U.S. Navy's Electromagnetic Railgun Fires Its 1,000th Shot
Nov 2nd, 2011, 1:49 pm
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As you may or may not know, the U.S. Navy has a prototype electromagnetic railgun. Sound a little futuristic? It is, and that’s why the 1,000 test-shot landmark is such a big deal. If these things are every going to go into wide use, they need to be proven to be reliable first, and this prototype is well on its way to doing that. As for powerful? It has already proven that. It has been testing with around 1.5 megajoule launch energy. How much is that? We’ll let the Navy handle that one. From the press release: “a one-ton vehicle moving at 100 mph has approximately one megajoule of kinetic energy.” Yeah.
(via Engadget)
- A video of the gun firing a projectile 7 times faster than the speed of sound
- Iran has a functioning railgun too, probably not a big deal
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