So… Wouldn’t a railgun system be able to do the same thing with less energy consumption?
I think it would have to be crazy long up the side of a mountain or something to work. I always thought that would be cool to see. I’m just an ignorant layperson though. I know little of the actual science, but I have read a lot of science fiction in my life.
I don’t think it would need to be all that long. The Navy considered putting railguns on ships, they decided against it because they figured out pretty quickly that the munitions would have to be shot lower than the horizon so that they weren’t firing shots into space, if they missed the target.
I was wondering why they would care about firing shots into space, but then I realized that it’s probably not enough velocity to escape our orbit and would just add to the orbital debris issue.
If the velocity was such that the projectile could exit our orbit, it would probably be less risky.
There’s an interesting excerpt from one of the Expanse books about how all the rounds they fire from their space ships are probably going to travel through space for millions of years before they actually hit something.
