Re: Weapon Naming Madness!

Jim Whitehead wrote:

[snip]

> >This is pure fantasy. Railguns - what you call "Gauss" guns ....
> 
> I do not claim Railguns and Gauss guns are the same thing. With what
I > have recently learned Railguns use metal plasma as a propellent,
and 
> accelerate the already expanding plasma with the magnetic field.

This is, again, not what is normally meant with a "railgun" by today's
weapon developers. Several others have sent URLs to websites where the
railgun principle is described so I won't repeat it here, but any metal
plasma in the bore comes from parts of the sabot vaporising. It is a
bi-product, not the propellant - the driving force is purely
electro-magnetic.

Some railgun designs use gas pressure (not a plasma; any gas -
including powder gas - works just fine) to give the projectile an
initial velocity before the driving current is turned on, in order to
avoid welding the projectile stuck onto the rails and to get a smoother
shot; this may be what you are thinking of.

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry