Talk:Strategic Defense Initiative

Archives Archive 1 - Archived January 14, 2007

Feel free to add new comments below. It may be helpful to consult the archives prior to asking a question as the answer may be archived.

Test Videos?

A video I've been looking for is a flight test video of a 'brilliant pebble' wherein a kinetic interceptor is put through a series of manuvers in a room over a catch net. A voice calls out each manuver, then the interceptor does it. The video runs from the start of the test through the interceptor running out of fuel and dropping into the net. Actual runtime of the interceptor would be much longer in space because during th test it had to constantly pulse whichever thruster(s) pointed down to hover.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 08:23, January 16, 2007 (UTC)

Questioning present day capabilities

Is SDI capable of causing wild fires, building fires, train track warp'g and zone hot spots that possibly create tornados and hurricanes?

I am curious to know what countries have SDI sattelite capabilities and the countries able to defeat same. I am aware China successfully killed a low orbit sattelitte in Jan07.

I am curious to know the time period an orbiting sattelite is capable of fire'g at a fixed point on the face of the earth before the window is closed.

Are there any sources capable of catching an event such as the firing of a ultraviolet focused laser? Greg0658 16:27, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I saw that movie. Was it Under Siege 2: Dark Territory? Maybe it was GoldenEye? What you're talking about is not part of SDI, it's privately owned, I think by Haliburton. --Dual Freq 01:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The People's Republic of China succeeded in blinding a low orbit satellite, but did not kill the satellite.

Rail Gun

Unfortunately the hyper velocity rail gun section includes much information that is inaccurate and almost all information that is unverifiable due to a complete lack of any other credible sources mentioning it on the various searches that I have tried. Some of it shows fundamental misunderstanding of even the differences between a rail gun and gauss guns and the sources of rail wear. I will rewrite it to the best of my understanding of rail gun systems but the flat fact is that without some source of information on the particular project it will necessarily be short or inaccurate. Some of the problems include the article talking about on and off switching of magnetic fields and how that was somehow responsible for the rail deterioration. In actuality the rail deterioration is caused by ohmic heating of contact surfaces between the projectile as current is passed through them causing vaporization of the metal and leading to pitting and the magnetic field switching is a problem that is inherent to gaussian rifles or gauss guns that have no rail or rail wear but do have magnetic field switching problems that make them inefficient (read inefficient to the point of impossibility) for such hypervelocity applications. Read or even scan the pages on gauss guns or rail guns and you will see the flaws of the current writings.

I would appreciate any input either from those with relevant credible sources or editing for those that have a better gift for English. Any technical changes from mine I would appreciate to be defended in the talk section or a source given for them. For the record my alias is Effilcdar and I work from a number of different computers and my email address is Matt.radcliffe at gmail (if addresses are against the rules then feel free to just delete it and others will just have to live without insulting me.)

Here I will leave a copy of the text that I copied off the pages edit site for those that might doubt my sincerity or how bad it originally was.

"""

The SDI rail gun investigation, called the Compact High Energy Capacitor Module Advanced Technology Experiment (CHECMATE), had been able to fire two projectiles per day during the initiative. This represented a significant improvement over previous efforts which were only able to achieve about one shot per month. Hypervelocity rail guns are, at least conceptually, an attractive alternative for a spacebased defense system. This is because of their envisioned ability to quickly shoot at many targets. Also, because only the projectile leaves the gun, the gun can carry many projectiles.

A hypervelocity rail gun works very much like a nuclear accelerator. A metal pellet (the projectile) is attracted down a guide (the rail) of magnetic fields and accelerated by the rapid on-off switching of the various fields. The speeds attained by these small projectiles are dazzling. In one experiment a small particle was accelerated to a velocity of more than 24 miles per second (at that speed the projectile could circle our earth at the equator in something less than 20 minutes).

One of the major technical challenges of the rail gun experiments was the rapid firing of the gun. The challenge had to do with the rails. In order to rapidly accelerate the pellet, the rail had to rapidly switch its magnetic fields on and off. This extremely fast switching requires a tremendous current of electricity (almost one-half million amperes) to pass through the rails every time the gun is fired. In some experiments the rails had to be replaced after each firing. Another challenge with the rail gun is the rapid acceleration of the projectile. At the speeds mentioned above, the acceleration stresses the pellet to pressures in excess of 100,000 times the normal force of gravity. In order to be effective, the bullet must be able to withstand the initial acceleration in order to get to the target. Further, if there ever were to be homing devices in larger rail gun projectiles, that projectile would need to be hardened to keep its shape, and the electronics inside it would need to be able to function after being stressed by the initial acceleration.

The purpose of the research into hypervelocity rail gun technology was to build an information base about rail guns so that SDI planners would know how to apply the technology to the proposed defense system.

In addition to being considered for destroying ballistic missile threats, rail guns were also being planned for service in space platform (sensor and battle station) defense. This potential role reflected defense planner expectations that the rail guns of the future would be capable of not only rapid fire, but also of multiple firings (on the order of tens to hundreds of shots).

"""

Further comments from effildar: I have edited the article and have changed the technical details but not any of the questionable historical details. Or even any of the more questionable technical specs. If anyone here feels that it is appropriate I would like to suggest a large pruning of doubtful historical facts. the changes I made were based on basic understanding of rail guns and a somewhat more advanced understanding of coil guns I did not remove or change anything that was not technically nonsensical. If any more information is needed then I would recommend Sam Barrow's power labs site or the Wikipedia articles on gauss guns or rail guns.

Finally if I broke any rules of Wikipedia all I can say is that I am sorry but I am someone who is changing something that was blatantly wrong and misinforming to the point that I suspect that it was malicious. I am not someone that generally even wants to edit here. I take NO I repeat NO responsibility for the facts that I didn't change. All I can say is that what I left I didn't know for a fact to be wrong. 71.112.30.41 07:17, 1 March 2007 (UTC)