Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: How to make a RAIL GUN?
Message-ID: <1991Mar26.165529.28754@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1991 16:55:29 GMT
References: <X0PaZ4w163w@vector0> <27EE910A.10011@ics.uci.edu> <1991Mar26.094649.28010@colorado.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Mar26.094649.28010@colorado.edu> rainer@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rainer Malzbender) writes:
>The astute reader will no doubt recognize this as a mass driver, not
>a rail gun...

No, the astute reader will recognize it as a coilgun.  The mass driver,
Gerry O'Neill's invention, uses recirculating payload carriers ("buckets")
so that it does not need to throw away a magnetic element with each shot.
If it doesn't decelerate and re-use buckets, it is not a mass driver.
(Although the early O'Neill/SSI/MIT prototypes were called that, based on
their intent as proof-of-principle experiments for a true mass driver.)
-- 
"[Some people] positively *wish* to     | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
