[BC] Re: KSDK

[Sherrod Munday]

On Tuesday 31 January 2006 20:39, Al Wolfe wrote:
> ? ? When I was in college we had an electrical cannon in the EE dept. that
> fired eight inch aluminum rings about fifty feet. Basically, it just
> discharged a capacitor bank through a coil, the aluminum ring being in
> close proximity to the coil. I guess the eddy current in the ring built up
> enough of a magnetic field to repulse the field in the coil and send it
> flying.

Essentially, this sounds like a rail gun. 

Taken to a much larger scale, such devices are capable of projecting small 
aluminum or heavier metal slugs at speeds capable of reaching thousands of 
miles per hour (in theory sufficient to place small objects into low earth 
orbit).

Ignore the G-forces on launch and the atmospheric frictional heating on the 
launched objects.  Also never mind the fact that they take megawatts of 
electrical power to do so... they are possible.