I helped build and design the thing!
Last Thursday the Guiness Book of World Records officiated this to be a world record for most powerful rail gun ever. The launch they witnessed (and can publish) was 9.96 MegaJoules of energy. I'll save you guys from digging around for old physics notes. The hunk of aluminum we call a bullet left the gun at over Mach7 or 3.2 kilometers/second. Your accord would have to travel 123km/sec or 276,000 mi/hr to acheive the same energy disapated by this gun... and it's at 1/3 max power.
Earlier I said the lanuch Guiness could publish because anything over 10MegaJoules is classified information. That's right, they're checking my background right now. My life is under the FBI's microscope to determine if I'm allowed "secret" clearance.
Anyways, on with the video and pictures.
Video of the launch:
http://www.livescience.com/php/video...080201-railgun
Yahoo's article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...blescifiweapon
Official press release from the navy:
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.a...d=34718&page=1
More pictures:
http://www.navy.mil/list_all.asp?id=34718
I think it's cool that we're actually going to use a bigger version of this in battle. Hopefully there are a few other engineers or nerds here that will appreciate this.
Last Thursday the Guiness Book of World Records officiated this to be a world record for most powerful rail gun ever. The launch they witnessed (and can publish) was 9.96 MegaJoules of energy. I'll save you guys from digging around for old physics notes. The hunk of aluminum we call a bullet left the gun at over Mach7 or 3.2 kilometers/second. Your accord would have to travel 123km/sec or 276,000 mi/hr to acheive the same energy disapated by this gun... and it's at 1/3 max power.
Earlier I said the lanuch Guiness could publish because anything over 10MegaJoules is classified information. That's right, they're checking my background right now. My life is under the FBI's microscope to determine if I'm allowed "secret" clearance.
Anyways, on with the video and pictures.
Video of the launch:
http://www.livescience.com/php/video...080201-railgun
Yahoo's article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...blescifiweapon
Official press release from the navy:
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.a...d=34718&page=1
More pictures:
http://www.navy.mil/list_all.asp?id=34718
I think it's cool that we're actually going to use a bigger version of this in battle. Hopefully there are a few other engineers or nerds here that will appreciate this.
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