When my children were young, I would threaten them with NPR if they got too rowdy in the car. They especially hated Car Talk.
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is.Later today I will post two cool new web sites you should know about, but I hafta go graduate from respiratory therapy. Let's see, shall I wear the crown or the purple graduation cap. Maybe both.
On a rainy day, what could be better?Over at a fairly technical discussion of type face criticism on MeFi, is a good example why I love MeFi. (That and the enlightening discussion of iconic font designer Eric Gill, who had an incestuous relationship with his sister, sexuallyy abused his children and had "an experimental connection to his dog.")
This is probably the whitest thing I've seen in years. Talk about your first-world problems.
(I actually found the article reasonably interesting, but then I fit the criteria given above)
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:04 PM on May 15 [1 favorite]
Rail guns can only accelerate things to around Mach 6, so a 5", 3 foot projectile is not going to have that kind of kinetic energy. This idea is actually a very old idea, which was stupid right from the beginning.
The idea was called "rods from God" and the premise was that you launch exceedingly heavy rods of tungsten which would then reach a target ballistically. They needed to be about 20 feet long and at least a foot in diameter for a number of reasons. They would heat up to tremendous temperatures, like the space shuttle did when the insulating tiles failed, which would cause a large amount of the mass to vaporize, but it would be at very high temperature as well as velocity, so combining the two would give you a huge amount of energy to hit the target with.
The rail gun rods would not be as effective as space launched projectiles because of the Mach 6 limit and the fact that they'd experience friction right from the get go, so they would not only heat up on the upward trajectory, but also slow down. Then they'd fall the the target pretty much like a conventional bomb would.
They were supposed to be "dropped" from orbit so that the target area would be hit without any warning and with no way to know where it came from. The idea was idiotic, since you can't "drop" something from orbit. You have to use rockets to slow the tangential speed to get it to leave orbit and start coming down. And even then, it doesn't "drop" down, but rather spirals down as a very hot and very easy to detect object.
It was finally determined that a few GBU-28's would work a lot better, especially considering that it wouldn't take too much to figure out who launched the attack, thus completely removing the original idea altogether.
You can't get the accuracy they are claiming AND the kinetic energy they are claiming at the same time. You can either make it out of a rod of metal, or you have to make it more like a rocket with a guidance system that would need to sur4vive the g forces and high temperatures.
It's an old military propaganda trick to make relatively minor threats seem much more deadly. Example: N Korea has modified SCUD missiles which might be able to reach the US. N. Korea has crude uranium 235 nuclear weapons. Therefore, N. Korea could attack us with a nuclear ballistic missile. The problem is that the nuclear weapon they have is far, far too heavy to be launched by a multiple stacked SCUD missile. Same is true for Iran.
The fact is that the surface navy is obsolete for any kind of defense and can only be used offensively against countries that can't fight back with decent missiles.
That's right. Our surface navy is a first strike weapon only. That's pretty depressing to think about. We've become the new British Empire and we're on the way down, unless we start making some drastic changes in our military strategies.
This stupid idea seems to pop up periodically as if it were a new and brilliant idea. It reminds me of the notion of using popcorn instead of foam "peanuts" as an ecologically friendly way of packing boxes of stuff. The idea sounds good until you think it through. You see it suggested every five years or so.
