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From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Hyper velocity missiles??
Message-ID: <1991Feb19.034107.19786@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 19 Feb 91 03:41:07 GMT
References: <1991Feb15.070501.10569@cbnews.att.com> <1991Feb18.061318.14305@cbnews.att.com>
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From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
In article <1991Feb18.061318.14305@cbnews.att.com> lipm@midway.uchicago.edu (Everett Lipman) writes:
>
>
>Although power supply size currently prevents EM railguns from being 
>used as practical weapons, there has been considerable progress 
>in railgun development over the past few years.  There is active research
>going on at military labs and also at University of Texas.  For more info, 
>see the January '91 issue of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, which has the
>proceedings of a recent conference on railguns and related topics.
>
>

True, it is a very active area, though the budget cutbacks now occuring are
seriously impacting this area.  However, it should be noted that power
supplies are only one of the many problems with EM guns.  More significant
in some ways is the fact that most EM guns rip themselves up when they are
fired and have to be carefully remachined before they can be used again.  This
was particularly true of rail guns where the rails would simply melt when
the gun was fired.  There has been progress on this problem, but it is not
solved.  

Sandia has been working on using two stage light gas guns to inject a
projectile into an EM gun.  This avoids many of the problems of EM guns
and, if I recall correctly, they have the world's record right now for
the highest velocity yet obtained.  The work I am personally aware of
is aimed at doing equation of state research at extremely high temperatures
and pressures.  There is another group out there interested in lifting
payloads into space with these systems.

John


--
John K. Prentice    john@unmfys.unm.edu (Internet)
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Computational Physics Group, Amparo Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, USA