Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Railgun, Electromagnetic Technology and Aviation


I am very thrilled when i am writing this particular piece, because i really admire the electromagnetic power and i have never understood why it has been overlooked but from now on no one will or can even if they want...
A very “high-tech” gun that has no other principle than the homopolar motor and the acceptance of the magnetic-power.

This very technology exsist since 1919 and invented by French inventor Louis Octave Fauchon-Villeplee his choice of name was “Electric Apparatus for Propelling Projectiles” and with that name it was patented in 1922.

It is simple and safe. Railguns are only consists of two parallel metals which are connected to a power source, from that power source an electrical current is given and the current makes the metal pieces behave like an electromagnet with high energy this creates a powerful magnetic field in the region of the rails and towards the position of the projectile. And the rest is taken care of by the good old Lorentz force we all love... This simplycity accelerates a projectile along the rails. Unbelievable isn't it? This is the science project of a 15 year old.
Its hard to say it is a “gun” because you can use it for many purpouses, which i am giong to return...

But the “gun” part is almost perfect, it is safe because there is no explosives used, and it is accurete by the same reason again you can give the same amount of energy(33 megajoules give or take) and you can hit the same target at the same place as mant times as you want. It doesnt have the recoil of a normal cannon, it has
much more power and shoots much faster and it doesnt have the self-damage factor that normal cannons have because of the explosives they use... And did i mentioned it shoots faster-yes i did but i will again because it shoots with an unbeliaveable speed of 3,500 meters/second or 10 mach per hour!

A demonstration shown in the video;















So back to other uses i mentioned before, first of all that is not a weapon that is a perfect “delivery system”. You can use it as a gun and they obviously did. You can launch aircrafts with it and it is done also there is a system called Electro Magnetic Aircraft Launch System and thats mainly the subject of this Blog, its relation with aviation and i am going to write about it.

But there is a much further use of it in development, which is to launch or launch assist of a spacecraft!!!
Yes! A spacecraft. And it will be much cheaper according to I.R. McNab. It can be as cheap as $528 per kg. It is much much more cheaper than todays cost of $20,000 per kg.(This is of course the NASA's cost and there are cheaper ways such as Elon Musk's SpaceX but that is a different topic.) So in short it is 37 times cheaper, cleaner and safer than conventional spacecraft launching. That is the power of electromagnetics it is rediscovered and there is no turning back again... And that is the part where science fiction,  becomes science:




I dont think NASA can or will complete the technology but this idea this vision is out now and later on maybe SpaceX maybe others can achive that. The era of standart explosives and powder is over with this technology.

And i think the era of the Internal combustion engine will also be over with this same technology because both electric motors WILL take over(and they are electromagnetism based) and secondly it will be very hard for the diesel engines to meet the huge energy needs of these weapons.  Of course it won t be a problem for nuclear powered carriers and Rolls-Royce Marine Trent-30 powered Zumwalt class destroyers.