Re: Railgun

Okay I'm going to try One more time. I think I can be understood this
time.

Once upon a time in the Real World...

The Railgun, from the "military" perspective is a misnomer. From the
scientific perspective a gun is any form of "matter projector" from a
pop
gun to a supercollider. This matter may be anything from a five ton
boulder
to one electron or less. It does not mean that it has any real military
value.

The *BASIC* Railgun, the scientific device,  comprises two rails from
one to
three feet in length, one capacitor of one to twenty Farads, not
microfarad
capacitors used in electronics, and a spool of common copper wire, cut
into
strips long enough to reach between the rails. Drop the wire on the
rails
completing the circut, the wire is vaporised, the rails are magnetised,
and
the plasma state wire is sent off along the axis of the gun. This device
has
no military value, This is what is called a Rail Gun, Rail for the two
stainless steel rails, gun for "matter projector".

The Rail Gun is a scientific device used for studying the effects of
plasma,
a state of matter with properties similar to energy, when it collides
with
other substances. Between twenty and thirty-five years ago: one
theorised
use of such research may have been to create some sort of "matter
/energy"
transmission. If you can find a substance that will conduct plasma like
energy, not be anniahalated when it hits it like matter, you can
transmit
matter "as energy", and we'll get around to rebuilding the object when
we
can get it there. Rember much of the "Academic" research at the early
and
middle part of the atomic age was trying to figure out how to accomplish
all
those marvelous technologies that appeared in "pulp" sci-fi, not on the
effects of rock-and-roll on fruit flies or wether salsa is a vegetable.
Of
course no substance has been found that can "conduct" plasma and such
research was (publicly) abandoned (nah, I don't believe in *FNORD*).

    The Railgun was the orphan child of this research, and was left to
demented engineering students to do with as they will. One such demented
engineering student, his identity lost to the mists of time (or a
research
archive somewhere) noticed similarities between the plasma in a railgun
and
the propellant of a chem.slugthrower. Both expanded along the axis of
the
device, the gunpowder contained by the barrel and the plasma contained
by
the magnetic field. The plasma has three important advantages over
gunpowder. The difference between the temprature of the air and the
temprature of a gunpowder "burn" versus the difference between the
temprature of plasma and the temprature of the surrounding air meant
that
the plasma had more force, more "desire", to move to a state of
equilibrium
with the environment, the upshot of which was the plasma expands faster,
able to impart more kinetic energy to a "slug" (penetrator rod,
whatever).
The second advantage was that the Railgun "pushes" the plasma "event"
(meaning "all the interesting stuff", for our purpouses this means burn
or
explosion)  forward, where a gunpowder "event" has a "static" location
in
the gun. The movement of the plasma event adds that more kinetic energy
to
our slug. The final and important advantage was with regards to our
friend
Issac Newton. The copper wire that is used as the propellant has
negligeable
weight when compared to the weight of the entire assembally.  Throwing
the
plasma made up of the wire forward has such a negligeable effect on the
gun
that "Felt Recoil" the important bit, was negligeable. The fact that the
plasma was moving forward at a similar rate to it's expansion meant that
the
gun itself never got the kick from the plasma expansion. The entire
effect
was more like a rocket or an "Orion Engine" than like a traditional gun.
So
conservation of energy askes how does this move a slug? The energy comes
from the capacitor moving the plasma in a similar manner to a mass
driver
cannon, rember that a capacitor big enough to propell a slug of military
value can kill an entire herd of cattle standing in inch deep water.

Now for the problems which the soultions are probably still classified,
rember the railgun "Ignition system" has been around for a long time.

How do you keep the plasma from overtaking the round
How do you keep the plasma from destroying the round
How can you get the rate of fire up to respectable levels
    (The chief problem here being that you have to charge enormous
capacitor
banks to make this thing work)

******
    Okay so the military uses the term Railgun to refer to the final
Hypervelocity Penetrator Round	version of this device, Why should we as
Sci-Fi gamers care differently. Answer: The Railgun is an ancestor that
can
have many different descendants, not just the plasma propelled HKP
thrower.
The railgun system can use the plasma itself as a projectile in multiple
ways. The Thrust Nozzle I have heard about, Oerjan Ohlson pointed out a
lot
of defencies in that system, My response is that we need those demented
engineering students to figure out the answers to those problems, not
just
say it can't be done. My dad was one of those demented geo-magnetists
that
was trying to garage-build (Dorm-build?) a device to prove that it could
be
done, and, on accident, took out his own stereo system with it. Plasma
physics can be studied by hitting a quantity of plasma with pulses from
microwave emitters, the process sets the plasma up in orbits that
generates
magnetic fields which contain the plasma in those orbits, moving this
ball
becomes a tricky proposition as anything that touches it will be
anniahlated. This has been done for more than twenty years.
Theoretically if
you have a "Ball" of plasma that already has a kinetic motion, say fired
from a railgun, and you hit it just as it clears the rails with the
microwave pulse emitters, you can have a VERY long range weapon, as the
plasma will remain stable for better than the length of the gun to the
horizon, possibly even as a surface to orbit planetary defence system.
    If we pidgeonhole the railgun as simply a method of delivering HKP
rounds, other methods of inquiry may be closed to us later. To wit: The
"Year 2000 Bug" was a result not of any one person's failure, but the
tendency to say "It's always been that way, why change it?". Even when
the
CMOS was sufficient to handle SIXTEEN digits for the date, "It had
always
been two digits. We can use that storage for something else." Now were
scrambling to fix the problem before being catapulted back en-masse to
the
year 1900 to do it all over again until we get it right.

Railguns, computer CMOS, and future choices: what's the connection?

    As a Sci-Fi junkie myself I recognize that in some way all of us as
Sci-Fi fanatics are responsible for keeping the dream alive, *ANY* dream
from space travel, to replicators for all. Even weapons have their place
in
that heritage: without the German V2 missile we could have never gone to
the
moon, much less have had satelite T.V., Global positioning systems to
improve everything from archaeology to farming, non stick cookware, the
personal computer you are reading this on is a decendant of a machine of
war. We may not be able to recognise the repricussions of the weapons we
build today, but who knows? A Railgun ignited plasma drive may be the
key to
FTL travel, or a controlled plasma bust cure cancer. How? Don't ask me,
I'm
just the dreamer.

    Science Fiction, and those of us that participate in it, in any way,
are
an integral part of modern progress, and even progress throught the
centuries. We, the dreamers, the wishers, the thinkers, we ask questions
that simply come to us "What if I could...?" or "I want....". The
demented
engineering students ask themselves "How can I build that?". Even the
mundanes and skeptics have their place. Nothing in the world is quite as
powerfull to our species as the challenge in proving the statement "It
can't
be done." wrong.

******
Sorry if I became too philosophical for this list but it's important to
me.
When I was young I dreamed of becoming a Xeno-Geologist, At the time I
said
I wanted to study moon and mars rocks. I rember when school stopped for
a
shuttle launch. Every T.V avalable was placed around the school, and
classes
were herded to within sight of them. I rember the first day this didn't
happen was the day the Challenger exploded. Then it seemed sadly
prophetic
in a way. It still does.

Jim Whitehead