The Deadly Coilgun/Railgun Hybrid You've Never Heard Of (Helical Railguns)
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- Опубликовано: 22 сен 2024
- Spacedock delves into the pros and cons of Railguns and Coilguns, as well as a couple of advanced
variations on the principle.
Luke Campbell's Galactic Library article on Helical Railguns!
ttps://www.galacticlibrary.net/wiki/Helical_railguns
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Luke Campbell's Galactic Library article on Helical Railguns!
ttps://www.galacticlibrary.net/wiki/Helical_railguns
how about we took the helical barrel design, but the round a solid metal shaped like the helical round, the coils would make the round levitate (so theoretically, it won't make contact with the rail inside the coil barrel) and then the rail will be the main propellent of the gun
Weirdly I paused the video and was about to suggest something similar to that Rocket Gun just as you started talking about it. Must be because you like mentioning Plasma so much on this channel that I thought of it before you even mentioned it.
Take a look at the newest aircraft carrier launching system.
I've always thought of this concept as a "Hyraco" Hy-brid Ra-il Co-il in my head.
How about a hybrit of chemical gun and a electromagnetic one
Enemy: I cast fireball!
Me: I cast Professor Winterburg's
Electromagnetic Rocket Gun!
Testicular Torsion!
@@akam9919
I cast nuke. (He said his voice squeaking as if freshly cleaned)
@@FireFox64000000 I cast close buthole!
@@akam9919 You HAVE testicles?
You use magic? Let me show you the power of physics (proceed to launch a bullet twice the speed of sound towards him)
Hey, the cross-section art of the Hyperion from StarCraft 2 has described some of its weapons as Helical Railguns!
I didn't know that. Very cool
@@rayzerot Yep. Said helical railguns are found on the Hyperion's hammerhead front (top and bottom parts) and 'wings' (same as the hammerhead front, but only fewer guns).
I just read that image and the helical part comes from the double helix path of the rails, sadly not a hybrid.
@@meestur6210 Yeah that's the other use of "helical railgun" I've seen around, with the twisted rails imparting spin on the projectile for accuracy.
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
The PD/CIWS guns we see in the cutscenes right?
+1 for showing Worf being hit by a hollow plastic barrel 😂
Hollow? It was full of air! 😋
Only his ego got hurt. ;)
@@chrisstevens2 Seriously, what kind of warrior let's himself get hit by a barrel falling off a shelf?! If Worf is after you, just pull a Robert McCall and hideout in the nearest Home Depot.
@@trplankowner3323
Take him out with some weird _Home Alone_ shenanigans.
@@chrisstevens2 His ego, as well as health and safety. Seriously, who the hell puts something heavy on a shelf inside of a ship that might rock about at any moment? Even a one in ten year occurrence probability is too much when the solution is so simple and completely solved in the modern day, or 50 years ago in the past for that matter.
Worf vs Empty Barrel is the most brutal form of combat.
The House of Barrel gained much Honor that Day.
You see, the barrel beating Worf is the showrunners subtle storytelling letting us know how dangerous a foe the barrel truly is
Many of my warship based federation ships on STO are usually named "USS Worf's Barrel."
Borg realizing Klingon weakness to barrel: " These people aren't even worth assimilating." Captain Janeway then sends Borg hub Klingon take-out, for which they are completely unprepared.
Man, that's a lot of Space Engineers footage. I love space engineers!!
same
The clue is that the planet is weirdly small
and the music at the begining is from se I think
I was very happy to see Space Engineers getting some love, too. Praised be Klang!
Klang is a myth! XD
3:38 DRG has one of my favorite coil guns. It literally puts a pin-sized hole through everything, including rock, in a straight line!
In the aftermath of a firefight, the entire environment looks like Swiss cheese!
My go to for the coilgun is always to put the Mole overclock on it and just do silly stuff!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
@@hoojiwanahave engineer make a platform stack and you're putting the "cheese" in swiss cheese :P absolutely deletes dreads too
For anyone who doesn't know, the coilgun drills a how through everything by default, but the Mole overclock makes it so going through terrain first actually increases damage. Of course shooting an enemy through a wall is tricky, but there is a tool to highlight enemies. If the projectile passes through multiple objects (with air between them) damage is boosted for each. So there is an exploit where you have a platform filled with holes, the projectile alternates between air and solid platform several times achieving absurd damage.
@@MrQuantumInc I like to shoot dreadnought eggs from spawn with it
I am a big fan of the Shard Diffractor with explosion when you shoot a platform, especially with multiple engis. But each pierced terrain with Coil Gun + Mole stacks 100% damage that the Shard Diffractor explosion does, that is nuts!
I thoroughly enjoy the scientific use of "yeet" on this channel.
One of the primary reasons why militaries are looking into railguns and coilguns is to replace missiles for very long range firepower, as missiles are hella expensive per unit, while railgun ammunition and the electricity needed to propel it would cost pennies in comparison. As such, in my mind the helical railgun kinda goes against this premise with its much more complex ammunition.
Could still be cheaper than missiles, even if not quite as cheap as simpler shells.
@@lorddaro7771And the high speed means lower time to target, which could be handy
Idunno man a fancy wire pattern and existing coil magnets are surely cheaper then the integrated computers and cameras of long distance missles.
On a scale of "cannon ammo" to "missiles", the helical railgun ammo is very much on the "cannon ammo" side of things.
Cannon ammo is actually surprisingly complex even tho there's no electrical things happening, just watch a video about the development of naval shells over the years leading up to the Dreadnought era to see what I mean.
As far as the hybrid railgun's ammo goes, materials science is here to save the day. There's plenty of alloys that use mostly copper and tugnsten out there, and they're used exactly where you'd think they would be used, where you have a lot of abrasion but need to transfer a lot of electricity. Think things like spot welder contact points, where you need to transfer a lot of electricity, don't want the contact to melt, but you also don't want it to get stuck to the other metal that you're actually welding. Tungsten/Copper alloys are great for that (there are usually some other small presences of intentional alloying elements to adjust properties to suit the application as best as possible).
All you really need for the "ring" contacts which are (in this video) ahead of the projectile's coil is a series of circular sections around the outside radius of the projectile, hinged at the front and sprung to push them into firm contact with the helical coil of the barrel itself. This allows easy feeding of the projectiles into the barrel, as there is a natural tendency for them to center themselves in the barrel by spring pressure alone, and if it's an attraction type hybrid railgun, the alignment of acceleration forces is also such that it will naturally tend to align the projectile in the center of the barrel. Both of these factors seem like they would further reduce barrel erosion.
@@demrandom There's a cost/benefit tradeoff here. If it's cheap, you can just lob a whole bunch of these hoping one will hit the target. If it's expensive, you want to put a guidance system on it to make sure it'll hit the target. Somewhere in between in a sweet spot which minimizes cost per hit. For traditional cannon distances (5-20 miles), I expect you're right and the sweet spot is closer to dumb projectiles. But for missile distances, I suspect other variables like wind, air pressure variation, aerodynamic imbalances due to manufacturing tolerances, etc. will push you towards wanting the projectile to have a guidance system again.
One of the issues with railguns (at least without other magnets to assist in forming the field) is the massive current tries to spot-weld the armature in place until it gets going. Which can't be great for that erosion problem. That's one of the cool things about the chemrail in Elysium, it starts with the armature/bullet moving.
Real life railguns typically use pressurized air, coils, or explosives to get the armature moving.
The ChemRail is one of Weta's most iconic designs.
