Railguns are nearly "war-ready": how does this change things?

Yeah, sideways because the principle involves electricity going from one side to the other, so some sideways force is involved.

Now, for a different question: does this get us any closer to Spinfusors?

what I normally see in sci-fi is some sort of venting mechanism that uses gas to counteract the kick, whether that's just the displaced gas from the firing itself, or an integral pump.

Wait, was this to one side or was this the spreading force? If it's the spreading force, it's not going to be felt by human.

@ 227, so a recoilless rifle?

nearly, It's hypothetically possible. I'm not sure how practical it would be, at least right now, but it's possible. more likely the recoild would merely be reduced to "gun" not "hamburger grinder"

edited 29th Mar '12 8:02:19 AM by Lanceleoghauni

Either way, it would completely change the design of the machine, you'd need something shoulder mounted or equivalent to fire the gas from.

I'm no gunsmith, least of all an electrical engineer. I only know what they tell me :P

it was mostly just an Idea.

Or my personal answer. Power armour.

I prefer Mini-Mecha, but that could work.

deboss: There is still plenty of recoil going backwards.

It is thought to work one of two ways. One there is the recoil forces similar what we see in chemically propelled rounds only there is no small scale explosion causing it. Instead it is the sudden force the round being pushed by the gun. The round pushes back. It is believed the greatest recoil force will be at the breach.

The other thought is two fold. Instead of the force being at the breach it is traveling down both rails since they are they have the largest contact area with the round. This is also where the sideways force comes in. The force of the magenetic field ont he round as it is being propelled down the barrel pushes back against the rails and pushes them apart.

In either case there is still quite a bit of recoil pushing back on the weapon system. Not as much as if they used chemical propellant to accelerate a projectile to the same speed though. But still quite a bit.

edited 30th Mar '12 7:34:53 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The main issue with RAIL guns is that the forces involved tend to warp them out of alignment.

edited 30th Mar '12 8:49:04 PM by Lanceleoghauni

What man creates, man can also fix if it goes wrong.

When tank main-gun designers ran into problems of thermal management on those, they came up with thermal sleeves that will regulate the barrels temperature, keeping it at a constant level despite the ambient temperature and climate.

They will do the same with any misalignment issues with rail-guns.

Quite a bit of a different task between cooling a main gun with a simple thermal sleeve and countering the warping of metals caused by powerful magnetic forces. You can't really unwarp a metal. There is still also the issue of rapid break down for repeated shots of the rails wearing out due to the stresses. Heat, Friction, and warping.

Have replacement rails/barrels ready?

Basically have round load with rail ready, those barrels are rated to fire some certain shots and after the load's done, change to a new load which contains new set of barrel...

The damaged rails can be kept for recycling after the ship is back to base...

edited 31st Mar '12 9:11:20 AM by onyhow

That takes up a lot of space and negates the advantage of the rail gun carrying more ammo. Also trying to replace a rail in the middle of a fire fight is highly impractical.

Well, if it needs to carry extra rails, then loading the used ones into where the extra were stored wouldn't hurt none.

The fix for the issue of rail wear is using coilguns instead of railguns. Same basic principle, but the electromagnetic force is produced with coils of wire instead of rails. Since the projectile never actually touches the coils, there's no friction, and thus no physical wear and much less heat produced. I imagine that the drawback is that it's much less energy efficient, but I haven't actually seen numbers on that so I'm not certain.

From what I've seen, railguns give alot more punch. Coilguns are being considered for a silent-mortar though.

Coil guns are indeed even more power hungry then a rail gun.

You guys are not getting it. Having to stop and replace the rail is not only inconvenient but also time consuming. Not to mention space consuming. You would be better off with a traditional naval cannon if that is that what you need to do.

No, really? The railgun itself is an advantage. If the rails would have to be replaced, even occasionally, they won't replace naval guns completely but they would still be useful for the long-range and high velocity strikes they're designed for.

Needing rails to be replaced would limit the usefulness, but not eliminate it.

I am afriad that does make it nearly useless. It makes each cost per shot go up signifigantly. IF the gun canot fire at least 100 rounds before needing to swap barrels and components it is useless in every practical sense of the word. Why bother with replacing rails when I can say fuck it and launch a cruise missile which out ranges it and has more accuracy. Better yet we are working the kinks out of the long range Hyper Sonic cruise missiles.

Read the first couple of pages, then skiped the rest because I wanted to point out something:

Railguns could not be as good for indirect/inland fire as misiles. Why? Because of angles of attack and time.

You shoot a mistile and a railgun at a target that you can...

• ..directly see. The Railgun is faster and more likely to hit the target. Oops, it also went through the next few objects after the target and set them on fire.
• ...is behind a hill. The mistile can go over the hill at a relitively low angle and quickly dip downto hit the target with pinpoint acuracy. The railgun? It would have to be fired at a high angle; be subject to gravity and winds; and would not be able to hit a moving target. Though it might work better on buildings/stationary targets.

Basically, the best use I can see for railguns is space combat, where it would likely be more reliable than chemical propellants, should you get them to work in void conditions.

True. And you don't have to worry so much about having thing overheat. Though having mettal heat up and cool down too fast is another problem...

Also, I have to think of that conversation from Mass Effect (paraphrased): "Remember, if you fire your mistile, you are going to ruin somebody's day at some point. It could be a long time till that happens, but you make damn sure you hit your target."

edited 31st Mar '12 12:52:49 PM by Belian

Well, in space there is effectively no friction unless you hit something. You shoot something at 1000 MPH from the moon, baring any collisions it would hit Pluto going 1000 MPH.

Gravity could pull it in, or change it's direction though. It'd be most likely to hit a star, planet, black/worm hole or asteroid than a ship though.

pretty sure that's wrong, you have to worry MORE about it overheating. Space is basically the best insulator I know. You also have to take into account the increase irradiance from stars because of the lack of atmosphere. Even without firing it you'd eventually have to worry about sunlight alone causing problems with heat sensitive systems.

edited 31st Mar '12 1:27:48 PM by Lanceleoghauni