3 ms·
Could the targeting system account for the sideways movement?
by chillwaves 7y ago
Could the targeting system account for the sideways movement?
- DuskStar 7y agoDo you mean in order to use this as an ASAT or ABM system? In that case, probably - though you'd still need some sort of terminal guidance to actually achieve a hit. If you mean "account for the sideways movement" as "give the satellite the horizontal component of the required orbital velocity" this doesn't work for a variety of reasons - #1 is that the railgun is 2000m/s and orbit is 7800m/s, and #2 is that things going 7800m/s (17450mph) at or near sea level tend to get very, very hot very, very quickly which is not particularly great for railgun projectiles and utterly disastrous for things like solar panels.