FYI, the flame at the end of rail gun predominantly comes from arcs turning air inside of the barrel into plasma, smoke - mix of rail dust, plasma burning everything it touches and air essentially changing it's composition - anybody who witnessed transformer station explode can attest to smell ;)
IIRC the "rail dust" is aluminum, which is the most common fuel for solid-propellant rockets.
@@JWQweqOPDH personally I've never heard of anyone using aluminium for rails as copper has far higher melting point, survives more pressure, has lower friction coefficient, has lower chance of developing intercrystalline corrosion etc etc.
Fun fact: when we've had a "pie in the sky" talk among engineers and discussing railgun, one guy suggested graphite grease as a way of protecting rails. Graphite is conductive, however it could also make current pass between rails on it's own ... but that's an engineering challenge that can be solved.
@@tommybronze3451 Maybe not the rails but I know some armatures are aluminum, and rail dust will naturally be mixed with armature dust.
@@JWQweqOPDH Can you please elaborate on what armatures you are referring to ? I'm honestly puzzled, because afaik problem with rail guns is also a parasitic eddy currents and aluminium is best for that (right after coper) and since super high forces working on rails you need to use very very tough materials and aluminium (due to it's Eddy currents) don't seem like a best choice. Specially if one had to mix aluminium with steel - that would be quite dramatic.
@@tommybronze3451 Several sources from the web refer to the US Navy's tech demonstrator rail gun using aluminum armatures. Here is a quote from Popular Mechanics: "The 25-pound projectile is a non-explosive bullet filled with tungsten pellets inside an aluminum alloy casing, or sabot, that falls away after the projectile leaves the barrel." I cannot verify this information or explain the reasoning behind such a choice. I can say that aluminum is used in long-span electrical transmission cables due to its high specific strength and high specific conductivity.
Electromagnetic Rocket Gun sounds like a good disposable anti-heavy weapon
In an old computer game "Ground control" infantry of the Order had basically this. Two shots per squad, that could blew heavy tank in short range.
If its just powered by the gas exploding its just a worse recoilles rifle
if its not, then its not recoilles
@@ataarono The burn rate as a function of time is fixed per cartridge in a firearm. With any kind of electrical burn you can effect closed-loop control of the gas generation.
@@smorrow You would be suprised, there is significant engineering for designing the propellant of purpose made cartridges to get the burn time just right for the weapons specifications. This is possible by shaping the propellant to change its surface area, causing it to burn slower or faster for example.
@@ataarono Um, I'm aware of that? There's "signifcant engineering" on the SRBs on the SLS too, but their flight plan is still set in stone once the SRB is made.
I've actually looked into helical railguns and use them for small arms in a sci-fi story I'm working on. To provide power to the weapon, each projectile actually comes with a shell casing just like modern firearms, but rather than gunpowder or some other propellant, the "shell casings" are actually tiny Explosive-Driven Ferroelectric Generators (EDFEGs, also known as explosive driven flux compression generators) to provide very short but very powerful bursts of energy. To supplement any additional power (a.k.a. hand-wave the need for more energy) most weapons will also have an on-board battery/power-source.
You had my attention, now you have my interest.
I might have to steal that idea for myself!
Though I'm a little stuck as to how I'd design the weapon's own on-board power system. I'm tryign to approach it from a realistic perspective as a veteran who knows all too well that the more complex the piece of equipment is and the more separate parts it needs to function, the more likely some grunt will break it or lose a critical part at the most inopportune time.
But I'm largely left with 3 possibilities:
1) The power supply is integrated with the magazines, and since the mags might get reloaded by a machine/ammo pack rather than by hand, they can be recharged when they get refilled.
2) A separate, detachable battery that's treated almost like a second magazine type.
3) A built-in battery, generally not removable/replaceable by the end-user (ie: a unit armoer function) that's good for a good long time and a whole lot of shots, can be recharged in the field from portable generators/batteries, and/or have their charges maintained when they sit in their rack in the weapons vault.
@@patrickdusablon2789 Two suggestions for that:
1. Do all of those, different manufacturer's solving the different issues at different rates, with in universe debate over what is best still ongoing. This parallels commercial arms development and gives you an opening to exposit when either something goes wrong with one of those parts or someone unfamiliar with that particular method needs the quick and dirty briefing on it.
2. Bite the proverbial bullet and include redundancy. (this is effectively what the magazine and detachable battery do.) Have a built in battery supplemented with either detachable or magazine baked in power supplies, said onboard battery can also run other components of the weapon system. Heck, if you want to go all in, have the onboard battery rechargeable by simply loading a 'fresh' magazine w/battery or even a separate 'recharge magazine' that's nothing but battery can uses the same connector and ergonomics to ease logistics. (Complete with some nickname about their color or symbol markings to distinguish them from regular ammo/battery magazines.) So that between fighting the system can be field recharged easily.
@@patrickdusablon2789 Now that you mention it, I do actually like the idea of the battery being built into the magazine rather than into the weapon.
A) if the battery only has to last for 30-rounds rather than 3,000, it could be made out of cheaper materials and less quality, maybe even considered disposal, the way we view AA and AAA batteries.
B) if the battery in the magazine is faulty, you can just swap it out with another. If the battery is integrated into the gun and is faulty, then you have no weapon at all
C) Weight considerations. If it's between a battery in the gun that adds 10 pounds you have carry around constantly or 10 magazines an extra pound each that are distributed around you body, I'd prefer the latter.
D) Absolutely what you said about keeping it simple. No offense to the average infantryman, but the lower you can make the threshold for required competence for handling a weapon, the better everyone will be. Making the battery part of the magazine can be a simple "Plug-and-play" system, so that soldiers/marines are less tempted to fiddle with the weapons components.
@@Sorain1 Yes, I like the idea of different power supply systems to different weapons. there's a whole bunch of characteristics that would give pros and cons to each design doctrine.
I do like the idea of redundancy, though in a different way from what you describe. To be honest, I've been on the fence whether I want to use railgun/coilgun small arms or stick with more conventional, albeit advanced chemical propellant-based small arms, notably electrochemical propellants, i.e. M41 Pulse Rifles from Aliens. Sort of the argument between rule-of-cool sci-fi vs efficient, but plain hard-sci-fi.
The Helical railgun is an interesting design as it almost looks like an enclosed barrel itself. Obviously hot gases are no good for electromagnetic materials, but perhaps if there's a protective medium between the projectile and the barrel components, ideally conductive, frictionless, and heat resistant, maybe the weapon can be design to fire both electromagnetically and with chemical propellants, so power supply is less of a failure point. Alternatively a simple barrel swap from the helical railgun barrel to a basic metal barrel could suffice.
There may even be a more mission-purpose reason to do so, i.e. helical railguns offer higher kinetic energy per shot, but chemical propellants offer higher rate-of-fire.
I'm surprised that superconducting coilguns/quench guns weren't mentioned
I did briefly mention them in the previous kinetic weapons video some time ago. The star of the show today was the helical which I find really cool!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
@@hoojiwana I was actually curious about reading more information on the Quench Guns. The information I found was really not all that big in quantity.
When you said a Coilgun/Railgun Hybrid.
I was thinking more a long placing the plasmified hydrogen from the expanse railgun at the tip of a MAC for an extra boost of speed.
On that note. We can already use magnetism to create thin walls of plasma to keep atmosphere from passing to a vacuum.
Maybe in a few decades once we're beginning prototyping the first space battleships.
I could see us use something like that for the spinal weapons
Using plasma to extend a railgun as many have suggested wouldn't work.
The plasma rails would be instantely dispearsed by the powerful magnetic forces, instantely cutting the current.
@@gavinkemp7920What if the plasma was contained by a solid insulative trough (barrel)? Compared to a metal rail it would reduce projectile friction and weapon mass at the cost of higher resistance.
