Neat

Bet that thing could take out a Superlight from half a sector away >.>

That's just... awesome. Let's get Alamar signed up for USN gunnery duty, already.

"Bet that thing could take out a Superlight from half a sector away >.>"
You would have to be able to hit it first tho <.<

Uh, Shadoen, see the above post about recruiting Alamar. Hitting it won't be a problem.

Sadly, I haven't played VO long enough to know anything about the old vets. Enlightenment plx?

Alamar: VO character almost as old as LeberMac. Joined BLAK early on in his career, he was a railgun expert, regularly killing folks before you could get close.

Plus, the dude who played Alamar is apparently quite the coder.

Did he use the quad-rail hornet?

duh...he called it jaws. I rail sparred with him frequently.

Awesome weapon. I know that when I worked with the US Navy, there was talk already of starting to look seriously at arming some of the new, "Stealth boats" with rail-guns since the traditional cannons on our ships were becoming obsolete.
No idea if any of it was serious though, since we still have total sea supremacy, and most of our ships never see combat except through their CAP Fighters (Combat Air Patrol) or their long-range, and ER (extended range) Missiles.

When you get comfortable with supremacy, that's when you lose it. I'm glad we're trying to stay ahead.

so hwo long til sombody realixes that if they biuld this on the sid of a mountin they can fire crap into orbit without biiolding the giant rocket to get it there?

I'm interested in how they will handle recoil. I'm not saying they did not think about it, just wondering how.

Didn't you know? The new energy bill Congress passed and Bush signed strictly bans not only incandescent bulbs, but recoil as well.

Awesome!

Now if I only had one mounted on my house...

so hwo long til sombody realixes that if they biuld this on the sid of a mountin they can fire crap into orbit without biiolding the giant rocket to get it there?

This will occur moments after someone mounts it on the side of a mountain for the purpose of blasting crap out of orbit without missile systems.

"so hwo long til sombody realixes that if they biuld this on the sid of a mountin they can fire crap into orbit without biiolding the giant rocket to get it there?"

Actually, an orbital launcher has always been one of the objectives of railgun and scram cannon research. However, it may just take more energy to launch a reasonably-sized satellite with a railgun than the traditional way... that and the strong electric and magnetic fields produced during the launch would be likely to fry any of the more sensitive components on board.

Also lnh, sober up before posting. Just reading that sentence gave me a headache.

I thought it was the G-Forces that were the limiting factor for fuel-less launch vehicles. Although I suppose launching a 500 lb. payload into orbit would probably involve some electromagnetic shielding...

I mean, at launch, what kind of stresses are we talking about, here?

Well, if we do the math, its like

Mach 5 <> 0.5 second = shit loads. Or something like that :)