[X] My Assistant

It was part of the master plan to move space travel to the private sector.

Ya, another thing that people are surprised to find out is not actually part of the government. NASA is private, just like the Federal Reserve.

NASA also isn't making railguns....

I knew about NASA, but not the federal reserve part though.

NASA also isn't making railguns....

Well yeah. Kind of hard to make shit when you don't exist anymore.

In theory, at least.

I was very sad when I heard about NASA getting buttfucked :<

The Ruskies and Chinamen were ecstatic, much to our dismay.

What? Is it 1965?

What? Is it 1965?

might as well be~

Aside from the whole "magnetic repulsion between the rails due to the laws of magnetic induction" problem, linear accelerators suffer from the fact that you need a ridiculously high impulse charge to get anywhere. Every research lab that does work with this class of device have enormous capacitor banks that have to charge for a long ass time before they can fire. And then there's all the liquid nitrogen to cool everything because of ohmic heat. The problem isn't as simple as "hurr durr make the rails really really really strong".

I don't know why I'm replying seriously to this thread, but whatever.

This.


Also, there is recoil involved in shooting any non-self-propelled object.

And the acceleration involved would kill all people in the missile.

And the acceleration involved would kill all people in the missile.

Are you telling that lightspeed travel is impossible?

Are you telling that lightspeed travel is impossible?

This entire thing is waaay the fuck out of my field of knowledge, but I'm gonna take a guess and say that he meant the initial acceleration of the discharge. A human body can only handle so many Gs before suffering horrible damage and then dying. We can increase speed gradually, but moving from a state of standing still to suddenly being propelled at light-speeds, I'd imagine we wouldn't survive.

You could perhaps try converting solid objects to photons.(Like that will ever happen)

Or perhaps create an inertia canceler.(But how?)

How do I break Newton's First Law?
(IMG:[emotibot.net] http://emotibot.net/pix/378.jpg)

More likely to find railguns being made by the navy or other military agencies. Supposedly as the most powerful weapon equipped on a long-range destroyer or cruiser.

Light-speed travel is way beyond the technology we currently have but given about 2000 more years it could be possible.

Try not to double post, bru.

but given about 2000 more years it could be possible

Not unless someone finds a way to generate infinite energy to move infinitely heavy objects.
Not that it really matters, since humanity will probably wipe itself out in the next couple hundred years.

Sub-faster than light travel doesn't make for good space operas anyways.

Ludicrous Speed!!!

Eh, back to NASA:

There's still ESA, and I can confirm that space isn't forgotten in germany... there are even shcolarships and special seminaries for aerospace engineering/future engineers.
But yes, these also offer jobs from a phlethora of private companies, so oh well.... At least it still exists.

And: Don't forget the Russians.
AFAIK, they really don't seem to care about the massive shitstorms that they reside in as long as they can shyoot ze metall into dye mOon.