You seem to have forgotten the actual problem scope. Nobody is claiming that railguns (or cannons) don't work. The issue is that to fire a projectile over the

You seem to have forgotten the actual problem scope. Nobody is claiming that railguns (or cannons) don't work. The issue is that to fire a projectile over the horizon the projectile's angle has to be increased. This poses one of two issues: - You fire the projectile SO fast you overshoot the target - You fire the projectile to hit a target just over the horizon but to do so it no longer contains enough energy to do measurable damage to the target. Try a diagram and see if that helps: http://i.imgur.com/jWihwxf.png http://i.imgur.com/jWihwxf.png