railgun but larger...

[gobuyone]

new here, have some ideas to share.

 

im thinking if we instead of shooting a solid projectile, is it possible to have a "pod" or some time of object that has it own power source, like a battery built on. and it creates its magnetic field, which would in turn launch faster and repel against the railgun thus causing it to go faster. is that even possible?

 

i also think the problem with the railguns projectile falling apart or disenergrating into thin air would be prevented by the "pods" new magnetic field.?

 

again.. im new. so what do you think... ??!

[Leader Bee]

You mean something a bit like one of these?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

 

Also from wikipedia:

 

[edit] Spacecraft-based mass drivers

A spacecraft could carry a mass driver as its primary engine. With a suitable source of electrical power (probably a nuclear reactor) the spaceship could then use the mass driver to accelerate pieces of matter of almost any sort, boosting itself in the opposite direction. At the smallest scale of reaction mass, this type of drive is called an ion drive.

 

No theoretical limit is known for the size, acceleration or muzzle energy of linear motors. However, at higher muzzle velocities, energetic efficiency is inevitably very poor. While linear motors can, with current technology, convert up to about 50% of the electrical energy into kinetic energy of the projectile, the energy of interest is the kinetic energy of the vehicle, and as the muzzle velocity increases, this is a smaller and smaller percentage of the generated power.[citation needed]

 

Since kinetic energy of the projectile is ½mv², the energy requirements vary with the square of the specific impulse, so in a design one must choose a tradeoff between energy consumption and consumption of reaction mass. In addition, since momentum of a particle of mass m has momentum mv- proportional to velocity, but energy is a square law, so the average thrust for a given energy is inversely proportional to the velocity of the particles. In other words, heavier projectile masses give lower specific impulse but proportionately higher thrust. (See propulsive efficiency for more details).[citation needed]

 

Since a mass driver could use any type of mass for reaction mass to move the spacecraft, this, or some variation, seems ideal for deep-space vehicles that scavenge reaction mass from found resources.

 

One possible drawback of the mass driver is that it has the potential to send solid reaction mass travelling at dangerously high relative speeds into useful orbits and traffic lanes. To overcome this problem, most schemes plan to throw finely-divided dust. Alternately, liquid oxygen could be used as reaction mass, which upon release would boil down to its molecular state. Propelling the reaction mass to solar escape velocity is another way to ensure that it will not remain a hazard.

 

Space is almost completely empty, so propellant sources are only to be found at asteroids, comets, moons and planets.

Edited June 24, 2010 by Leader Bee