2008 Naval Rail Gun Fire Testing

In the demonstration Thursday, Jan. 31 2008, engineers fired the electromagnetic railgun at what they said was a record power level: 10 megajoules.

The previous railgun power-use record was about 9 megajoules of muzzle energy.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• navy
• naval
• rail
• railgun
• gun
• future
• weapon
• military

[TacereM]

Why at night?

[Insaneroy]

Make a better effects, i guess.

[choctaw111]

Impressive. What was the weight of the projectile and how fast was it going?

[cubefreak123]

@Jimera0 Ever read the Halo books? The MAC cannons on the UNSC ships were giant magnetic cannons, i.e. railguns. But I am interested to see what they come up with after this.

[Jimera0]

They're actually going to fit a massive version of this thing on warships. This bigger, badder version is predicted to be more powerful than a Tomahawk missile.

It's expected to be ready in around 10-15 years. My friends, the future is here, and it includes bad-ass explosive free guns that fire projectiles so fast they ignite the freaking air around them.

Fuck the Covenant, we'll have them beat in about 50 years.

[Ralph12344]

nah it has the same effect but they just edited the color to make it look cool

[lightfdar]

Not necessarily depends on what you make the rounds out of and the type of environment you fire the in. Bare in mind that you have new high strength materials and way of making old materials stronger eg carbon cylinders and ceramics. Conditions as using a electric field to charge the air molecules and set the bullet at the same charge so as it is fired the air molecules are repelled. I am sure there are lots of ideas to get this to work never say never lol

[SANCTIOND]

True. This has lead to a lot of descent over the absence of human direct energy weapons (aka Laser guns) in those games. Apparently, a lot of people don't like the idea of humans still using primitive projectile weapons two whole centuries from now XD

[gettotheGate]

The problem with games like Halo, Mass Effect, and any other set in the future, is that they seem to always underestimate humanities insatiable lust for better technology. We have guns that fire around corners, fire-and-forget infantry weapons, we're on the cusp of unlocking holography, railgun weaponry and nanotechnology,. But what so many forget is that, since humanities dawn, war has birthed almost every new technology or improved technology we have.

[SANCTIOND]

This is suddenly zipping me ahead to the HALO universe where the humans of the UNSC developed ship-mounted railguns (well, more like railgun-mounted ship considering the ship was built around the massive weapon) that could fire a 600 ton Solid Ferric-Tungsten round. Or, the more powerful Orbital Defense Railgun that could fire 3000 ton Tungsten rounds. Things could split whole Covenant carriers in half! :)

It's exciting and frightening to know, we're on our way to a future very much like that...

[Tannerislegend]

so im guessing the rail gun from transformers 2 is just a bit more advanced

[snipedsniper18]

ROFLMAO