{"id":11241,"date":"2014-05-23T10:04:31","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T17:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=11241"},"modified":"2014-05-23T10:04:31","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T17:04:31","slug":"the-navys-rail-gun-hides-a-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/the-navys-rail-gun-hides-a-secret","title":{"rendered":"The Navy\u2019s Rail Gun Hides a Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HCea-HsyfCI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p>The Navy\u2019s Rail Gun technology hides a secret, that the Navy\u2019s projectile accuracy has been substantially increased by about 45x.<br \/> But first some history.<\/p>\n<p>The US government brought Prof Eric Laithwaite to help them build a rocket launcher based on linear motor principles. Today we call this the Rail Gun. In terms of its original objectives it was not a success, because astronauts could not survive the accelerations required to launch from a rail gun and cargo required a much longer rail gun than feasible with the then technologies.<\/p>\n<p>The Navy succeeded with ship based rail guns as a means to shoot projectiles. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/video\/watch-navy-s-new-supergun-launch-shells-at-5600-mph-bfCXOGXZQziZgHnsbq9VzQ.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomberg TV<\/a> has a good video on the Navy\u2019s Rail Gun. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/video\/watch-navy-s-new-supergun-launch-shells-at-5600-mph-bfCXOGXZQziZgHnsbq9VzQ.html\" target=\"_blank\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/video\/watch-navy-s-new-supergun-launch-shells-at-5600-mph-bfCXOGXZQziZgHnsbq9VzQ.html\">http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/video\/watch-navy-s-new-supergun-lau\u2026q9VzQ.html<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Watching this video I realized that the secret to the Navy\u2019s Rail Gun project was not the rail gun itself, but the substantially increased accuracy attained by the much higher muzzle velocity.<\/p>\n<p>I present two important point. Using quick &amp; dirty theoretical reasoning and real examples showing that the rail gun projectile has an increased accuracy of between 28x to 45x over conventional ship-based guns.<\/p>\n<p>And the real possibility that the rail gun projectile traveling at Mach 7.4 has the ability to shoot down the X-51 traveling at Mach 5 at an altitude of 70,000ft.<\/p>\n<p>PowerPoint is here <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iseti.us\/pdf\/NavyRailGun(2014-05-23).pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iseti.us\/pdf\/NavyRailGun(2014-05-23).pdf\">http:\/\/www.iseti.us\/pdf\/NavyRailGun(2014-05-23).pdf<\/a><br \/> Enjoy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Navy\u2019s Rail Gun technology hides a secret, that the Navy\u2019s projectile accuracy has been substantially increased by about 45x. But first some history. The US government brought Prof Eric Laithwaite to help them build a rocket launcher based on linear motor principles. Today we call this the Rail Gun. In terms of its original [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,35,14,1528,38,1522,219,224,8],"tags":[1605,591,620,1602,1601,1598,1596,1604,1597,1603,1599,1600],"class_list":["post-11241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-counterterrorism","category-defense","category-disruptive-technology","category-engineering","category-innovation","category-physics","category-science","category-space","tag-astronauts","tag-laithwaite","tag-linear-motor","tag-mach-5","tag-mach-7-4","tag-muzzle-velocity","tag-navy","tag-projectile-accuracy","tag-rail-gun","tag-rocket-launcher","tag-ship-based-guns","tag-x-51"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}