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NASA will create railgun to launch the spacecraft.. / September 17, 2010 /

Engineers of the American Kennedy Space Center, proposed an original way to launch the spacecraft and the carrier into the upper atmosphere. As stated in the press release, NASA, the initial acceleration it runs the unit will be attached to an electromagnetic launcher, similar to the railgun, created for the U.S. Navy, a special slide with a gas-piston driven.

Similar systems already exist. For example, in some entertainment centers in the U.S. rides «roller coaster» is used to bring the trucks to move the electromagnetic field, but there dispersal truck carried up to 96 kilometers per hour. According to the plans Engineers Space Center, railgun will need to overclock the machine runs up to 960 kilometers per hour at an interval of 3.2 kilometers.

After the dissolution of the further acceleration of the machine it runs will give their own power plants, including the hypersonic ramjet engines. Apparatus itself before reaching the upper atmosphere would develop a speed of ten Mach numbers (around 11.5 thousand kilometers per hour).

Key technologies that will use NASA, has developed. In particular, in 2008 the U.S. Navy has shown a prototype long-range railgun. The tested sample was able to disperse the projectile to a speed of 2,520 meters per second. Currently, this figure increased to 3.5 thousand meters per second. In the future, the U.S. Navy plans to use the railgun, also known as rail-gun and Railgun on promising project destroyers DDG-1000 Zimwalt.

Railgun — gun uses electromagnetic force to disperse the electrically conductive projectile that is the first phase of launch is part of the circuit. Cannon got its name thanks to the two contact rails, between which the projectile moves in contact with them.

In addition, under development and testing of missiles with hypersonic jet Hyper-X and X-51. These devices will have to reach speeds of up to 25 Mach numbers. Tested in early 2010, prototypes have shown performance engineers build engines, although the tests were successful only partially.

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