Some things transcend politics and change the way we see the world. I’m speaking of course of the Navy’s new railgun.
What is the railgun? No, it’s not a gun that shoots trains at the enemy (though that sounds kind of cool; maybe the Navy should work on that too). It’s a gun that uses magnets to kill. Like think of one of the magnets on your refrigerator. Now imagine one of those magnets chucked at your head. Now imagine that time 33 million. That’s a railgun.
Instead of explosives, railguns use Science! to fire bullets so fast the air catches fire. And they can fire up to a hundred miles away. And it literally can shoot through schools. It’s so awesome, sometimes we just have to point it at things and they explode in anticipation of the railgun firing. It’s a disruptive technology that will change ammo storage concerns, the way we do naval warfare, long range combat, the gay marriage debate, childhood obesity, the alternative minimum tax… everything. In fact, if a problem can’t be solved by the railgun, it probably can’t be solved. And any unsolvable problems we’ll just blow up with our railgun.
Like think if we have a war with China. We won’t have to fly all the way across the world to fight them. Instead, we’ll just point our railgun straight down at the ground at SHOOT STRAIGHT THROUGH THE EARTH INTO CHINA! You mess with America, China, and you mess with the railgun, and you can’t deal with that.
Eventually, the railgun will be so powerful, IT WILL SHOOT THROUGH TIME. Right now, seventy years ago, Nazi Germany is working on a time capsule to warn Nazis today to take out the railgun because they know WE’LL USE IT TO KILL HITLER! But you can’t stop the march of technology. One day everyone will have a railgun. And a jetpack. And we’ll all live in peace. Awesome peace.
One day everyone will have a railgun.
Not lefties. They’ll be afraid of them. Of course, we may have used ours to exterminate all the lefties.
Let’s face it, a gun that shoots trains is super duper cool. But in these days of huge budget deficits and all that, the cost of the ammo would be prohibitively expensensive. Instead, they need to develop a rail gun that uses hippies for ammo. They can be placed in a sealed container as to not expose our brave men and women in uniform to the stench of un-washed hippie, a known carcinogen. Finally hippies would have a use, and they can be disposed of in a cool war type way.
“In fact, if a problem can’t be solved by the railgun, it probably can’t be solved. And any unsolvable problems we’ll just blow up with our railgun.”
Impeccable logic. Bring on the problems.
And the hippie ammo would be all like, “Out o’ site, man!”
Test it on the UN building.
Railgun demo? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Eqx3OETuw
(1) Launches its projectile at speed of up to Mach 8.
(2) Range of a hundred miles accurately.
(3) It makes the very air around the bullet catch fire.
Ladies and gentlemen, I name this awesome device: Mexi-Cannon 2.0.
There’s plenty of good sites out there that detail how to build your own railgun. The navy gun is just the same, except about 1,000 times more powerful.
I’d vastly prefer the Navy instead spend their annual Awesome Budget on modernizing the Iowa battleships. Railguns sound too nerdy to me.
“We’re America. You say battleships are a thing of the past. Our question to you is simple. Have you ever heard a 16 inch shell land within a mile of your house?”
I’ll compromise on allowing the Navy to place railguns on their new, modernized Iowa battleships. No matter what, I simply cannot tolerate the glorious USS Iowa rusting in San Francisco under the orders of a wackjob feminist Senator.
Technically, what’s amazing is how the gun doesn’t blow itself apart due to the supersonic shock waves developed within the gun as the projectile accelerates . Oh, and it’s possible to build one big enough to make the payload reach orbit. So that 100 mile stuff is silly.
I want one in my own tank. If the Mach 8 load doesn’t get you, my sonic boom will.
Can I get one for my shoulder holster? And when does Palin take one moose hunting? That would be awesome.
I like the hippies-as-as-rail-gun-fodder plan. Launch them at N. Koreas. Kim-dong-il-sonuvabitch would be all “IIee ! exploding hippies!! We must surrender or we will covered in smelly stoned maggoty hippie flesh!”. A win-win for sure.
Looks like the local shooting range will need to expand a bit to handle the increased range of the super awesome !Science inspired railgun!!! On the hippie shooting model, how many hippies will the magazine hold?
I wonder if a smaller “potato” version is possible. The potatoes would have to be modified, of course, to make them electromagnetically responsive. Then we could rename it the “electropotato gun” and sell it to the Irish.
