhaps, or something in that nature. So to detect it, you just point satellite dishes towards the moon or wherever you think it could be coming from, and if you detect something out of the ordinary...now you know.
 
it's impossible to destroy the us government in 1 swoop except for furing 1 event every year.

take a guess what event that is...
 
yes. riskiest time for the US government. Every important person is in one place, at one time. I believe it's the only publicized time that the president, vice president, and speaker of the house are all known to be in the same place. they may meet other times, but always secretly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top