@@JWQweqOPDH The plasma would it self cause erosion due to the high temparitures and charged particles involved.
That I believe would be called a plasma railgun. And overall, they are basically railguns, but worse. Although I am talking about railguns using plasma as the armature. But yes, the plasma can get dispersed, and it also causes wear and tear
I remember back in college physics class where my team wanted to build an electromagnetic projectile launcher as a term project (the professor said that there's always a team that picks that project every year.) We first thought to make a railgun, but realized that would be too expensive for a bunch of college students because we'd need to get the rails professionally re-machined after every launch or so. We ended up making a mono-coilgun instead because that was just more practical for us to build. It only launched ball bearings at a modest velocity, but it didn't need to be especially impressive to demonstrate that we could build one. The hardest part was wiring it such that we could charge up the bank of capacitors (because we couldn't afford a chonky enough single capacitor) in parallel while getting them to discharge in series with a throw of a switch.
I can make a primitive "science fair" grade coilgun from a disposable camera flash circuit (xenon flash), a disposable pen barrel, and some magnet wire.
The disposable camera flash circuit is already most of what you need, including the high current switch (the flashtube can do double-duty as a triggered spark gap with no modifications).
Sure with only the one camera flash capacitor it'll only fling a piece of a nail across the room, but it'll also punch a hole in like 3 sheets of newspaper if you put them right near the muzzle.
All you need to do is cut one of the wires going from the flash capacitor to the xenon flash tube's primary electrodes, and put the ends of the wires for the acceleration coil across that break in the circuit you just made. That's all there is to it! When you make the flash tube go off, if you have a piece of nail in the pen barrel at the right place (easiest to achieve by winding the coil in the right spot close to the capped off end of it), the piece of nail will go flying!
The parallel/Serial part isn't that hard once you figure out you can use a spark-switch for that.
The way I see this railgun tech progressing is seeing if there’s a way of generating a em force to float and maybe spin the projectile (not sure how the bullet could complete the circuit to propel itself, idk learn from Nicola Tesla) or shape of projectile to generate less friction on the barrel or do what the mg42 did and have a form of gun barrel spacer (sacrificial metal between the barrel and bullet) or easily mass produced interchangeable barrel for infantry mortars. But until a simple slug of metal can be floated and then propelled in a barrel at that speeds, there’s not as much potential.
@@Slimburger24 "But until a simple slug of metal can be floated and then propelled in a barrel at that speeds, there’s not as much potential."
Why do you think so? Combat mostly isn't spray-and-pray anymore.
The reason why electromagnetic accelerators are researched is their potential for far greater muzzle velocity. That would allow for further enlarged effective range as well as the capabilities to hit through obstacles and most light armor.
If you go for a long-range shot you do not go for multiple shots, and it wouldn't matter if a single shot would cost upwards of 1000$ in materials.
(and please - Tesla? there is not much to learn from a tinkerer that denied the existence of electrons).
@@ABaumstumpf when I referenced Tesla, I was asking if there is potential to Lawrence force though the sabot and shot without creating friction on the barrel material in an attempt to prevent ware and tare on the barrel. A rail gun (after leaving the mussel but does not rely on built pressure behind the sabot/bullet, right? Otherwise rail guns will not be economical for drone warfare, or intercepting Chinese hypersonic missiles, (costly to shoot down with missiles) and instead more effective use of time and research would be put towards hacking and point defense propellant or laser guns at the potential targets the enemy will aim at.
Is it possible to create Lawrence force to propel a slug at significant force without it touching the rails or to reduce arcing? I know I’ve never seen anyone do it but I’m really curious if there’s potential behind it.
The projectile, needs time to put more energy behind it to propel it to higher inertias, but if there’s no resistance/mass out the mussel, then it won’t carry much energy in its own inertia to carry itself forward, so the barrel would end up lengthening hyperbolically to liner speed if mass doesn’t change assuming the whole projectile is fired without a sabot (E(in newtons)=1/2(mass)(velocity)^2. Then, there’s air resistance I didn’t count. Assuming the Laurence could be generated with air gap, maybe the air plasma could be pushed away from the rails the same way plasma is pushed from the walls of fusion reactors being tested today? Then the next problem would involve if the plasma levitation of those shields would mess with the rails circuit between the shield and plasma? Then if that’s possible, would it be more effective than laser defense, and cost effective at defending against many hypersonic missiles?
Due to the effects of back EMF, the magnetic field in a coil does not dissipate immediately when current is disconnected. It does decline very rapidly but it is not instant. This complicates the matter of timing as you have to turn off the coil before the projectile passes through it so the effect of the back EMF does not appreciably slow it down once it has fully passed through. This limits coilguns to a practical, efficient muzzle velocity somewhere around 2.5km/s. Railguns and helical guns aren't affected by this phenomena as it is a traveling magnetic field and so can have theoretically unlimited velocities as long as enough power can be delivered and the barrel doesn't disintegrate. Coilguns are, in theory, more energy efficient. In some sci fi future it may be that infantry firearms would make use of coilguns as they have lower power demands and simple ammunition whilst artillery and warships use the heavier, more powerful railguns.
We already have infantry-sized coilguns, so that's definitely plausible. They're just not combat effective yet lol.
@@bable6314 The issue with Infantry coilguns isn't so much the gun itself, its the power supply. Nobody wants to carry enough batteries on them to make a coilgun combat effective.
@@DrRussian Correct. Current battery tech only holds about 1%-2% the Joules/kg of chemical propellants. Not a problem when you're powering it with a huge gas turbine which normally pushes your ship at 50 knots. But kind of a big deal when a soldier has to carry everything in his backpack.
@@solandri69 Yep. Same reason Power Armor isn't a thing yet. Once we get the power supply figured out a whole lot of things change all at once.
@@TheVillainInGlasses That actually isn't really that big of a deal. If power was the only limiting factor, people would've used small scale fuel cells capable of running off of large hydrocarbons and had nearly limitless power at our disposal. Far greater is the issue that motors just don't synergize with organic kinematics very effectively. It's why there's no humanoid robot on earth that can even move like a human in any one domain of performance, let alone act as effectively as a generalist in movement.
I am so making a Dnd artificer using "Professor Winterburgs Electromagnetic Rocket Gun" as part of their kit
YES, fear the artificer, one of my favorite HFY stories had a guy use magic to project a magnetic field, and using ball bearings, some math, and his knowledge of how railguns/coilguns work he became the most deadly familiar in the magic military school
like, the only flaw their senior tacticians and casters could find to exploit was his fire rate, and with the effective range and penetration he could demonstrate, fire rate really isn't much of a weakness
he later went on to use his scientific understanding of weather and electrical discharge to produce the most powerful lightning strike spell they'd ever scene
the big problem though was he kept doing this in training exercises, where you really don't want people dying
1:51 Well seeing my own content in one of your videos was jarring to say the least lol. Been a fan of you guys for years, thanks for the credit
Hehe security railgun goes *tthhoooommmmBAM*
+1 for the little Helldivers clip at the end
Note 6:24 switching the direction of the current would, in this case) not affect the direction the shot is fired, since the both the magnetic field of the projectile- and barre-coil would be flipped. (It's the same thing as multiplying two negative numbers together resulting in a positive number again.)
Edit:
this effect can be achieved at home:
1) Place permanent magnets on both ends of an AA-battery and pushing it through a long coli of blank wire.
2) The battery and magnets will be moved through the coil.
I don't know how current implementations work, but back in the day, chemical propellant was used to give the projectile the initial push, and was then further accelerated with the rail magnets. Hence the "flames" coming out of the barrel.
