The US Navy's new railgun has debuted at the Navy’s Future Force Science and Technology Expo at the Washington Convention Center this week, and it's gnarly as far as big guns go.
Conventional weapons like a Hellfire missile can travel little over Mach 1 and a 5-inch gun hit targets up to 13 miles away, the railgun can strike targets 110 miles away at Mach 7, and it can reach Mach 7 in about 10 milliseconds. Its projectile has the impact at 110 miles away of a freight train crashing through a wall at 100 MPH.
It's all very neat, keen, supercool and groovy. It's all very Star Wars (the movie) with apparently a little Back to the Future thrown in. Understandably, the science nerds behind this are excited, as we see from the first man speaking, Roger Ellis the program's officer, showing us his excitement in his reserved, nerdy manner. But the Reuters video is still mainly a straightforward, informative news video about the railgun. Until the 1:03 minute mark, that is, when we heard from Rear Admiral Mathias Winter, Chief of Naval Research, as he does his best little-too-excited, wild-eyed Doc Brown impression talking about the Flux Capacitor. I was waiting for him to tell us how it generates 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. but he didn't have to. It's funny enough without it.
I can't stop laughing. He's leaning in closer and closer telling you "It's like a Flux Capacitor, right!" "We've got scientists, who have designed these, and it's coming to life!" <really wide eyes> OMG LOL
Conventional weapons like a Hellfire missile can travel little over Mach 1 and a 5-inch gun hit targets up to 13 miles away, the railgun can strike targets 110 miles away at Mach 7, and it can reach Mach 7 in about 10 milliseconds. Its projectile has the impact at 110 miles away of a freight train crashing through a wall at 100 MPH.
It's all very neat, keen, supercool and groovy. It's all very Star Wars (the movie) with apparently a little Back to the Future thrown in. Understandably, the science nerds behind this are excited, as we see from the first man speaking, Roger Ellis the program's officer, showing us his excitement in his reserved, nerdy manner. But the Reuters video is still mainly a straightforward, informative news video about the railgun. Until the 1:03 minute mark, that is, when we heard from Rear Admiral Mathias Winter, Chief of Naval Research, as he does his best little-too-excited, wild-eyed Doc Brown impression talking about the Flux Capacitor. I was waiting for him to tell us how it generates 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. but he didn't have to. It's funny enough without it.
I can't stop laughing. He's leaning in closer and closer telling you "It's like a Flux Capacitor, right!" "We've got scientists, who have designed these, and it's coming to life!" <really wide eyes> OMG LOL
