XULUX11
Member
So I've been building my ARC 920 lately and since I have had a little experience with REAL railguns, ( I built a very small railgun with a friend a couple years back ) I wondered, "could you actually build and fire a handheld railgun?" So I did a little research and came up with this.
So the Railgun as most people know it is indeed an extremely powerful weapon. Most railguns can fire up to 7 times the speed of sound. This incredible speed generates massive force as far as the projectile goes, but as Newton's third law states,"any action has an equal and opposite reaction." That means whatever force comes out of the railgun, will have equal and incredible recoil. Even a Mosin Nagant rifle has significant recoil, but or course its not enough to injure you. I'm sure you know where I'm going with this now. It you had a railgun that was handheld like the ARC 920 in Halo 4, if it was firing even anywhere near 7 times the speed of sound, it would not only knock you flat on your back, it could break your shoulder. So just firing a railgun like that handheld (unless your a Spartan or course) isn't at all practical because it could injure you so badly. Now here is that part where I found maybe it could be possible, in the future with better technology. All railguns need a rather large source of power. The first stage is pneumatic that accelerates the projectile into the actual rails, and then electricity is put through the rails of course accelerating the projectile even faster. So you need both compressed gas, and lots of electricity as a "fuel" for the railgun. Compressed gas you could easily fit inside of an ARC 920 size handheld railgun ( something like paintball c02 container maybe ). But the capacitors for something like that, just wouldn't be able to be fit inside of that size railgun. At least not is this day and age. In the future, maybe technology will have evolved enough to allow that kind of power to be stored in that small of an area, but even then the railgun wouldn't have as high muzzle velocity ( maybe more like 3 to 4 times the speed of sound ). And that is why maybe you would be able to fire it then without hurting yourself. But even then there are rifles that could outperform even that kind of a railgun easily with more reliable ammo, smaller building costs, and better availability. So let me know what you guys think about this. And check out the ARC 920 I'm building here, http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/36961-ARC-902-Railgun-WIP?p=613053
-Jones
So the Railgun as most people know it is indeed an extremely powerful weapon. Most railguns can fire up to 7 times the speed of sound. This incredible speed generates massive force as far as the projectile goes, but as Newton's third law states,"any action has an equal and opposite reaction." That means whatever force comes out of the railgun, will have equal and incredible recoil. Even a Mosin Nagant rifle has significant recoil, but or course its not enough to injure you. I'm sure you know where I'm going with this now. It you had a railgun that was handheld like the ARC 920 in Halo 4, if it was firing even anywhere near 7 times the speed of sound, it would not only knock you flat on your back, it could break your shoulder. So just firing a railgun like that handheld (unless your a Spartan or course) isn't at all practical because it could injure you so badly. Now here is that part where I found maybe it could be possible, in the future with better technology. All railguns need a rather large source of power. The first stage is pneumatic that accelerates the projectile into the actual rails, and then electricity is put through the rails of course accelerating the projectile even faster. So you need both compressed gas, and lots of electricity as a "fuel" for the railgun. Compressed gas you could easily fit inside of an ARC 920 size handheld railgun ( something like paintball c02 container maybe ). But the capacitors for something like that, just wouldn't be able to be fit inside of that size railgun. At least not is this day and age. In the future, maybe technology will have evolved enough to allow that kind of power to be stored in that small of an area, but even then the railgun wouldn't have as high muzzle velocity ( maybe more like 3 to 4 times the speed of sound ). And that is why maybe you would be able to fire it then without hurting yourself. But even then there are rifles that could outperform even that kind of a railgun easily with more reliable ammo, smaller building costs, and better availability. So let me know what you guys think about this. And check out the ARC 920 I'm building here, http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/36961-ARC-902-Railgun-WIP?p=613053
-Jones