From: nuny@bid.nes   
      
   On Thursday, April 14, 2016 at 2:21:04 PM UTC-7, MrAnderson wrote:   
   > Hm, railguns, now I'm thinking that there is no need for expensive missile   
   > bus, you could just shoot those munitions from Orbital railgun... Cheap   
   > option.   
      
     Still need a bus because small projectiles won't make it to the surface   
   intact, but yeah, a railgun can deorbit a bus just fine.   
      
     I assume you still intend this to be primarily an antipersonnel weapon? If   
   so, your mention of 10 x 30 cm slugs in another post is practically the   
   definition of overkill (and I'm not even sure that "small" a slug would make   
   it down intact). For that    
   matter so are my .45 ACP-sized slugs at Mach 30, though anything much smaller   
   would be less likely to be lethal even if a grain of sand is a guaranteed   
   through-and-through at that speed...   
      
   > Not sure why tangential trajectory would be good   
      
     The advantage is that one projectile can hit two or more targets.   
      
   > What's the point of giving enemy time for detecting plasma trails of our   
   > bombs?   
      
     I gave a link to Busemann's Biplane in another post- I should have made it   
   clear that looking at the illustration as a cross-section of a hollow cylinder   
   gives us a "bus" with no lift but aerodynamic drag and maybe no plasma trail.   
   Certainly it would    
   have a minuscule frontal radar cross-section, so it would be very hard to see   
   coming that way.   
      
      
     Mark L. Fergerson   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)