I think the most recent ones are pure EM, hence why they have less of a fireball than the guns from the 90s, but they still absolutely wreck the rails after only a couple hundred shots, and performance starts dropping well before that
I also like the idea of using supercapacitors as the ammo.
Particularly in coil guns.
@@jtjames79If your idea is to remove the need for external power by having the projectile provide all the energy, that won't allow higher velocity than conventional guns because the specific energy of a super capacitor is about an order of magnitude lower than gun powder or solid rocket propellant.
@@JWQweqOPDH No. That's why I didn't say that.
I'm personally a big fan of combination chemical / magnetic weapons.
There's nothing stopping a coilgun from being installed around a conventional cannon, with something like an Electro-Thermal Chemical (plasma) ignition system to provide as consistent a muzzle velocity as possible.
That way, if your ship's power system isn't running at full, or you need the power for something else like a laser system at any given moment, you can still use the coilgun as a conventional cannon to fire things like flak shells for missile defence. But, when you need it, you can spool up both systems and pull a much higher muzzle velocity out of your main gun for offensive use.
To my understanding, the initial acceleration for both coil and railguns is a bit more electrically intensive than the rest, so it could also save you a tiny bit of electrical production (and thus heat generation), in exchange for small propellant charges.
The helical railguns are also fascinating - I've not heard of those before - and though they're obviously a lot more logistically intensive with regards to ammunition, that sort of logistical burden wouldn't matter as much in orbit of an industrialized planet, or on the surface of an airless moon. There, they'd be able to rely on local production to keep up with demand in a way a fleet away from port just can't do, and it's also a situation where having the longest-ranged, hardest hitting railguns is very, very important. It's not like the Earth or Mars is going to be dodging much - so 'the only defence is point defence'.
A third thing, which could benefit literally any kind of gun-type weapon in space, is if the projectile has some amount of onboard Delta V for course corrections. Any target at extreme ranges can just dodge a regular railgun round, but if the armature is a miniaturized missile that can keep up with say... 3G maneuvers for a 60 second burn time, then they'd need to be that much faster, or that much farther away to be out of the weapon's effective range.
The first major downside is you need rocket systems that can handle the acceleration of being fired - so you're probably stuck with non-throttleable solid-state propellants and dozens of single-use maneuvering thrusters, like the PAC-3 interceptor - but the plus side is we already know that stuff works. To match speed with the target, you just alter the angle of the projectile between perpendicular and parallel, while keeping it on the same heading for proportional navigation.
The second downside is the rounds will be a lot lighter, and depending on how much fuel you give them, essentially hollow, but at rail or coilgun velocities in space, even getting smacked with a crumpled up wad of paper would leave serious damage, so this is easily the lesser of the two issues. In fact, firing what is basically a fuel tank at the enemy might be *more* effective against lighter targets, since the ammo is more likely to crumple, deform, and dump its kinetic energy into the target, instead of over-penetrate and waste all the left-over energy it kept going with. Results may vary depending on how hard or soft the setting is... Literally; I mean the armour.
Please do more of these "Never Heard Of Scifi Weapons Series". I really loved your Dust Guns video which led me into a deep rabbit hole about space weapons and accelerators and stuff.
Love the content. Keep it up❤
Your personality comes off so well in the script. it is so refreshing. material/military lore and history challenges struggle the most with this, given the subject matter and niches.
The US Navy did not abandon the railgun project. In fact, they completed it. Railguns are installed on all Gerald R Ford supercarriers and they have been deployed in combat operations, just not in the form anyone expected. Every Gerald R Ford comes equipped with an EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System)--a railgun that fires airplanes instead of bullets.
Dang so they launch planes at the enemy with the intent of a kamikaze attack? The Navy took some notes during the Pacific conflict didn't they? 🗿
@@OK-zo3cq I suppose it's in a sense a refinement of kamikaze tactics - they hurl themselves at the enemy and then, crucially, miss.
@OK-zo3cq the current launchers use steam power, causing a significant bottle nech on the launching phase. The EAL system is on the super carriers, but so far the largest thing they've launched are junked cars that the Navy has shown so far. The last time I heard about the systems years ago, they were revised to make it to operation by 2028, and likely wont be operational to launch jets before the Battle of Armagedo.
Way to spill state secrets guy
@Wonderwhoopin It isn't state secrets. The presence and use of EMALS on the Gerald R. Ford class carriers is publicly available and easily accessible - it's literally on the Wikipedia page.
What always got me about portable railguns (as in Eraser), was how the person holding the gun didn’t fly backwards while holding the gun as it would’ve recoiled enormously from something being sent at incredible speeds 😊
With the kind of forces involved, I wouldn't be surprised to see the shooters *arms* being ripped off from the recoil (followed by the remaining body parts shortly after)!
Spacedock forgot to mention the reason the Winterberg Electromagnetic Rocket Gun was even conceived. Mr. Winterberg developed this spell in order to design a projectile launcher system capable of yeeting the required projectile fast enough to "tamp" (his words, I'd have used something like smash) nuclear fuel hard enough to start a fusion reaction. Literally slapping a bit of nuclear fuel so hard that it compresses so fast that it super heats enough to start a fusion reaction.
"MAC rounds? In atmosphere?!"
"One way to get their attention. Hang on to your teeth, people!"
'Grafton is down, I repeat, Grafton is down'
So, if the rails in the helical rail gun are only used to transmit power, they could be replaced with a wire that connects the projectile to the breach of the barrel. You'd just need to make sure the cable gets cut (and ejected out of the barrel) as the projectile leaves the barrel. That would eliminate two points of friction between the projectile and barrel (with the associated wear, arcing and engineering tolerances issues).
Also, the helical railgun projectile doesn't need to be as complex as shown. In a "pulling" configuration, you could replace the coil inside the projectile with ferromagnetic material (or a permanent magnet), and the section between the two ring contacts with something non-ferromagnetic (like air). Yes, a ferromagnetic slug won't produce as strong forces as a coil projectile, but it would make it cheaper and less failure-prone.
Love the footage from Forgotten Weapon. Great video as always.
Oh hey, that music is from Space Engineers! Never thought I'd hear it somewhere like this!
And so are half of the clips XD
Gotta love it when someone references an underrated game in a completely different community
1:07 I THOUGHT I HEARD SPACE ENGINEERS MUSIC IN THE BEGINNING!!! Excellent choice! :D
Fun Fact: in some airgun circles, adding petroleum jelly or variations to the back of the pellet skirt is used to create Dieseling.
Thoroughly enjoying how many clips of Space Engineers are in this vid
And the music
Powering railguns is more complex than you make it out to be if you want to maximize efficiency. For instance, the faster the projectile is moving, the higher voltage you'd want to use, and that becomes a problem the longer the rails get, because if you wired the rails to the power supply near where the projectile started it might arc instead of following the projectile, etc.
The big problem for the electrical rails is NOT friction due to "extra high speeds" as it is a problem even for low-speed railguns that fire subsonic.
Rather it is cause the rails need to form a good electrical contact at high velocities and that just doesn't happen easily: Either the contact is not even and you get uneven currents and hotspots, the projectile is a bit too slow and thermal expansion increases resistance, sparks and pitting (really bad), the projectile ablating - or many other things. We are talking about currents way above what is used for welding. The projectile will take a beating from that and that is ok, but the rails are exposed repeatedly to that. If there is any small deviation the projectile might go just a bit slower, further increasing the stress on the projectile and rails, which then again lead to even more deterioration.
This can be as bad as after just a few shot a projectile getting stuck and then basically welding everything together (or blowing the rails apart due to the metal getting evaporated).
