this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
36 points (89.1% liked)
Videos
14264 readers
313 users here now
For sharing interesting videos from around the Web!
Rules
- Videos only
- Follow the global Mastodon.World rules and the Lemmy.World TOS while posting and commenting.
- Don't be a jerk
- No advertising
- No political videos, post those to [email protected] instead.
- Avoid clickbait titles. (Tip: Use dearrow)
- Link directly to the video source and not for example an embedded video in an article or tracked sharing link.
- Duplicate posts may be removed
Note: bans may apply to both [email protected] and [email protected]
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So.... Wouldn't a railgun system be able to do the same thing with less energy consumption?
I think it would have to be crazy long up the side of a mountain or something to work. I always thought that would be cool to see. I'm just an ignorant layperson though. I know little of the actual science, but I have read a lot of science fiction in my life.
I don't think it would need to be all that long. The Navy considered putting railguns on ships, they decided against it because they figured out pretty quickly that the munitions would have to be shot lower than the horizon so that they weren't firing shots into space, if they missed the target.
I was wondering why they would care about firing shots into space, but then I realized that it's probably not enough velocity to escape our orbit and would just add to the orbital debris issue.
If the velocity was such that the projectile could exit our orbit, it would probably be less risky.
There's an interesting excerpt from one of the Expanse books about how all the rounds they fire from their space ships are probably going to travel through space for millions of years before they actually hit something.