Earth Space Weaponry

[Harekin]

I did up specs for a huge railgun too that fired a 1kg shell and hit with like 1.5million newtons per metre squared and extremely small recoil(0.5m) and could be fired twice a second. Thats as effective as a drone if you have good aim!

[Daryl Froggy]

I did up specs for a huge railgun too that fired a 1kg shell and hit with like 1.5million newtons per metre squared and extremely small recoil(0.5m) and could be fired twice a second. Thats as effective as a drone if you have good aim!

Except that drones actively go through shields that railgun could only hit the shield until it came down then it might be able to take out the ship with those two shots, if it had any amo left.

[Harekin]

Surely the thousands of rounds aboard the ship would be acceptable. Plus if the rounds tip was 1mm then it would hit with 15,000,000,000 newtons. Surely few shields could absorb that much sheer brute power.

[Daryl Froggy]

Surely the thousands of rounds aboard the ship would be acceptable. Plus if the rounds tip was 1mm then it would hit with 15,000,000,000 newtons. Surely few shields could absorb that much sheer brute power.

Well usually I'd say yes but we haven't seen any actual numbers on SG-1's shields thus we can't make a clear and precise decision.

[Harekin]

Well if a round that hits with a force of 15billion newtons cannot penetrate a shield after a few hits I really dont see whats the point in trying to fight anymore! That could penetrate a fleet of hives and keep going.

[Daryl Froggy]

Well if a round that hits with a force of 15billion newtons cannot penetrate a shield after a few hits I really dont see whats the point in trying to fight anymore! That could penetrate a fleet of hives and keep going.

We don't really know that either. But I don't know enough to spout numbers supporting either my argument or yours so I'll just end my participation in this discussion with this, I have no clue.

[Unorthodox]

I was musing about the ineffectiveness of the railguns used by Earth's current spaceships, when I came across an idea. For the uninitiated, railguns use fixed rods to allow an alternating magnetic current to accelerate the projectile out the barrel of the weapon, and coilguns use coiled magnets to (much like the spiral grooves in a gunbarrel are used to spin the bullets, allowing for greater distance and accuracy through aerodynamics) allow the alternating magnetic current to not only accelerate, but also spin, the projectile.

However, one magnetic-based technology hasen't even been considered by TPTB, most likely due to the fact that it has so far only been used in current civilian technologies: Magnetic Levitation, most commonly used in Maglev trains.

Maglev trains require a few basic components to work: a powersource, a series of magnets on the track that alterate in polarity as the train passes, and a series of set-polarity (aka the magnets polarity is set) onboard the train to allow it to be repelled/attracted to the magnets on the track. This is pretty much how railguns and coilguns work, but I figured I could at least try to introduce something that has a different presentation to it.

Pretty much the way I see a Maglev Cannon/Turret would have a series of circular magnets placed incrementally along the barrel. These magnets would be connected to some sort of powersource. When the round is fired (using a controlled explosion, since that would require less power on the ships' part), an electrical current runs through the magnets, alternating their polarity at specific times. Therefore, the projectile is either repelled away from the magnets behind it (and therefore accelerating it out of the barrel) and attracted to the magnets ahead (further accelerating it away from both the weapon and the ship equiped with it).

Anyway, I have two main points in this that I am asking your opinions about: A) I'm preparing to write a serious sci-fi/war story, and I need a good ship-based weapon that is different, if only cosmetically, from the standard coilgun/railgun weapons that are becoming commonplace in sci-fi, and B) if the idea that a Maglev-based weapon would be any more effective or efficient than the current railgun/coilgun theology.

And please, if this post made no sense, then look up Maglev Trains on Yahoo or Google so that you have a better idea of Maglev technologies.

[Avatar28]

Actually what you've just described is a coilgun (aka a gauss gun). It has nothing at all to do with spinning the projectile. A railgun actually uses an effect called the Lorentz force to propel the projectile. I direct you to the appropriate wikipedia pages:
railgun
coilgun

[V-MAN]

Rail guns are okay they just need be firing much much larger projectiles and at much faster speeds. Something the size of a bus and made of solid metal would be cool.

Imagine what something like that being fired at a rate of 3 rounds a second and at a speed of around mach 5 would do to a hive ship.

[Wraith Scientist]

Here's my idea for a magnetic cannon



Remember the left hand rule?

The current goes down through the projectile

The magnetic field is perpendicular to it, across, between the magnets

So the direction of thrust is forward, towards you

Essentially a linear motor

Small air gap so much more efficient than a coilgun
Requires less power than a railgun
- Best of both worlds

Good, eh?

[Tassadar]

Hmm I'm not a weapons expert but wouldn't it be smarter to start developing energy weapon. All the other races seem to use them so it's probably the best way to go. Plus increasing projectile size would cause some serious reduction in ammunition. But this is of course only applies to the Stargate universe. In the real world or near future the weapons described above seem like pretty cool advancements.

[Jimbo-DR]

No matter how you fire it, small projectile weapons just aren't going to do the damage required to bring down capital ships... anything with a strong hull like the Hive Ships can take a ton of those hits without any seriuos damage, like a Bee trying to sting a rock.

The Shielded ships are barely affected by projectile rounds at all... like a bee trying to sting a fish through water.

Until we have an effective energy weapon we can't do very much against opposing flagships.

And I'm not holding my breath on an energy weapon.

[Avatar28]

Forget big, what we need are FAST projectiles. I'm talking relativisitic velocities here, not some piddling mach 5 or even mach 20.

[2ndgenerationalteran]

its still finite.

[Raj_2006]

wht about explosive rounds, fill them with naquadah or even narquridah maybe add nulcear warheads in them. and make the missles adhanced versions . or maybe make topedes. , you know in the real world we do have working lasers, i did some looking on websites such as wikipeida and there are lasers we could use.