There's also the issue that the rails repel each other when charged, so the gun literally tries to tear itself apart with increasing force the more juice you dump into accelerating the projectile.
If you want a way more advanced version of a railgun in a sci-fi story, you can make it use artificial gravity instead of magnetism to fire.
Thanks for throwing some Space Engineers footage in there. That brilliant game does not get enough love. 😊
What about using parallel streams of plasma to replace the rails in a railgun? the power consumption would be absurd, but you would never need to replace the rails, since they are reformed after every shot. for that matter, what about using conductive fluid rails? you could use something like ferrofluid and confine the fluid to the tracks with magnets, which get disengaged after firing, so you can expel the old rails and make new ones. a bonus for scifi of either of these systems is you would get funky looking muzzle flashes.
That sounds like a madman's invention, i love it!
Few problems i would expect to see with that would be the dramatically lower conductivity of even "high" conductivity liquids, most folks don't know for example that water is a horrible conductor although you obviously didn't refer to water here.
The other end is the confluence of viscosity, temperature, conductivity and resistive losses at huge temperature peaks and the variable nature of those values.
Probably won't see in a century atleast if ever, but boy would i like to be wrong!
Ferrofluid is too costly to dump. I'd say it just sucks any bits that fall off right back to the rails. That, too, could be a fun muzzle flash of black liquid shooting out and then reversing
@@goober-ey7mx I assumed that some of it would be recycled, yes. Some would probably have to be expelled though.
@@RiversJ You would essentially need a fluid metamaterial, getting the conductivity high enough probably isn't impossible but I image it would be difficult with today's tech. You would also likely have to deal with some form of electrolysis within the rail fluid, meaning you would need to be replacing some of it after every shot. Still might be more cost effective than replacing the rails, depending on the chemistry.
You did miss my favorite electromagnetic weapon, the plasma railgun. This thing is fun; you pump a bunch of energy into a few milligrams of atmosphere contained inside the chamber, which then ionizes into plasma. Because plasma is affected by magnets, you can run it down a barrel. To keep the plasma together, the electromagnets are shaped so that they force the plasma into a toroidal shape, held together by pressure differentials. The upsides are interesting: since it only shoots air, the gun has effectively unlimited ammo as long as it has power, just like an energy weapon. Unlike an energy weapon, the destructive force comes from kinetic energy; although the plasma projectile is only a few milligrams, its muzzle velocity is ludicrous, on the order of up to three percent of the speed of light. The biggest downside is admittedly somewhat crippling for a spacefaring civilization, though: since the projectile is only held together by atmospheric pressure, the gun straight-up does not function in a vacuum. As for feasibility, a 10-megawatt prototype was tested in 1993 under Project MARAUDER, so it could potentially exist right now in a classified state.
I think they focused on designs suitable for space warfare. So not atmosphere dependent. The rocket gun being the exception as the projectile supplies the required "atmosphere" for ionisation
big fk off vortex cannon
Dense Plasma Focus gang represent.
Actually, if you pump enough energy into the Plasma, you can accelerate it to relativistic speeds, which significantly decreases the plasma spread allowing it to be used in space, over long distances.
Hmm Plasma Railgun combine with Electrolaser
Have you explored combustion light-gas guns, or electrothermal light-gas guns, in previous videos? NASA has used them for micrometeorite impact testing for decades, and the Navy has built prototypes as big as 155mm for naval gunnery. They achieve railgun projectile velocities due to the higher speed of sound in lighter, high-pressure gases like hydrogen. If you search “combustion light gas gun” you can find military contractor Utron’s reports to the US Department of Defense on their experimental work circa 2006. Would work fine in space since the combustion gases include their own oxygen.
@1:30 Your gift to effortlessly deliver such provocative descriptors as deep and simple as a yeet, combined with munitions-grade precision and profound impact makes you the hay in the needle stack. Bravo good sir, bravo.
One of the reason the U.S. Navy dropped the rail gun is because the ammo need to survive beings shot out and do damage to traget cost as much as proven missiles. So it was cheaper to put more missiles on a ship than a rail gun.
Turns out lasers are most practical for blinding missiles, too.
Like a kid blinding a search helicopter with a laser pointer
that is not true, your mixing that up with the 155 mm AGS on the Zumwalts. Railgun projectiles are still much cheaper, and the only reason they even run as high as $25000 a piece is because of the guidance system. Inert unguided projectiles cost even less than conventional artillery ammunition since they dont have an explosive warhead.
They also repurposed the projectile to fire from conventional weapons, so it wasn't a huge loss. A major issue was power consumption. I'm 99% sure this is public knowledge but ships have power consumption issues, namely they need power to run all the new fancy stuff and weren't designed for it. So, they could only fit a decent sized railgun on nuclear powered ships. The EM interference also caused havoc on other systems.
last thing i heard was the barrels were getting too warped after the fourth shot.
@@randomkaycomic the repurposed projectile also got cancelled.
As for the railguns power consumption p0roblems. it can be fitted on conventionally powered ships as long as they have the spare power capacity. Problem is, aside from the Zumwalts, modern surface ships just dont because they where all designed before railguns.
Which is probably part of the reason why Railguns haven't progressed much, there are no current ships capable of using them and the USN needs a new class of destroyer to use them, and its gonna be quite a few years before those ships are even going to start to be laid down.
I would say that for a near-future setting Electro-Thermal Chemical weapons (which use a plasma charge to ignite a relatively conventional but high energy propellant) for light vehicle and personal weapons make more sense, they simply need less power generation/storage and fewer support structures. Naval ships, large spacecraft and static installations can still use the more exotic weapons.
its crazy how Stupidly close we are to having practical versions of these weapons.
I've always loved railguns and coilguns. The gausshog was one of my favourite vehicles in Halo, and the idea of a gauss sniper rifle like the M99 Stanchion from the same series is just really cool to me.
Fun fact: Gauss weapons are a third type of electromagnetic weapon that don't use coils or rails. Though the gauss cannon also has coils so it's probably a hybrid.
In Halo Infinite, you can get a skin for the S-7 Sniper rifle that makes it look like the M99A2-S3 Stanchion. (The sniper rifle at the begining of Contact Harvest)
In 2007, a solid-projectile helical-coul electromagnetic launcher was successfully built and tested at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
I've always hated the tuning fork depiction of railguns. Leaving the rails exposed invites corrosion, and having the prongs like that means they need to resist the stress of repulsion directly. With a real gun barrel surrounding the rails, the stress from the rails repelling one another can be handled by the gun barrel. This would help keep the prongs from being shorn off in opposite directions
Not to mention how most designs have the rails far apart, implying extremely wide ammunition.
The art design just wants to make it really obvious that it's a rail gun. Otherwise it just looks like a gun with a boxy barrel.
No mention of the Solenoid Quench Gun - the military industrial complex did a great job purging all mentions of that type of coilgun from the internet
The most efficient electromagnetic launcher is the "quench gun" a superconducting coil gun. The energy is stored in the superconducting coils then the superconductors are "quenched" by the magnetic field of the projectile automatically turning off the coils as it goes past. So apart from using superconductors it is actually simpler that other coil guns and over 90% efficient conversion of electric power to kinetic projectile energy. While rail guns manage 50% efficiency at best.
In a coil gun the projectile does not touch the sides of the barrel so there is no friction or arcing. You can find two videos explaining the quench gun by two rival teams trying to build one for orbital launch, Lancaster labs and Electromagnetic launch.
