Leaving the projectile out of this means more options for projectile composition. The plasma then conducts the electricity, closing the loop that provides propulsive force. Plasma armatures are used on some railgun projectiles - the armature is behind the projectile and gets turned to plasma when the electricity comes on. Using a superconductor for projectile or rails sidesteps much of the current issues with ohmic heating and rail ablation.Īnother idea I had for railguns was more plasma. You know that because already are thinking along those lines with your high temp superconductors. Railguns can be made into sweet near future scifi with nonmagical real physics-based schemes. If you are trying to shoot things in real life, work on the coil guns and you may be on the wrong website.
So is commuting with your Prius as opposed to your jetpack. At the end of the day they are glorified doorbells. Because you are writing awesome fiction, not working for DARPA.Ĭoilguns have a limited upside for awesomeness. Coilguns, on the other hand, are limited mostly by timing and design issues, which are much easier to deal with today, and therefore make coilguns more practical for tank cannons (assuming current technology). In conclusion, although the railgun has arguably received more attention, there are some strong material limitations with it's usage in war. NASA has many uses for coilguns, and is actively pursuing it's usage.The biggest issue with coilguns is timing, but the issues with timing in coilguns dates from WWII on to the 1980s, which is now much easier to deal with via computers.Although coilguns typically have lower velocities than rail guns, tanks don't need to fire at the same distance/velocity as the Navy needed in the first link above.This really only leaves coilguns - mostly for their capacity for fire regularly. These parameters are well beyond the state of the art in materials science. The barrel must withstand these conditions for up to several rounds per minute for thousands of shots without failure or significant degradation.
At this time it is generally acknowledged that it will take major breakthroughs in materials science and related disciplines to produce high-powered railguns capable of firing more than a few shots from a single set of rails. Under high-use conditions, current railguns would require frequent replacement of the rails, or to use a heat-resistant material that would be conductive enough to produce the same effect. The heat generated from the propulsion of the object is enough to erode the rails rapidly. Wikipedia summarizes the challenges of rail guns (emphasis mine): Physics problems, such as barrel life, are rather less amen able to such brute force solutions, and are the reason that not everything that can be described can be built, or built in a useful form. Engineering problems, such as the size of pulse power units, are engineering problems that can be resolved with suitable applications of time and money. Railguns face two types of problems : engineering problems, and physics problems. How is it possible to shoot more than about three or four rounds out of an EM rail gun before having to change the barrel? How is it possible to build the kind of pulse forming networks that are needed to be able to shoot not direct fire weapons, but 200 mile indirect fire weapons? There is a lot of potential that a capability like EM rail gun could bring.
#Towermadness 2 plasma vs railgun how to
There are a number of things the Navy still doesn't know how to do. The Navy is documented of having been developing rail guns as weapons as far back as 2005, yet as of 2018 there have been some hugely limiting problems: Unfortunately, however, there have been some major setbacks. Ironically, rail guns have arguably received more attention for development in military applications.
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