Why are mass drivers/gauss cannons not used as an alternative to rockets in spaceflight?

Question

Is it due to energy demand or acceleration damaging the cargo/humans or something else?

In: 6

Answer 1

You could technically use an AK47 shooting down as a rocket. The recoil exceeds the weight of the gun.

The problem is we want the rocket to weigh as little as possible, and the rocket to NOT destroy the payload, such as a squishy human.

For example, if you threw a nuclear bomb out the back (Orion drive), you could go pretty fast, but it might also blow up the pilot.

Rockets are pretty good for this. They’re basically only fancy tubes with fuel. Compare to an AK47, they skip out on the bullet and only use the gunpowder. Rockets ARE chemical guns without bullets, because they only want recoil and aren’t trying to shoot someone.

A gauss gun require fancy magnets and a powerful generator. This is too heavy even for Earth based artillery, much less spacecraft.