This was so cool, and proof that I don't have a single original idea ahead of anyone else. I was thinking if this yesterday, thinking "I wonder if they could make a rail gun on one half and coilgun on second half, but this helical one looks even better than they. Thanks for making it easy to understand, with the projectile's innards being shown and how complex it really is starting to get. This was awesome to see. Another thing that would be effective is a two stage helical, where the projectile houses it's own rail gun or coilgun (whichever makes better sense to those who know), so essentially a railgun IS IN the projectile, which gets electromagnetically blasted out like normal on the first part, sending it to Mach 7ish, then the projectile, while in motion, sends out the metal piece that hits a very armored target at like Mach 12 or so, if only the battery pack within the larger projectile casing could supply that much power. It could atheist be an easier way to send satellites into space❤❤❤
Nowadays you can simply use sensors to do the timing in a coilgun for you. Beam and light sensor run by an Arduino in front of every coil toggling the next stage ought to do it if you were to make your own at home, no need to know the mass of the projectile. Allegedly.
A bank of capacitors would also be the way to go unless you have scarily high current power supply. Oh and with the metal impregnated resins available nowadays you could theoretically 3D print the ammunition so that it maintains a flatter trajectory when it drops subsonic.
The reason for the smoke usually is a chemical starter, to ensure the projectile doesn't weld to the rails and stay in the barrel.
My idea of an electromagnetic launcher is just a crossbow thats primed by a high power electric motor. Mechanical power is stored in the springs, while energy is stored in a detachable battery. No need for capacitors, timing mechanisms or specialized ammunition. This arrangement is also wayyyyy more efficent than other launchers and can be made with relatively inexpensive off the shelf parts, so it can be scaled down to a long gun sized package.
A man that goes by the handle JoergSprave here on YT actually did something similar with a homemade ballista hooked up to a ebike motor.
That's not electromagnetic tho. That's electrically assisted loading for a torsion weapon
@@matthiuskoenig3378 Not wrong, alltough the electromagnetic rocket might not qualify either; one could argue that it's a gun that just happens to use an electromagnetically excited propelant. Still, I think there is some potential in my arrangement. Sadly I can't even build an airsoft strength version yet. Someday, I will test the idea.
Love this idea. Reminds me of one of my favorite obscure sci fi guns: the thunderbolter from Timeshift. Semi automatic high velocity crossbow with exploding bolts. It's be a hell of a cool gun and it's totally build able with current technology. Sadly small explosive rounds like that are indeed a war crime under the Hague convention.
How much energy can you store in elastic compression though? Can it outperform explosive propellants?
@@volbla Sorry for the late reply. With a motor driven spring you can use a power supply that that is much more energy dense than gunpowder, such as an armored vehicle using it's petroleum fuel. The weight of the weapon system itself may be heavier, but that's insignificant compared to ammunition weight for many applications. Theoretically, a CNT spring could acheive 2.1 kwh/kg, and you would only need one spring for the whole system, rather than having a load of gunpowder for each individual cartridge. Bullets actually have a terrible mass fraction of fuel vs container, 9mm has a wt% of 8%, the rest is brass (this is why caseless ammo is so attractive!). This gives you a practical specific energy density of 250 wh/kg. Which a lot of modern li-ion batteries can compete with, if not surpass.
Awesome video! I have been working on my own coilgun for the last few months now, and I believe there is a sort of middle ground between the HCEL and a standard coilgun configuration. Here, instead of using a sensor and relay setup, brushes are placed some distance in front of the coil (or behind it, depending on the projectile), connected to the open ends of the Power circuit. Once the projectile reaches the brushes, the RLC circuit of the coil is closed by the conductive projectile itself, and current can flow with the projectile as a conductor.
If that sounds a lot like a railgun, then you are right, it is, though in this case the lorentz works against us. The coil creates the dominant B field for the purpose of the projectile acting in line with the rail, wich in combination with the current flowing perpendicular to to the barrel causes an acceleration perpendicular to it and thus wear. This can be mitigated by using rings of brushes instead, allowing current to flow in parallel with the barrel, thereby preventing acceleration by lorentz force.
Not using complex components in the end has multiple advantages:
-Near-instantaneous switching
-Reduced complexity and cost (high-voltage relays can get very expensive)
-Increased maximum voltage (mostly limited by the capacitor now)
I have not yet been personally able to run tests on this design and compare it to a more conventional setup, though i am quite confident in it, as it doesn't deviate too much from the standard.
Electromagnetic railguns exist now. But they erode too quickly right now conpared to conventional guns. A conventional gun barrel may have a lifespan of a few thousand firings, but current railguns last maybe 50 firings.
yes thats great, and this is exactly is explained in the video, so maybe you should watch it before commenting first
which is why they aren't being used by the American navy... yet. New innovations are required to make them worthwhile.
@@LilFeralGangrel it also why railguns, at least publicly aren't being funded at the moment. The navy already has the design of the gun where they want it, but they are waiting for material science to advance enough to create a suitable barrel material. Otherwise everything else about the railgun is mature and ready.
Of course this assumes that they aren't funding the project secretly.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818of course they’re funding it secretly. We don’t have a multi trillion dollar black budget for no reason.
@@LilFeralGangrelthat we know of. Who knows what they're working on in secret? The military has *all* manner of classified DARPA projects.
Missed the opportunity to call it a 'hell' gun.
Corded versions of hybrid accelerators are do-abe now. In fact, they can deliver more than enough damage (eg. for home defense), yet also be tunable and quiet. But then, pneumatic is still a better choice for now.
Of course, if you can find a way to use pneumatic to also carry away waste heat in an electro-magnetic, you might have a real win.
I found an interesting paper from 1991 on a type of self augmenting railgun:
"The accelerating force of a railgun 1/2L′I2a can be increased by augmenting the self‐induced magnetic field created by the armature current. Augmentation fields can be produced by external current coils or, as is done here, by shorting the railgun muzzle, and using the gun rails as the augmentation coil. Experimental results are presented for a 3.6‐m railgun operated in this self‐augmented mode, and effective inductance gradients are achieved which are as much as 9.3 times that of the unaugmented gun."
As you note, augmented railguns have been known about for years but never seem to have been adopted for flagship projects. I wonder if small scale trials have shown that they do not actually work well in practice?
And what do you think of mass effect magnetodrynamic weapons? basically shooting molten metal accelerated by electromagnetic force. and because it is like shooting drops of water, the whole would reach extremely high speeds, but when thrown together, when it cooled it would become a single, extremely long projectile.
basic science of molten metals: magnetism becomes zero when the metal is molten.
I think it's the other way around - the projectiles are molten because they're being pumped with that much energy during the firing sequence.
i think keeping the metal in a proper shape would be difficult.
@@jaquigreenlees The idea is that the electromagnetic force heats the metal and expels it, under pressure, that is, not by pushing or pulling but by pressing, as if it were a jet of water but with metal and due to the extreme force the speed would be very high.
@@jaquigreenlees The metal doesn't have to itself be ferromagnetic like iron nickel or cobalt to be accelerated by an MHD pump (and this weapon is just a particularly high flow velocity MHD pump, at least in concept).
The acceleration happens for the same reason that the acceleration in a railgun happens. Lorentz forces induced in the pumped conductive liquid.
ANY conductive liquid will work with an MHD pump, even seawater.
Most research into MHD pumps has been based on using them to pump NaK eutectic alloy thru cooling passages in a liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor. However, like I said, ANY conductive liquid will work (including mercury, already molten metals like Lithium (probably of use in fusion power due to the want to have the lithium blanket which breeds the tritium be molten for ease of separating out the tritium and other "fission" products (yes, it's fission when you take Lithium-7 and crack it into Tritium and Helium-4, even tho the reaction requires an overall input of energy it's still fission)).
