Pretty straight forward question really. What are rail guns, how do they work and how likely is it that they will replace stage one rockets in the future? Why have they not done so already? Is it feasible? Or would the astronauts just get pasted due to the extreme acceleration?
In: Technology
Rail guns us a law of electricity to shoot.
But to go fast you need a lot of power, and just like your PC gets hot when using a lot of power so does the thing you’re shooting. This is a big limitation.
You need to go really fast to go into space, like really really fast. Wind resistance slows things down just like it slows down a baseball or a bullet.
Rockets overcome this by constantly pushing. Just like driving a car. You need to have the throttle down or you just keep slowing down.
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