![](\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/files\/14430\/railgun_x220.jpg\")
I’ve always loved the name ‘rail gun’ – of all the various futuristic weapons concepts I’ve encountered, it’s probably the most down to earth name. And, since it’s based on an idea you can replicate at home with a bunch of wire and a battery, it’s always seemed one of the most practical.<\/p>\n
The US Navy’s been interested in rail guns for use on their various capital ships – they’re aiming for a 64 MJ version that will be able to lob projectiles up to 200 miles.<\/p>\n
A recent article in the MIT Technology Review<\/a> describes a 10 MJ gun which is nonetheless scarily impressive. Particularly because, at over 2 kilometres a second, a 3 kg slug is travelling fast enough to cause flakes of aluminium on it to spontaneously combust, leaving an impressive fiery tail.<\/p>\n Video<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve always loved the name ‘rail gun’ – of all the various futuristic weapons concepts I’ve encountered, it’s probably the most down to earth name. And, since it’s based on an idea you can replicate at home with a bunch of wire and a battery, it’s always seemed one of the most practical. The US\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[23,6],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scitech","category-the-future","tag-awesome","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}