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Here is a question. if the projectile hit the target wouldn't it also move the target? i mean sure it would damage it and all but if you missed the core, or something then wouldn't it just make it harder to hit again? Also, the projectile is not under its own power. wouldn't that make it work under the same principle of the Ion engine? and therefor move the firing ship backwards?

Railguns' 'firing' operation is more like a rapid, controlled acceleration, so I don't believe it would affect your vessel's position.

And, Blackstar: I was just demonstrating the principle - the faster the object is moving, the more E it will produce. Even objects with tiny mass can do extreme damage if they're moving fast enough. And by the 2150's, I would imagine weapons like these would be fairly refined. I'm just saying what everybody else here seems to think: weapons like railguns, lasers and nukes would've been WAY more appropriate on Enterprise than freaking 'phase cannons'.

ChakatBlackstar wrote:We're a long way from marble sized ammo doing that kind of damage. They're still trying to build a railgun that doesn't damage itself everytime it fires. There's a sale pitch: "This gun is so powerful it destroys itself!"

I doubt it's possible to produce a damage-proof railgun, so we'd probably be better off in the long-term going with coilguns.

Now I know micro-meteroites do not travel at quite the same speed... or size... but wouldn't most ships already have some sort of "defense" against micro-meterorites and the like? Wouldn't it be justifiable to say that it would not be "that difficult in the ST universe" to upgrade those "defenses" to deflect/ricochet a railgun shot?

I believe diflector dishes work over a number of levels over a long distance. It projects a sort of shield hundreds of meters ahead diverting any matarial out of the way. Projectiles would be fired from closer range not allowing the diflector to work properly.

Teaos wrote:I believe diflector dishes work over a number of levels over a long distance. It projects a sort of shield hundreds of meters ahead diverting any matarial out of the way. Projectiles would be fired from closer range not allowing the diflector to work properly.

True, and like I said, the mass and speed that diflectors are designed for are minor compared to what would be fired from a rail gun, but the tech is still there. I think a rail gun would be an obsolete technology VERY shortly after it would go into starship use.

Side note, would the deflector push stuff out of the way in warp?

The ship would dodge big stuff but small stuff it would push out of the way.

Jim wrote:

Teaos wrote:I believe diflector dishes work over a number of levels over a long distance. It projects a sort of shield hundreds of meters ahead diverting any matarial out of the way. Projectiles would be fired from closer range not allowing the diflector to work properly.

True, and like I said, the mass and speed that diflectors are designed for are minor compared to what would be fired from a rail gun, but the tech is still there. I think a rail gun would be an obsolete technology VERY shortly after it would go into starship use.

Side note, would the deflector push stuff out of the way in warp?

That's why deflectors were built in the first place. When you're traveling at warp even a piece of dust could put a decent sized hole in your ship.

And I think the railgun/coilgun weapon would be effective for a realitivly long time. Although it would be interesting to watch as they develop laser weapons to replace railguns. The nav deflector only seems to face forward, since it was primarily designed for warp travel and we've never seen a ship fly in reverse at warp. I think as energy sheilds became more common, and as the Romulan War dragged on, the energy based weapons, with far more limitless ammo, became more popular.

That sounds just about exactly like what I would've liked to see. A shame that Enterprise's writers didn't have Star Trek fans in mind when designing the show.

Hell, I wouldn't have minded if they had just kept those plasma cannons from the pilot episode, or added more of them.

Captain Seafort wrote:I doubt it's possible to produce a damage-proof railgun, so we'd probably be better off in the long-term going with coilguns.

The USN already has plans to update their prototype to make it able to fire more than once without servicing. And you're right about coils; but since I was using a real-life example, I decided to stick with what was really available.

Although, IIRC, the US Army is working on a coil-gun type of indirect fire piece.

Railguns would have no significant recoil, as there is nothing to cause an opposite effect, the round is accellerated magnetically, not chemically, therefor causing no explosion. in which to cause backwards firing.. ect..

. A shame that Enterprise's writers didn't have Star Trek fans in mind when designing the show.

You mean they had something in mind when they made the show?

Rochey wrote:

. A shame that Enterprise's writers didn't have Star Trek fans in mind when designing the show.

You mean they had something in mind when they made the show?

Well rumours said Berman wanted to recreate Star Trek in his own image. This is the same guy who wanted the Dominion war arc to last only three or four episodes and created the episode "Threshold" so I shudder at the thought of what he would've done.

Anyway, wouldn't Railguns/coilguns have some sort of recoil? They're moving a mass and depending on the speed they're firing, there has to be some sort of recoil.

You mean they had something in mind when they made the show?

Touche, Rochey. I think all they 'envisioned' was more $$$.

ChakatBlackstar wrote:Anyway, wouldn't Railguns/coilguns have some sort of recoil? They're moving a mass and depending on the speed they're firing, there has to be some sort of recoil.

Not exactly. Your dedication to Newton's law is admirable, but the rail gun is not actually moving anything except an EM field. Although the tolerances are much smaller than we like to envision, imagine the slug suspended between the rails (or in the tube of coils) and being forced forward by successive powerings of electromagnets. There would be a small amount of air displacement, but that would nominal at most.