You can also use an MHD pump to pump gases if you ionize them first, this is how you get things like Ionocraft, electric thrusters for spacecraft use (using an easily ionized noble gas), and even the humble "ion wind" electrostatic air purifier.
The electromagnetic rocket gun sounds like an obvious project for some RUclips maker to take on.
Sure, getting a practical version might be very difficult but if you're willing to just treat the barrel as expendable that seems simpler.
Awesome video always loved the non explosive driven kinetics like this. I have always felt like a barrel resilvering type approach would be used. When Saddam was talking about is Babylon gun they floated an inside barrel liner described as an inside out condom to act as a sacrificial layer. If you can get the erosion to prefer this layer over the rails you reduce the corrosion. I would postulate at these forces you will see different material issues akin to hardening, maybe moving towards brittle but my material science hat was hung up 20 years ago.
I think one of the biggest issues with a Helical Railgun is that the projectile has to fit into the weapon in a specific orientation. Every other gun type simply requires the "pointy end" to the front. This complicates the storage and loading system, especially for a turreted helical railgun where the orientation of the barrel and its guide rails can not be assumed.
there is also the chemical coil... and rail guns.
this is another hybrid system, where an initial charge... such as gunpowder is used to accelerate the slug in the barrel THEN the coils take over. this is done to overcome inertia. this can be done in rail guns for example with a very short barrel that starts the slug into down the rails but once the gas is no longer needed the "barrel" isn't needed, and you can switch back to the gap between.
The advantage here is it lowers the power requirements somewhat.. this system tends to work best short barrel long rail systems.
I've seen some IRL railguns use an air cannon to launch the projectile into the conductive rails for similar reasons (but also because with a railgun if you start the projectile at 0 velocity it might just go backwards, or it might spot-weld itself to the rails rather than moving).
Inertia doesn't have much to do with it in the example I've seen, more so a "sticky rails"/"indecisive directionality" problem.
@@44R0Ndin i've also see "spring piston" system used to "start" a projectile moving through a coil gun.
but the gun effect is used in "larger" slugs, where the slug weighs over 100 lbs... they can use a lower power for constant acceleration down the rail, rather then the huge spike needed to get it moving from a standstill.
I,am amazed that they didn’t market the rail gun as an eco friendly weapon, since electricity is used to propel the projectiles not gun powered
But it will need to be green electricity and not power gnerated from a gas turbine prime mover. Sorry Rolls-Royce!
Finally someone who doesn't confuse railguns and coilguns
According to the Traveller: The New Era technical sourcebook Fire Fusion and Steel the gauss guns used in Traveller's Third Imperium universe are helical railguns, though it does not use that name. The book even has a diagram similar to Luke Cambell's and a pretty succinct explanation of the theory in its gauss weapon design system.
But what I really want to know is, what might these weapons SOUND like? I've only ever heard fantastical sounds that some sound designer used to make sure everyone knows, "this isn't a conventional gun."
I'm imagining some whining, or even humming, from the capacitors and power system, and just a miniature sonic boom from the departing projectile. Maybe with the railgun, a whole bunch of arc noises combining into a sort of brief, incredibly loud ripping noise.
My guess is it just sounds like a normal gun or cannon. Just more silent because you don't have a lot of quickly expanding gases as a chemical propellant would produce. The most noise would come from the fast moving projectile. In other words it's boring. 😊
coilguns - silent, except for the supersonic crack
railguns - there are videos of them firing already, pretty loud
helical railguns - combo of the above i suppose
@3:59 - Perhaps a bit of both; having timers that set the shot, sensors that calculate the shot made, and then a machine-learning chip that makes the necessary adjustments to those timers as needed so that each subsequent shot gets closer and closer to the sweet spot. A smart weapon that tunes itself to get better through usage.
*Me who has heard of them and written them into scifi*
Anyway, should watch it ('twas good)
Same. I enjoy the way he puts videos together, even if I already know about the topic.
Well, minus writing them into scifi 😅
Professor Winterburg's Electromagnetic Rocket Gun sounds pretty much insane from description. I cannot even fathom what barrel should be made of. Definitely amazing idea for Sci-Fi story!
One thing I always wondered, why do MACs in Halo have a muzzle flash, when they are essentially a gigantic coilgun?
Maybe an explosive to begin the launching or from vaporizing metals
That's not muzzle flash; that's the projectile. A projectile accelerated to relativistic speeds WILL be hot enough to emit light.
You saw the enormous slowmo muzzle flash from the Navy rail gun in this video, right?
@@coltonholiday4872 Yes, but macs are coilguns. They don't have any explosive charge, because the electromagnets do all the lifting. With railguns there is an explosive charge at the beginning, otherwise the rails and the projectile would fuse together.
@@attila535It doesn't matter; rail or coil, there's going to be matter converted into plasma and pulled in the projectile's wake...from friction if nothing else (remember that even a vacuum isn't actually empty...just sparsely populated.)
The visualisations were that fun that I noticed myself watching them instead of listening to the narration and had to go back to learn what you were saying
I personnaly love light gas cannons. They exist and are never mentionned in fiction, despite a muzzel velocity of 30km/s !!!
if the goal is to achieve high speed with a given material limit. Wouldn't you just put a projectile in a spin launcher, slowly accelerate to higher and higher speed via a electric motor, then release the stored rotational energy into the projectile.
Given the same max current/voltage limit of material, a spin launcher can accumulate far higher projectile kinetic energy before the coil burn out. And since it's just using regular electric motor, you don't need worry about electrode burn out and require less cooling. Not to mention you can add into a gear speed multiplier stage to the spinner to increase projectile speed far higher than what the source motor can achieve.
Another thing, unlike a coil gun, where only a portion of coil is outputting force at a time as bullet travel through the barrel. 100% of the section of the motor spinner system is outputting force. So similar weight and size weapon will have far higher power density than coil gun. It also doesn't require any special bullet. Since it's a spin launcher, you can literally pick any rock off the road as projectile.
Although this spin launch gun does have some downside. You can't rapid fire since it require spinning to build up energy. To achieve high speed, you probably need to maintain a low vacuum around the spin area to prevent the projectile from getting destroyed from aerodynamic friction (technically regular rail gun bullet will also get destroyed by air friction if it get fast enough). Recoil is going to be an issue unless you set up a counter weight bullet that also get release half cycle later. But technically rail gun will also get the same recoil issue if its bullet go fast enough.
apperance wise, it's probably going to looks like a disk with opening at outer radius. Doesn't look like a traditional gun with barrel. But it's basically a miniature spacecraft launcher system but launcher small object instead of rocket.
Wow! I’ve never been this early before! Thanks for the video and the information, Spacedock!
It’s an idea that is bouncing in my mind last 3 years ago and I dreamt of having time to experiment on it. This video makes me so happy.
I feel like Helical guns would be the size of the Gustav once the concept becomes practical from the sound of this video. Hell, it seems like rail guns and coil guns already are that size in testing stages
I love the idea of rocket assisted rail gun projectile. Rocket assisted artillery shells have been around for decades.
For why you'd want to fire that hybrid gun talked about at 6:34, the reason I'd go with is that you've put this weapon on a small ship, like an Elite Dangerous Eagle in a spinal mount and wanted it to be able to fire out of both the ship's bow (front of a ship/boat) and stern (opposite of the bow) depending on commands put in by the pilot or weapons officer. This could also be used to dispense bigger, heavier, and slower-moving projectiles that do all of their damage by either radiation or explosive force besides launch velocity, as I believe that's the basis of the torpedo launchers in Star Trek, flinging the ordinance out far enough from the ship that it's already at a minimum safe distance by the time it arms. After all, the TNG technical manual says that the fore and aft torpedo launchers both draw from a shared 250-round magazine. Setting up those coil guns to fire a projectile with full homing and a muzzle velocity of roughly 2-3 times the firing ship's top sub-light speed can be exactly what's needed to turn these cannons into missile/torpedo tubes.
