Re: railguns

Los wrote:

> A question for you propellor heads. At what velocity do you think a
decent
> railgun projector (ala KV design) would spit out its slugs and how
large
> would they be?

It depends on the precision in your targetting sensors, the size of the
target and the ranges you want to hit at. Assuming the "standard FT
scales" and shotgun-style fire with several (preferrably *lots* of)
projectiles into the target volume each time you fire, aiming to
achieve the MT railgun hit probabilites, 3000 km/s (0.01c) might be
sufficient... How to achieve such velocities is another matter
entirely, but who knows what tech will be available in the future?

At those speeds, the slugs don't need to be very large - the kinetic
energy of a 10-gram slug travelling at 0.01c is IIRC about one kTon,
but don't quote me on that yet since my reference books are at work :-(

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