Drakenred®™© wrote:Ironicaly many of the railgun designers latly have been looking at useing a gas injection system to basicaly"pre fire" the projectile so that it is already moveing forward by the time the round gets to the Rails. and aparently it works.
That would probably also help with acceleration of coilgun rounds. Using the coils as amplifiers rather than drivers.
With the rails I could see how it can and can't help.
Pro doesn't have to move the round from the resting possition.
Con in order to maintain proper alignment the round and propulsion unit would have to be on the rails this may cause the round to not get optimal propulsion from the rails. Also due to inconsistancy of chemical propellants it may misalign the round or mess with the already bad errosion problem.
With a coil
Pro doesn't have to move the round from rest
Con the timing issue even more difficult to deal with due to inconsistancies of chemical propellants.
Hey I just thought of other cons for each system in general.
Coil easily misaligned (if a single magnet of the set is misaligned it will likely destroy the weapon with the projectile, though this is easily countered if the elements are placed in a foam or some other type of firm non-conductive substance that will keep them from moving.)
Rail round easily misaligned (if the round looses contact with the rails it will probably cause an arc and likely create a weld, making the weapon useless but not in as dramatic a way as the coil's misalignment)
Coil dependance on circuitry makes it more succeptable to EM which is
strangely enough produced by the weapon.
Rail (think I've mentioned it before) dependance on conductive contact (which makes it impossible to fire in any material that is a better conductor to ground than the round or armiture, in seawater it is quite likely that the railguns will just cause an arc in the water damaging EVERYTHING in xyz radius and weld the round/armiture to the rails.)
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