• PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
    132·
    6 hours ago

    Yeah it’s all possible when you asspull nonexistent tech. Oh wait, USA tried to make railgun but failed. In making a gun. In Murica. Let that sink in about how cooked tech research there is if they can’t even make a gun.

    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
      71·
      5 hours ago

      Uh, what? Railguns are a tech as old as time, i highly doubt the US was the first to create one. I could throw a railgun together in about 30 minutes with the stuff i have laying around the house. They are INCREDIBLY simple, literally 1 moving part and no circutry whatsoever. Just hook your positive to one rail, negative to the other. Right hand rule tells you which direction your projectile will fire.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
        4·
        4 hours ago

        Yet they still failed to make railgun which would be viable as military weapon (iirc they intended to make it main weaponry for USS Zumwalt)

      • Ignotum@lemmy.world
        4·
        5 hours ago

        The issue is that large scale railguns tend to self destruct, either from the heat or from the immense forces, so it can only fire a few shots before it needs extensive maintenance, and the time it takes to recharge is quite long in most practical applications (warships and such) which is why the american military has given up on the concept.

        For launching stuff you have the same issues, except you now the payload isn’t a solid piece of metal but an intricate component which somehow needs to survive the insane acceleration (unless you use a really long barrel)

        • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
          24·
          4 hours ago

          The first issue is definitely solvable, thats just a material science issue. The second one is also definitely possible, but depending on the payload it might be very difficult. Seems easier to just accelerate a tungsten sphere to mach 4 than to bother with a warhead.

          For the intense heat, thats a waste product. Get rid of it by not producing it in the first place. Which means your rails are now cryocooled superconductors.

          For the immense forces, i might need to look into railguns again. Afaik the only force that isnt being counteracted is the force on the projectile. I might be wrong at those power levels, while the net force should be zero the force on the arms could be opposite, ripping the railgun apart or crushing it. The solution i would think is coiling your rails around the barrel, now the rails effectively act as their own support with a minor bracing.

          For the record, i didnt put it together that he was referring specifically to the large models. I just knew i made a rail gun back in high school and its wasnt difficult, so the idea that the US govt cant copy my project struck me as absurd.

          Finally, im a hobby electrician with my passions lying more in technology and futurism, so i have looked into railguns in passing but I do not work for the military nor have i looked into the specifics of the large scale models, so corrections are more than welcome.

          • Ignotum@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 hours ago

            Yeah the first issue is in theory solvable, but they never managed to do it, not in a practical manner at least (huge cryocooled superconductors is probably not very practical)

            The forces are from the immense magnetic fields, two parallel wires with current in opposite directions will repel eachother, so the rails are trying to move apart from eachother

            This plus the heat causing material expansion plus the rails needing to be very straight for it all to work, and you end up having a bit of an engineering headache on your hands

            But yeah it’s mainly when you build large ones meant to fire things at really really high speeds, maybe we’ll find a way to improve it one day, but for now it’s sadly dead in the water (in the military sector at least, but they tend to be the main driving force behind technology that fires things)

  • freshcow@lemmy.world
    21·
    11 hours ago

    “GW per year” and “TW per year” is nonsense.
    Watts is a unit of power, which is energy per second.
    Im not sure Musk even understands what a Watt is, he just wants to sound smart.