Electromagnetic Railgun Blasts Off

Idiots indeed!  Why, war has never resolved a thing has it?  A complete waste of time, blood, and treasure.  Except for a few trifling exceptions such as ending the Nazi terror in Europe and Japan's conquest of the Pacific, and the U.S.'s independence from Great Britain, and ending slavery in the U.S..  There are, regretably, a few other nasty bits that didn't turn out quite so pleasantly for the participants like the Russian revolution (tough time for the menshiviks), Cuba, Cambodia, Korea, etc. 

Damned if there isn't always some fellow out there who isn't quite ready to be reasonable, open to discussion, and willing to forgo amicable relations with the greater Global Village in favor of simply taking everything by force.

And you're also spot on about the obsolesence of military power in this modern age of Dignity, Respect, Equality, and Warm-Fuzzy Feelings.  A 12 year dialogue with Saddam got him to peacefully abide by the the UN's High Commission for Happy Thoughts.  And that cheery little fellow over in North Korea, isn't that just a sterling example of how peaceful, non-confrontational, and perfectly innocent little chats can get anyone to abandon megalomania, hatred, and naughty thoughts.

Oh, I haven't looked in on things lately, but I presume that all of the positive energy we've been sending over to Darfur has put an end to all that genocide nonsense.  Right? 

Cheers,
Siphis

Is it scientifically (not to say intellectually or ethically) defensible for the academic center of higher learning, MIT, to pretend that the solution for our ills is purely technological, particularly technology for killing folks?

When will MIT Technology Review examine in print its tacit premise that the solution to all problems is entirely new technology, particularly technology which will attract DOD funding and add to the stock valuation of our patriotic weapons makers?

The work of Professor Richard A. Pape, ironically funded in part by DOD, provides empirical support for the notion of withdrawing from countries that we in the US currently occupy is a far more effective solution if our real goal is security, rather world domination. I don't expect that his work will grace the pages of Technology Review since it hardly provides support for even more exotic wonder weapons.

Would it not be intellectually honest for the MIT Technology Review to publish on the limits of purely technological solutions before the US and other nations and groups committed to novel violent low or high tech "solutions" which even in the short run will likely kill us all?

Yes, such an article risks offending DOD and endanger MIT's position as the #1 academic grantee of DOD largess , but then that risk might be rational if it increases the probability of a full (rather than truncated) life for everyone's children and grandchildren.

Reason demands that we examine the limits of the hugely profitably cow of technology, especially technology designed to kill ever more effectively. I believe that particular path to peace was discredited by Alfred Noble, who tried to repent of his folly by endowing a peace prize. Will we as a nation, ever repent of our folly and reverse direction?

may the gods forgive us all for our participation in the unexamined, counterproductive hubris [which scholars from Viktor Frankel (hyperintenionality) , Touchman (the pursuit of folly) to Chalmers Johnson (blowback) warn us leads to our own annihilation by invoking the fury of the goddess, Nemeses],

Tom, who once was a true believer in the omnipotence of technology to solve all problems -- my own idiotic hubris and wasted years...

P.s. My earlier comment (2002) disputed the article of faith that Iraq was sitting on a mountain of WMD's. This skepticism earned me the wrath of TR readers. I wonder if those who attacked my skepticism about the alleged Iraqi WMDs so vehemently are in Iraq still searching for WMDs other than DOD's policy of violation of Article 4 of the Geneva Convention which mandates that the occupying power (us) is compelled to preserve the lives of the occupied rather than annihilating civilians via the Peaches Patrais' El Salvador option as well as cutting the slow starvation food ration of Iraqi civilians in half starting January, 2008?

Qu: how is US government propaganda superior to that of the classical dictatorships who also sought world domination.

Ans. Greater sophistication... I'm confident that "Peace through strength" and "Stay the Course" score higher with focus groups than "Arbeiten macht frei"*.

* Perhaps someone will correct my German which I failed ignominiously as an undergraduate.

Rail gun technology can be used for asteroid and low gravity planetary mining, and propulsion.  As a weapon it doesn't leave chemical vapors, or need depleted uranium.  It can be used as a ground penetrating bunker buster.  The projectile can be very small thus reducing collateral damage.

The U.S. military budget is an obscenity. No one else comes close to spending as much. No telling how many countries we may have to impose our form of government on. There is always some other boogie man out there that the U.S. military is running straight to the bank for. And look how effective military might is at bringing political solutions to the middle east. But I do find rail guns fascinating, particularly the potential for reaching escape velocity, that might come in handy some day. We could load up the moon with nuclear waste, generals and politicians.

With 60MJ for instance, we can only send 60kg at 100km - and that if we ignore loss of energy due to friction.

Dear cobraphx, it seems like you got owned by a very commonly used fallacy. Namely, that we should accept the high price of military R&D programs, because the fruits of these will eventually trickle down to the civilian sphere. This is practically a smoke-and-mirrors trick, to distract people's attention.

The right question to ask would be: Why couldn't we support civilian R&D directly? Why is the military route necessary at all? Couldn't we develop GPS, carbon fibers etc. etc. directly for civilian purposes? Then the military could adopt them too, if they wished to do so.

The secrecy involved in the military R&D makes everything 10 times more expensive. Developing technology via the military route also means that the civilian sphere will have to wait for decades before it gets to use it.

Military R&D is a bad deal for the tax payer. We could get a lot more bang for the buck if we supported civilian R&D.

Railguns are inherently inefficient.  More energy remains in the intense magnetic field between the rails at the point that the projectile leaves the rails than what is carried as kinetic energy in the projectile.  That energy is non-recoverable (for all practical purposes) and can only be dissipated through ohmic resistance in the rails and in arcing between the rails.  It's difficult to design rails that can survive a single firing.

The sole virtue of railguns as hypersonic launchers is that they are (relatively) simple, and don't require sophisticated power switching circuits.  It's just a matter of shorting a capacitor bank through the rail circuit.

Reported purchase of eestor for Rail GUN by Northrop Grumman (Note:they have contracts with Lockheed Martin). The person posting certainly is an expert in this area..
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4231461.html


91. RE: World’s Most Powerful Rail Gun Delivered to Navy
Basically what they need to do is interrupt the shock wave through the rails. The easiest way to do that would be, introducing phononic gaps or rather changes in the material to break up the pressure wave front. The easiest way to do that would be by using a cold sintered ceramic deposition method. That way the layers could be tailored to disrupt the initial shock wave front. The trick with ceramics is that they can withstand great pressures, but you need the pressure gradient to be not too steep. That way you prevent glassification from occurring. Glassification occurs when the periodic structure of a ceramic material is deformed. Which means the ceramic end up having the characteristics of glass, more like your grandmothers fine China. There is also the problem with micro fractures, but that can be dealt with. The real big thing which was holding back this technology was capacitors. But Northrop Grumman, a few months back setup a contract with EEStor. They now have access to as many ultra-capacitors as they need. Anyway, good luck on this project. It should be doable now. The only problem slowing the US down would really be how intelligent the scientists are. That are working on the project. From what I've seen of Ph D's within the last few years. Things are looking rather grim on that front.