Mass Drivers As Weapons
Small to moderate size high-acceleration electromagnetic projectile launchers are currently undergoing active research by the military for use as ground-based or ship-based weapons (most often railguns but coilguns in some cases). On larger scale than weapons currently near deployment but sometimes suggested in long-range future projections, a sufficiently high velocity linear motor, a mass driver, could in principle be used as intercontinental artillery (or, if built on the Moon or in orbit, used to attack a location on Earth's surface). As the mass driver would be located further up the gravity well than the theoretical targets, it would enjoy a significant energy imbalance in terms of counter-attack.
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Famous quotes containing the word mass:
“At first, he savored only the material quality of the sounds secreted by the instruments. And it had already been a great pleasure when, beneath the tiny line of the violin, slender, resistant, dense and driving, he noticed the mass of the piano’s part seeking to arise in a liquid splashing, polymorphous, undivided, level and clashing like the purple commotion of wave charmed and flattened by the moonlight.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)