Railguns: The Kinetic Future of Warfare

As seen in XCOM.

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[km]

its basically the next technological tier of throwing a sharp stick really fast

[Theo-evyu]

Just for the sake of comparison on barrel life to keep things in perspective: The barrel life of an Iowa-class battleship's 16" gun was around 300 shells, more or less depending on how many full or partial powder charges were put through the gun. Although, the 5" guns the same class carried had barrels that last for 4600 full charge firings.

[davidcoghill]

Simon is everything the Discovery and history channels should be.

[MrMuki]

One thing to note - there is already a railgun in combat service, but it's projectile are fighter jets. The electromagnetic catapult system on the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers. The side note here, is that those ships have a nuclear reactor to power the damn thing.

[WarpFactor]

Suggestion: How Sir Simon successfully manages his infinite number of channels... and growing daily.

[zerosixteen.]

The railgun reminds me of the huge sniper in Evangelion where they used all of the elctricity in Japan just to fire the gun

[ignitionfrn]

1:25 - Chapter 1 - How it works
3:15 - Chapter 2 - History
7:00 - Chapter 3 - Potential problems
8:30 - Chapter 4 - Accuracy
9:30 - Chapter 5 - Modern railguns
12:10 - Chapter 6 - The future of warfare

[paxamericania]

My dad machined a few parts gor the railgun that is much as he could tell me that he machined parts. Bless his soul as cancer stole him from this world. I hope he is up in heaven.

[redjak]

Another Megaprojects suggestion: The cameras that recorded the projectiles in flight.

[FlesHBoX]

7:49 I love how you can see the sabot behind the round, quickly losing ground, but still with a mach cone...

[WillPittenger]

You should do an alternative to the rail gun: the coil gun. Also, please include space applications. These devices have been talked about as mass drivers for vehicle launches from the Moon.

[Lucy-dkcz]

New idea for Simon’s nested channel: Cancelled Projects

[mattbell]

Simon: we could start launching spacecraft daily if we needed to
SpaceX: gestures broadly

[kaltaron]

Using cannons to get stuff into space? Jules Verne would be proud.

[mikepayne]

I highly recommend the tv series The Expanse. It features rail guns and shows how devastating they can be.

[danielm]

The rail gun to launch spacecraft is featured prominently in Gundam Seed, they refer to them as mass drivers in the show. Though they don't specifically talk about that piece of tech, you can tell that's what they are by the way they are depicted and destroyed.

[samsecretary]

alrighty-- you got me with the "As seen on XCOM"

props, and watch out for grenades on your landing craft.

[KMACKTIME]

Used a rail gun in halo 4, was meh power weapon. Perhaps they should look into a rifle that shoots beams or explosive needles

[TheAunvre]

He actually missed the largest problem with railguns, and the real reason militaries are putting less time into them. *Energy transfer.*
Studying terminal ballistics taught us a long time ago that too much power in a projectile will actually reduce effectiveness. Like neutrons, the vast majority of energy is dispersed just before the object stops - if a projectile blows through an object too easily, very little of the energy is imparted on the struck object. The deck-mounted railgun was punching clean holes directly through target ships. Small arms found a way around this with hollow-point (the round disintegrates, which causes 100% of energy to be imparted on the target), but it's been an issue finding a similar solution for ammunition under the acceleration stress of rail rounds.

Railguns might retain a place in the future as they have incredible range, incredible potential energy (if the correct target is found), and practically no way of neutralizing (defending against) them. They're certainly not practical in most applications though.

[psycommu]

Everybody gangsta till someone makes a stationary beam magnum from gundam.