Can we shoot the moon?
““We’re America. You say battleships are a thing of the past. Our question to you is simple. Have you ever heard a 16 inch shell land within a mile of your house?”
Yeah. I’m offended at the dinky 3 in or so cannons they put on US Navy ships these days. I mean, 3 inches? Hell a WWII Sullivans class destroyer had five 5 inch guns! The 16 inch gun, now that’s a gun. Who needs accusacy when the 16 shell will destroy everything in a mile radius? Now that’s what I can a “disproportionate response.” Don’t be bringing a 3 inch cannon to a gun fight with a 16 inch cannon, that’s all you need to know.
Plus the 16 inch gun can fire hippies, too. What’s not to like?
Do they have them at Bass Pro Shops yet??? I want one!
Yes, DamnCat! But the local sonic boom from it would kill everyone within miles. Hmmm.
But also, a better place to build one of these “mass drivers” IS on the moon. Besides holding the Earth ‘hostage’ (to use a recent Obama term), we could also cheaply send payloads anywhere in the Solar System.
Proud Infidel,
I am no sailor or Marine, but I can only sigh when the Navy’s response to Marine concerns regarding coastal bombardments is, “Well, we can give you guys a destroyer with some missiles and a weeny gun.”
I believe there was an 8 inch gun in the works years ago. That would certainly be less weeny than a stinking 3 inch.
If this country was run properly and if we had any money, we’d have a battleship for each Marine division.
R Lee Ermey needs to be put in charge of this project forth with! The rail gun fires a cheap aluminum “bullet” that has no need for an explosive charge! It’s called kinetic energy. When it hits something, something goes away! It even blows up the other guys explosives! We need Rail Guns on the backs of every one of our Marines by the end of this year! There is still lot’s of Moooooslim splodin’ to do and why not let the boys have some fun while they are at it!
I too don’t understand the retirement of the Iowa class battleships. Now, THAT was a boat! Just think about it. We lob a few hundred 16 inch shells (about the same size as a VW Beetle) at our enemy and tell them if they don’t knock it off we are going to break out the really big guns (Rail guns)! I think they may think about giving up and worshiping America for the rest of their miserable lives!
Now we have to solve our other National Security crisis…fat kids. I think we should fire all fat kids through the Rail Gun. It will make a contribution to science and they won’t have to suffer being called a fat homo and stuff all through school. Problem solved for our first “lady”…
Latin motto for the project, “velocitas eradico.” Translation:
Speed destroys.Speed kills.FTFY
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/12/12/2010-12-12_navys_scifi_railgun_breaks_record_for_most_powerful_gun_on_the_planet_video.html#ixzz181lc7TZb
(joke confusing railgun and penile firing here)
#14 beat me to it…
Marko,
I’m no Sailor or Marine either, I was Air Force Wing Wiper Specialist First Class, but I feel your pain. I’m sure it was quite comforting to Marines at the beach in WWII to see those huge guns firing shells the size of large household appliances at their enemies. If I were a Sailor these days, I’d cringe if I had to explain to some Marine all my ship has is little 3 inch pop gun.
Infidel,
Did the pilots let you carry their golf clubs on off days?
Frank says: “Some things transcend politics and change the way we see the world. I’m speaking of course of the Navy’s new railgun.”
I will not be impressed until I see Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage build one out of stuff you can buy at Lowes.
Forward Into The Past! The Germans developed the original rail (as in railway) gun almost a century ago. It had a range of 80 miles and threw a 200 pound projectile. We’re up 20 miles and down 180 pounds.
Marko’s got a pernt as far as the Marines go. If you were pinned down on the beach, would you want be told that the Navy will be sending a 20 pound hyper-speed projectile from 100 miles away, or would you want to call in a rain storm of 2,700 pound rounds from just over the horizon?
How much are we spending on this deal? The Gerries were always good at rail guns. Mebbe we could put them in charge of this project.
“Velocitas Eradico”
I think that’s the spell Harry Potter uses to finally wipe out Voldemort in part II of ‘The Deathly Hallows’ – if not, well, it ought to be!
