Could US Navy's Railgun Help Tap Moon's Resources?

i think (personal belief) that the high power storage and fast switching
is the most difficult part of a large massdriver .. especially making it
small, light and cheap

and that is something that railguns would teach ..

servus

markus

Am 06.06.2019 um 19:50 schrieb 'Combs, Mike' mikecombs@...
[spacesettlers]:
> So from what you say, sounds like David might be... maybe... halfway
> justified in drawing the connection he does.
>
> Thanks. This is all good to know, and still encouraging.
>
> Regards,
> Mike Combs
>
> From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com]
> Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2019 9:47 AM
> To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [spacesettlers] Could US Navy's Railgun Help Tap
> Moon's Resources?
>
> afaik the problem with rail guns is rail erosion from arcing and
> mechanical friction .. this limits the life time of the inner part of
> the rails to a few hundred shots (for the main gun of a ship this is NOT
> an unmanageable problem and something the navy knows how to handle -
> look up the gun tube life times for BB main guns)
>
> for a mass driver which is not intended as a weapon, but as
> infrastructure with ideally unlimited lifetime this IS a problem
>
> but the high power storage and fast switching that is needed for a
> railgun might also be applicable for a mass driver (its essentially a
> coil gun and related to a maglev)
>
> servus
>

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