http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/13/32mj_railgun_test_onr/

That’s some gun!

“potentially offering 200 mile range with projectiles striking at Mach 5, before trying to build an actual weapon”

😯

Hardly innovative. William Gibson described a blimp mounted railgun using chunks of ice to destroy a research facility in Arizona in his book Neuromancer, published in 1982. They’ve been trying to perfect the tech for nearly thirty years or so. One day they’ll get it sorted. A high power railgun lobbing ten kilos of ice at orbital velocities would be like using a suitcase nuke but without the unpleasant fallout issues. Instant urban renewal.

Got to like the pig latin motto on the end credits

How does it actually work? I don’t understand it.

Targetting might be an issue.

Hardly innovative. William Gibson described a blimp mounted railgun using chunks of ice to destroy a research facility in Arizona in his book Neuromancer, published in 1982.

Pah. Gibson is hardly original. Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress featured a rail gun in 1962.

And it was first patented in 1922. A full century before we see one in operational service?

Arthur C Clarke described a railgun as the launch system for a reusable, orbital spacecraft in 1949 🙂

I bet someone can beat 1922.

Dan Brown describes a late mediaeval tapestry depicting a rail gun held in a secret chamber in the Vatican in Angels and Demons

Elfin, it uses magnetic induction to propel an object at high velocity, but it requires a lot of power, or else room temperature superconductors to get the velocity, and the projectile needs to be in a discarding sabot so you could use just about anything as it’s kinetic energy that does the damage. Gibsons version uses a chunk of ice travelling at 17000mph; meteoric velocities. You could level central London with around 20Kg of supercooled ice.

*chuckles*

Jules Verne 1865ish?

A super-high-velocity gun, operating on electrical energy instead of an explosive propellant, has been a minor scientific dream for some time. The idea is not new; for it was tried by the French in World War I.

So I guess that beats 1922.

http://greyfalcon.us/Electric%20Cannon%20Uses%20No%20Gunpowder.htm

Actually I’d forgotten Clarke, as I haven’t read the book in a long while, whereas I regularly re-read all of Gibson’s books, and actually met him in Brighton at a Worldcon. Lovely bloke.
I digress, interestingly, Mach 8, 5280mph, or 2722.32 m / s, is the speed that Aurora, the SR-71’s alleged replacement supposedly flies at. Probably no correlation there, but it might be the only weapon that could shoot one down.