3:30 I'm so glad you showed the coil gun from Deep Rock Galactic. I freaking love that game.
Rock and Roll...I mean stone.
What about Electro-Thermal Chemical (ETC) Weapons?
So many space engineers clips!!
Genius. We need this on USA navy ships
The issue is the massive amount of power needed. The US navy did try and it works great but the powerbank was fucking huge
@@horndogfred5246 Not only that but the amount of rail erosion made it impractical, at least for the target velocity General Atomics was shooting for. Both the Chinese and Japanese projects are trying to work around this by going for a lower velocity to bring rail wear down to practical levels. US navy is waiting till metallurgy can catch up to make the desired speed practical because the Japanese solution doesn't yield, in the Navy's eyes, significant ballistic improvement at levels of power draw over existing 5" guns.
@@horndogfred5246hence why we need to invest more into sustainable fusion
@horndogfred5246 The power was not the problem. That's why they had if for ships to begin with. The problem was that you'd only be able to get several shots off before the barrel needed to be replaced.
@@supremecaffeine2633 the power was absolutely the problem. The power bank was enormous, it took ages to charge, and it was very dangerous. I'm not discounting this video but the navy had different concerns
Helica Coil Electromagnetic Launcher sounds like something you absolutely, positively don't want to be hit with.
Interesting, but I'm not sure calling it a railgun is accurate if Lorentz force isn't part of the thrust... You might even be able to build one with some kind of wireless power transmission instead of rails.
3:50 my buddy few year back made a coilgun with optic sensors turning coils on when object is detected. For greater detectability he simply painted bullets for them to stand out from background. Simple and efective
The Arcflash Labs gun shown in the Forgotten Weapon video reports the speed, so there must be _some_ kind of tracking and possibly closed-loop control.
Usually when I hear helical, I think of Calico... and that reliability report Ian was supposed to post one day😅
Seems like the best thing to do would be some sort of rail Gatling gun or magazine system.
What about hybrid between Railguns and normal guns such as a Chemically assisted railgun where the projectile gets its initial acceleration from a chemical propellant before the rails take over? one such weapon would be a Electro Thermal Chemical gun.
While the definition is correct, most militaries refer to an ETC gun as a chemically projected gun that uses an electrically-induced plasma explosion as a primer for the charge, in order to make the explosion uniform, quicker, and able to accelerate a bullet way faster (meaning that compared to a traditional round you can either have a faster bullet for the same barrel length, or a way shorter barrel with an equally fast bullet). Such weapons were actually used in the movie Elysium, were called Chemrail (chemical+rail) and were absolutely cool!
@@valeriogennari2626 ETC guns can (and in testing have) also used LIQUID propellants, which apparently also allow higher velocities beyond just the ignition improvements of a chemrail using an electrically exploded wire as the initiation source in a line along the length of the "casing" (rather than just at the base like with traditional powder+casing ammunition), due to the ability to mix a liquid fuel and oxidizer only when the projectile is ready to be fired rather than require those two elements to be premixed in a solid material (this requirement puts an upper bound on the maximum energy you can get out of gunpowder while retaining shelf stability). Not mixing the components before hand means they can be less stable when combined but still shelf-stable because they are only mixed just before use.
0:40 "Higher velocity is particularly important in space combat because increasing projectile velocity directly increases effective range"
I mean, it IS harder to dodge a faster projectile, but isn't any projectile firing weapon has basically infinite "effective range" in space?
Using magnets to put bullets in bad guys
The music used in the beginning of this video is from the soundtrack of the game 'space engineers' and is not declared in the description of the video
0:20 Sir Isac Newton* would REALLY want some words with that studios animators about physics!
newtons 3'rd law = "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"
Meaning, by fiering that cannon like that, she would ALSO be pancaked into a ketchup puddle!
(*Aka: "The deadliest son of a bitch in space!" - from: Mass Effect 2 )(see reply for link, unless youtube auto-deletes it)
Title: "Mass Effect 2: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space"
RUclipsr: "Panicstate" (now go find it)
I think the gap is unlikely to happen because you can file those gaps with magnets or electromagenetes to boost the rail gun.
That advantage of a gun that can fire in both direction is weapon that would be aimed with the ship.
With the acceleration involved you want those to be as long as possible to minimize forces on the ship. The longest possible is the length of the ship. Building the ship around the gun is ideal from the gun perspective but you could mount it on the side with powerful control moment gyroscopes or reaction wheels to handle the torque.
In this case the gun can be used offensively fire fowards in direction of what you are chasing or defensively fired backwards in the direction of those chasing you without having to do the acrobatic maneuvers we see in the expanse.
Ferromagnetic coil-guns have one particular drawback: Saturation of the projectile. This limits energy and velocity to unusable levels. Such as they are surpassed by air-guns. Helical rail-guns simply replace the cumbersome ferromagnetic projectile against a powered air-coil to provide the reactive force, since air is not ferromagnetic and undergoes no saturation. The downside is even more tear and wear of the barrel and the rails. Furthermore, there is the problem of ohmic losses of the coil in the projectile. The higher the coil temperature gets, the the higher the electrical resistance and losses become. And yes, this ist the end of the dream of electromagnetically propelled projectiles. The next technology has some political and economical problems and will be introduced to the general public not earlier than after the end of oil, gas and coal in about 400 years: Gravitoelectromagnetic (GEM) propulsion of projectiles and vehicles.
That coincides with my estimate of when we can get serious about the stars. They're not just right behind Neptune. In fact, the big nothingness is several hundredthousand times the size of our system, before the first next star comes.
You ARE a babbler though. This comment. Your bio. They give a very. VERY particular air. Whatever floats your boat though. No. No purpose here. Just early morning insomniac boredom, and cantankerous, logically-critical, irritability.
@@3xeplodng_3agle_studios I can't understand, what exactly you wanted to tell me. As an unimportant graduated electrical engineer, I am not as well educated as e.g. a lawyer or an economist. Therefore, I might be wrong in my comments. You are kindly invited to correct me, where you can provide proof.
@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx We are already serious about the stars. Since 1999 to be exact here. Not in a civilian but defense context. This shows already implications, when NASA was made apterous by the USAF/AFSPC (now USSF) just after 2011 (retirement of the STS), since it is very difficult to hide military secrets in deep space and the US-DOD doesn't want to share advanced technologies for bending of spacetime without masses and FTL interstellar space travel with Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. Additionally, even terrestrial flight without kerosene would be a terrible and heartbreaking experience for our oil princes, gas tsars and coal barons. Therefore, I am quite sure, technologies about GEM, topological insulators, Rindler horizons and aneutronic high pressure p-B pulse plasma fusion with DEC (Direct Electricity Conversion) can not pop up before the end of oil, gas, coal and uranium. Therefore, people have to wait, as they had to wait for about 80 years, when the industrial revolution was delayed due to restraint of the steam engine, James Watt could build first.
If you have an fixed gun running trough your ship the option to use the same gun to fire backwards could be useful.
You need your biggest gun the most when you are running away! Of course you need it pointing backwards.
Psh I've heard of them before. There's this channel I'm subscribed to that just talked about them. The "Dockspace" channel. You know, your voice is pretty similar to theirs. Weird coincidence.
Brilliant solution to the coil gun timing problem.