From: djwj <djwj@e...>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 02:25:51 -0700
Subject: Re: Weapon Naming Madness!
> Oerjan Ohlson wrote: > In the same collection of symposium proceedings I mentioned above, DERA The only Railgun I was introduced to was my dad's homebuilt. It did not use the plasma to propell a slug, but used the plasma as a projectile itself. I haven't really had the time to look in on the latest technology in Railguns. In effect I knew of using a powder slugthrower without the slug. > 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. Gauss guns use the magnetic field itself as a propellent, theoretically running much cooler than an equavelent Railgun, but as you said there isn't much out on working Gauss guns (what you called Coilguns). Some space exploration scientists and companies (which ones at the moment excape me, try any of the major colleges, especially in california, or Florida Institute of Technology, right next door to Cape Kennedy Space Center) theorise using a gauss mass driver to propell cargo containers made from a certain composition from a low G planetary body (Luna, the asteroids or the martian moons), the recieving craft can simply drop the empty containers from orbit. This is typicaly used in extraterrestrial mining concepts to avoid trying to ship or generate masses of engine propellent. I haven't had the time to look in on this recently, and am not entirely sure what new has come of it if anything. It may have been usurped by classified projects looking into making a weapon out of it, I wouldn't be suprised ;-)