realistically you have to think, other than “tactical superiority and economics” angle, why do we really need this? do we have any threat that would require such a weapon? I bet this is going to be used to bust incoming meteor strikes.
its not that we need it. but military advancements are the best source of RnD and miniturizing things for everyday use.
this has all sorts of cool application s for cheap material transfer into orbit, super conductors, and exotic materials that dissipate heat rapidly, while being durable and reusable. if the barrel is reusable and can fire plenty of rounds without warping, its a big win for materials engineering.
all the components trickle down. superconductors can make trains the preferred method of travel. mAterials can be used in space or car applications, etc.
How? The sheer shock of firing one of these things would tear an airplane apart.
Not to mention you’d have to carry a powerplant capable of getting the projectile to fire. Drones use tiny powerplants because all useful roles for drones don’t require big powerplants. Anything that requires a large powerplant invariably includes a pilot because nobody trusts a supersonic nuclear bomber to a computer. I would think you would need an AC-130 or larger to have a battery large enough to fire one of these things once.
@regulate
Mutually Assured Destruction that people actually respect, for one.
You can intercept a nuke, probably. You can’t intercept a hunk of metal going maybe several times faster than Mach 1 or 2, not really.
If you do hit it? It’s tons of FAST metal SHARDS now. That makes it FAR worse.
Just imagined a 130U Spooky, but with railguns. Fucking chills.
Tanks can mount them too, raw power isn’t an issue, just a matter of conversion into usable form for the capacitors to charge, there. Boom, you now can be a Tau tank commander.
Mass drivers, yeah. Still theoretical, though; it’s like an aircraft carrier catapult, but for space stuff, in practice(hypothetically), if you will.
Glad you brought that up.
Relevant: plasma-based weaponry(weaponized lasers are fairly far along by now, shoutouts to Northrop-Grumman’s work there) is only limited by making enough of it in the required space, basically
(structural integrity is important, but if it fires, it fires; we can figure out wear and tear AFTER it shoots properly lol, did that with railguns and we’ve fixed that!)
To save the day for nerds wishing for defictionalization, nuclear fusion reactors, once they are
viable(we already got to breakeven, wooo: http://www.nature.com/news/laser-fusion-experiment-extracts-net-energy-from-fuel-1.14710),
can provide a stream of the “ammo” via funneling off plasma that won’t be missed/powering the weapon’s electric stuff, etc.
tl;dr with a fusion reactor you can power/directly provide for your PPC/Tesla Cannon/what-have-you expy; size, shape and destructive potential will vary.
Anything mecha-related from that franchise is by definition not realistic, and usually not possible.
You’ll get stuff more like what’s in my avatar. Close up look:
Bear in mind that this particular machine, the the Fafnir BattleMech, is tough, and can drop lights and mediums in-game with one shot of one of those big motherfuckers on it’s front; and it’s in same ballpark height-wise as the mofo who shows up here(the Atlas, BTW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3CWr3ZUQJeo#t=54
which is, in MechWarrior Online at least, just about 60 feet tall. About the same as a AT-AT from Star Wars(at it’s head, the hump of those is 22.5 meters/~74 feet at highest), AND makes the 50 foot tall monster whatevers look like wimps.
Woman who? Kappa
