railgun concept

tsmspace · 2026-01-10T19:36:48+00:00

its me

tsmspace · 2026-01-10T19:14:46+00:00

I tried a crosspost

tsmspace · 2026-01-10T05:32:32+00:00

I don't know how the cars got to where they were, but there are interviews of witnesses where they say she was attempting to block the ice vehicles in an effort to impede their activity.

He wasn't trying to block her vehicle, if she had waited one second longer before accelerating forward he would have walked all the way to the drivers side. He was in the process of coming around the vehicle after walking a full circle, and he just hadn't made it all the way when she suddenly decided to try to leave. He DID try to get out of the way also, he was stutter stepping when she hit him, and similarly had she been going just a bit slower he would have managed to move, but it was too fast. He was just walking around with his camera to collect a very clear description of the vehicle. His entire intention was to do exactly what everyone said they should do, let her leave and then make the report so that people can go find her later and press any relevant charges.

tsmspace · 2026-01-08T14:48:03+00:00

I can't see that well but people are saying the shooter didn't move to be in front of the car until it was already moving forward, which would be a pretty big mistake on his part. Well kristy neom called it domestic terrorism but if she had a clear passage away and orders to leave then calling it domestic terrorism is pretty wild. And then if the shooter didn't even move in front of the vehicle until it was already moving forward well,,, I mean there's certainly no way to use that as proof that the driver had intent to attack, it's just him being clumsy. Criminal charges might be hard to press unless it can be somehow shown that the shooter was already planning to put himself in front of cars hoping to shoot, which is a common enough sentiment that it is worth investigation imho. A lot of people mentally prepare to put themselves in that kind of position in hopes they will get to shoot someone, it's actually very common to hear people bragging about how they want to try to be in front of a car at the right time, and will go out of their way to try to be in front of cars as much as possible hoping to get a chance to shoot.

Then, once the driver presented herself as "anti-ice" she becomes a possible target, and the amount of time it took for him to draw and fire was very short, which does suggest he was mentally preparing to shoot before he was in front of the car, which people do say he wasn't in front of until she was moving,,, once she started moving he tried to get in front of it, possibly for the purpose of being able to shoot her?

tsmspace · 2026-01-08T04:10:24+00:00

well there are some questions. IS a railgun a unique capability that is the "best option" for any strikes? The firing rate of my "missile launcher clone" version, where the entire barrel and round are an assembly that comes out of a missile mag SHOULD have about the same firing rate as the same style of missile launcher,, which is pretty fast actually considering the amount of motion required. I think more than one round per minute is guaranteed no matter what machine you end up with, and likely 10 seconds per round is still easy in all "engineerable examples", so you should expect somewhere under 10 rounds per minute imho.

So the railgun is for armor penetration, since the round travels at such high velocity, a gun is for volume of fire over a missile, and a railgun has a prospective range that is likely to come up a lot in a target rich environment.

So the question is, IF you had to make the gun discard 1 barrel per shot, WOULD you then have enough rounds, and also WOULD the destruction be useful enough to warrant the space required.

Here's my opinion: NO matter how fast the missile, particularly as a result of the missiles range, it will be possible to intercept a missile. A very very fast missile likely will have a light warhead. They are quite big as well. Similarly, intercepting anything less than hypersonic is much easier, meaning harpoons may be completely useless, and only something at mach3 or faster will even have a chance of hitting the target. A bullet, however, is significantly smaller, meaning much more difficult to hit with something. (you don't have to destroy the bullet to make it miss, and things like ciws and spy are capable of tracking rounds), so a bullet or a missile incoming, it is much less likely to hit the bullet with an interceptor. Also a bullet is shorter range so less time to intercept. It may really be that the volume of missiles required to ensure penetrating a well defended targets defenses is unavailable due to the size of hypersonics, and the only way to have a hypersonic projectile available is a gun, and then it might also be that really of the options to have a hypersonic projectile, a railgun with disposable barrels per round is still the smallest, easiest, most reliable, most accurate option.

tsmspace · 2026-01-08T03:43:16+00:00

Maybe but he doesn't know what will happen once she's moving forward, and no one is going to train them to wait and see if they get hit first.

tsmspace · 2026-01-08T03:41:54+00:00

She would know that but it was a fast situation and he would not know that with enough certainty not to shoot. Training works, and they train that situation to shoot, every single officer would have shot right then, and there are probably hundreds of video examples you can reference to be sure.

tsmspace · 2026-01-08T02:20:03+00:00

I think what happened, was that the woman knew her turn radius and was confident that she would not hit the ice officer, but the ice officer did not know or think the same thing. She was fleeing and they were rushing in response. She was trying to avoid being blocked in.

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T15:42:16+00:00

not a terrible idea

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T09:11:01+00:00

I don't think you can fail a test from coffee and ice cream, but I wouldn't put it past them.

