railguns

[Evodavich]

Here's an insane idea can u use a railgun to increase the range of a particale cannon or mpac rounds

Why i asked if the particale cannon fire magnetic particale and cause mpac rounds are in a magnetic bubble (jason already knows how to counter mpac rounds with his mag sheild idea)

[Vash360]

I'm sure fel could come up with many different ideas to make them any more dangerous. He hasn't disappointed us yet lol

[SYED]

Are there any ftl energy weapons? Some of the plans are to make cesna sized ammo, with in built cloaking and steering capability. If it was armed with ftl or just really fast energy weapon, the bullet can fire as to approaches.
Can rail guns get refitted with that new ftl tech, so any projectile would be more than ftl, so by pass defences and cause internal damage first.

[Spec8472]

Someone went and built a Gauss (rail) Gun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... WeJsaCiGQ0

Not high powered, but y'know...

[imthejman85]

Railguns don't need any explosive to put a LOT of energy into a target. The largest unclassified railgun in the world at the moment shoots a 40lb projectile at about 5.6k mph,the equivalent energy of 32 "1-ton car being thrust at 100 mph."
http://gizmodo.com/5889004/the-military ... eally-real

Now scale that up to a projectile weight several thousand times that mass and traveling at 1/5th the speed of light. The most you might want to do is shape the projectile to ensure it disintegrates on impact instead of punches completely through a target. Once that happens, as Fel stated earlier, the projectile itself vaporizes and you have gas metal traveling at 24,000 miles per hour tearing through whatever it hits. You're talking pressures and temperatures alone that could tear a ship apart, let alone any crew on the ship. Adding any explosive, up to and including anti-matter, would be redundant in the extreme. That would be like using a M.O.A.B. to kill a spider.....

On another note, the best overall shaped projectile for space-based rail cannons I can think of would probably be a relatively thin cone at the front with the back of the projectile flared outwards. The front cone is made of the hardest material you can make it with with very thin weakened lines along the sides for the next step. The cone punches into the target, and when the back end contacts the hull of the target the energy of motion alone literally rips the projectile apart along the slightly weakened lines as it punches further into the ship. From there, simple laws of motion take over and you have the aforementioned battering ram Fel inferred in his own post earlier.

[SYED]

Since rail guns are capable of very long distance firing, fighters might still be useful, if weaponry is changed to railguns, and the projectile has minor ability to change it trajectory and has inbuilt stealth.