Fantasy SF Blog

Home
RSS Feed

U.S. Navy Brings Railgun to Life

The U.S. Navy may have invented a railgun but gamers have been using railguns to destroy enemies for several years now. Wikipedia describes a railgun as type a gun that "converts electrical energy (rather than the more conventional chemical energy from an explosive propellant) into projectile kinetic energy." Wikipedia's entry also mentions that railguns were part of the plot in the 1996 film Eraser starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vanessa Williams. The Free-Lance Star points to railgun video game usage as early as the Quake II video game.

Railgun technology has been featured in popular games such as Quake II, in which players can choose weapons for combat. In a 2006 listing by Game trailers.com, a handheld railgun was ranked seventh on the list of the 10 favorite video-game weapons.

Mark Daniel, a self-described gamer from Fredericksburg, said the weaponry in video games can be almost as much of a draw as the characters or story line. He said it's "cool to see technology can be influenced by science fiction, video games and movies."

"Every time they have a new idea for a weapon in a video game you get a lot of hype about it," he said.

Indeed, a Free Lance-Star story on the railgun last year drew more than 300,000 hits online.

Even though it is not a novel idea the U.S. Navy's railgun is still very impressive and unlike the video game and movie railguns it is worth noting that the Navy's railgun is real. Gizmodo says it destroys everything it touches at 5,640 mph. Here's a video of the Navy's railgun in action.

Posted on 2008-02-02

blog comments powered by Disqus