because it apparently didn’t go up as high as it was supposed to, the test was ultimately declared unsuccessful.
Poor Chinese. They have yet to learn so much from Elon (hint: declare everything a success. NO. MATTER. WHAT.)
One of my favorite Star Trek quotes of all time: “If the invasion had been considered a defeat Gowron would’ve been assassinated by now. He simply declared victory, and went home.”
A new space race with railguns would be the fucking coolest thing ever
until they use the tech to drop bombs more effectively
Unless your upper half happened to be on the upper path of one of those things. Then it would probably be amazing for like a nanosecond. In the most macabre way I suppose. But just a nanosecond. After that when you fully realize what happened there probably wouldn’t be much you left to keep realizing anything past that.
It goes without saying that we should work out any safety issues before that
You can launch payloads into orbit with less pollution and for cheaper. You can build habitations with the material and bring humans up the traditional way.
Of course though, the powers that be are going to be more interested in killing each other.
…a weapon to surpass Metal Gear
I wonder how much more energy it took to accomplish that compared to just shooting a rocket. Last I had heard railguns weren’t really feasible because of the absurd amount of energy they would require even with perfect efficiency.
I’m no expert, but I could imagine rail-guns would be a huge advantage on nuclear powered vessels. For one the ammo doesn’t explode if hit by enemy fire, and I’m guessing the ammo would be super cheap. In theory you could shoot bars of iron.
They might also have a much smaller launch signature, meaning harder response to a first-strike launch. But I’m not a physicist or nuclear deterrence expert or anything.
When it’s not an experiment:
- Do we know where it is?
- Is it mobile?
This is the military we’re talking about.
They’ll turn a metal ring into a million dollar thing making sure it has 0 flaws on the surface that might cause 1 in a million shots to go off course.
They’re not feasible because of the erosion of the barrel with our current level of materials science.
That’s horrifying… but TBH it also sounds kinda sick
It might be a mistake to allow AI’s control of weapon systems.