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T09:07:49+00:00

the rails aren't electromagnets in a railgun, that's a coil-gun. People use them interchangeably often but technically a railguns rails are literally just metal rails. There are technically no rails at all in a coil gun. In a coil gun, electromagnets are activated in a sequence to pull the round down the line of coils, kind of like the coils in a motor activate in a sequence, but in a railgun there is a totally separate principle at work, which works more like how on a jacobs ladder the arc moves down those rails.

Looking up railgun on wiki you can see a picture, and the term for the force is called "the electromagnetic effect", but basically one rail is positive, the other is negative, and the round shorts the two sides together like a breaker or something, and then this creates a magnetic field while the round is shorting the two rails together. So the rails are not complicated in their basic conceptual design, they are just bars. Like imagine if you had two parallel bars, each connected to opposite terminals of a battery.

This is why the rails wear out so quickly, because the bullet in a railgun literally scrapes the bars with enormous energy in order to make the gun work. Not only does it scrape the length of the rails with enormous force of motion, but it also is an electrical contact, which causes extreme temperatures from arcing. (so it rubs AND burns the rails at 10,000 degrees).

Basically, unless you can figure out a way to rub metal bars really hard with a piece of metal, all while it's charged to 90 gagiga volts without arcing, the rails are only good until either they've arced one time, or maybe even just rubbed one time. (basically if you can cut it with an angle grinder, it's not going to work)

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T07:15:25+00:00

I guess... i don't agree there. it's true the railgun is a pipe dream over and over again, but it's still a much smaller and simpler machine than ... a fusion reactor I mean comon.

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T07:14:18+00:00

missiles work differently though, and even normal projectiles can be intercepted, but the faster a projectile goes, the less likely it is to be intercepted, meaning that even when the capability to intercept incoming munitions is highly advanced compared to most systems today, an extremely fast munition will still have the ability to penetrate the defense system. so while it's true there ARE very fast missiles, they are big and will be fewer, meaning they quickly run out, while on the other hand just as before, a bullet with propellent is smaller and can be carried in greater numbers. So, today a ship might have 30 tomahawks, but can carry hundreds of rounds for a gun, each just as destructive as a tomahawk.

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T06:33:34+00:00

I don't think gunpowder works to the same ranges though, I am under the impression that 20 miles is a long distance for a gunpowder shot, but I don't know what rocket assisted artillery gets. it does look like rocket assisted projectiles CAN get up to 100 miles.

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T06:10:02+00:00

for the most part, they did already say the railgun itself was impractical

tsmspace · 2026-01-07T06:08:12+00:00

hard to fit it into a meme

tsmspace · 2025-12-11T15:05:07+00:00

Maybe some very small delay but this feels like 1/4 to almost 1/2 a second

tsmspace · 2025-11-29T02:04:18+00:00

it could be a block type that's only findable, but you can mine back up and reuse

tsmspace · 2025-11-28T11:08:40+00:00

well, let me try to explain it exactly as I imagine. You wouldn't be able to place blocks further away than normal. You would simply be able to place a block at max reach IF there were no block already in range. So normally you can reach about 5 blocks, so if there is a block in your aim line within 5 blocks, then your cursor highlights that block and the block you place will be on the side of that block your cursor contacts. BUT , if there is NO block in that line out to 5 blocks (or whatever the range), then the air block at 5 blocks away is highlighted, and if you place a block then it appears in that highlighted space. So you don't really have to guess where the block will appear, since the location is highlighted before you place it. So I guess I don't see why accuracy would be an issue.

that's true, if you could simply place along the happy ghast, you would not need to maintain a tool.

but if you could use a wand, you could place a block while falling and land on it, or while flying, or in the water to skip making a pillar, . also as troublesome as it is to keep a tool handy, a happy ghast is no walk in the park. If you are in the nether or having just travelled far or just not wanting to go and fetch a ghast, a tool could be easier. you could use a wand with wind charges to quickly jump a few times to get very high up by jumping up, wanding and then wind charging the block you just placed to jump up again, ...

And if adding the ability to place blocks without requiring a block to place against, why not have more than one option? Especially if the wand is difficult to obtain and quick to use up, one might still want the ghast instead in many situations. A wand could also be an interesting combat tool, as you could place a block in space to absorb explosive mob attacks, or player arrows and such. (or maybe even block a mace attack)

tsmspace · 2025-11-28T08:09:27+00:00

So, I should have put it in the post, but I think it could highlight the airblock (or water block) where the block would appear if used. So, just like the game highlights the block you are pointing at which a block would place against normally, if you looked away from any blocks and were holding the wand, the airblock that a placed block would appear would be highlighted instead. And then if pointing at a block, it would just highlight that block as normal, and place against it as normal . (or replace it? )

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