Burma, I’ll be serious for a moment. I believe there’s probably a middle ground between weeny precision rounds and restoring the good old BB-61 and her sisters. But I also believe that we will one day again find the amphibious assault a viable part of our strategy. When our Marines are going ashore against determined resistance, they will need something more than “smart” bombs and missiles. There are some things that simply cannot be replaced by a totally different thing. I know I am a civilian, but from everything I have ever read, I believe heavy fire support from naval artillery cannot be replicated by anything in our arsenal. My pride in our Marine Corps makes that unacceptable to me.
Since we are living in the future,
I want my flying car now , please.
I heard the original project was for a coil gun, a weapon that would have been even more violently awesome. However, a rail gun technology could be used to theoretically put satellites into orbit, while a coil gun couldn’t. The Clinton Administration not wanting to spend all kinds of crazy money on a gun only, pushed the rail gun concept instead.
My opinion though is very simple. Why not have both?
There is nothing particularly new about this gun. William Sturgeon in 1832 invented the electric motor. The gun is just an electric motor with the armature unwrapped. Electronic variable frequency drives from the 1960’s made it possible to control the acceleration of the motor and vary the speed. As for the 16” gun it is no match. My dad told me he saw them fired in WWII. You could watch the projectile flying in a big slow arc. No match for a 3” bullet going Mach 8.
We should have a battleship with 50 16″ guns on each for each of the 57 states!
Ivan,
If what you say is correct, a 16 inch high explosive shell is even more superior in terms of fire support than a bullet.
The problem with super-sonic ordnance is that it doesn’t give enough time for the bad guys to ask “WTF?” before they die.
FormerHostage, yea but it get’s them the big surprise faster…Mohammad was wrong!
How quickly can we get one on the Mexican border for testing?
@Marko: You and I are of an accord. I’m not entirely enamored of the Army’s fascination with precision guided artillery rounds. There are times when the tactical advantage lies in killing all of the enemy in a wide area and at the same time denying them all access to it.
The joy of artillery has been that it has been highly mobile — as in it can be picked up and dropped via a helicopter — and the rounds are cheap. When the artillery becomes less mobile and more expensive, it becomes relatively indistinguishable from tactical air support. It loses its ability to deny large areas to the enemy.
The history of the latter part of the war in Southeast Asia is pretty well lost; however, it was Creighton Abram’s deployment of artillery that finally made a difference against NVA infiltration. Abrams saw the value in artillery bases along the borders, each with interlocking fields of fire, and this strategy finally crimped the infiltration of men and materiel. Abrams was an amazing general as far as I’m concerned. Although an armored soldier, he was able to implement ground and artillery strategies that finally made a difference, albeit too late.
My point is that I think our over-reliance on precision guided weapons is hamstringing us in Afghanistan. Interlocking artillery fields of fire can deny enemy infiltration routes in ways other weapons cannot.
I don’t know if you are right Burmashave, but there is only one way to test your theory. Of course MLRS’s are pretty good at area denial too.
@Mr. M: The MLRS system is quite a weapon; however, one huge value of standard artillery is that you can rain down rounds all day long every day without any concern about cost. The MLRS is excellent for destroying concentrations; however, it is not as well suited to deny ground to the enemy on a 24/7/365 basis.
The prob is, as is the case for tactical air support, basic cannon artillery is neither sexy nor the route to promotion.
Correction: Instead of “interlocking” I meant “mutually supporting” fields of fire above.
I also like the fact that it’s named after the greatest President, Ronald Railgun.
I’m thinking that this is a satellite killer… Vertical mounting -vs- horizontal. 100 mile range fits the profile. Tag, your it.
Burma, you dedicated a sentence or two to the expense factor. I sometimes get the feeling our military dedicates hundred page “studies” to this topic without once taking into account the fact that artillery can do a lot of things better and for a better price.
P.S., Burma, notice that the Army named a great, great tank after General Abrams. Our guys still know where and whom to give credit.
If the projectile is non-explosive, then it must destroy by transferring its energy to the target.
The further it travels through the atmosphere, the slower it must go because it’s transferring energy to the air as it passes, so although it’s ultimate range may be 100 miles, how much energy will it still have at that range?
I suppose lobbing what amounts to a 25 lb aluminum anvil 100 miles is pretty cool if it still goes Ka-Boom when it lands, and not just goes Thud.
Still, this technology could revolutionize Pumpkin Chucking.