From: adam.w.krajewski@gmail.com   
      
   Welcome to discussion Els! (is that's what I can call you?;)   
   In the later part of discussion, we lowered the mass of projectile to 10 kg   
   with speed at 50 km/s. What do you think, would that be more feasible? As for   
   the Russian test, we don't know how exactly was the launcher built, what   
   caused the coil to blow up.    
   Maybe strong bracing would prevent that? As for energy storage, keep in mind   
   it's future (or more accurately, completely diferrent world as you may have   
   deduced from my other posts on the group), so some technological advance could   
   get capacitors to more    
   than this 20 kw/kg and 33%. Also, how effective could the flywheels be here?   
   Or how could room temperature superconductors affect capacitor and coil   
   technology?   
   For now, I am in a designing phase for the ship, and, the coilgun barrel is   
   around 25 meter long. This coupled with 50 km/s and 10 kg's seem to be a bit   
   too impossible huh? Anyway, it's still a design phase.    
   Okay, now more to Mr Fergerson.    
   I am drawing the ship, it has 600 m long and around 700 m with some fancy   
   looking antennae/sensor/whatever on front (I am probably gonna change this   
   part of project). Shape from the back to front: a 100 m diameter cylinder that   
   is like 170 m long, that's    
   the engine + fuel and big part of propellant; then a smaller and much shorter   
   cylinder, that's the reactor and next batch of propellant; then the "weapon   
   ring" octagonal 100 m wide section with 2 edges with coilgun turrets, 2 with   
   PBWs and 4 with lasers;    
   then we reach 300 meters of the ship, and then starts the "brick", 100 m tall   
   and 50 m wide, divided into hangars, cargo bays, crew quarters, and propellant   
   tanks. On frontal part the steer and portside walls, there are next two   
   coilgun turrets. Also in    
   these walls are missile silos with missile magazines and armor covers. On the   
   thrust axis, there is an option to mount a spinal coilgun, that could launch   
   quite big projectiles, like these 100 kg's ones. It's "caliber" is around 2   
   meters. When it will be    
   near completing, I will post it on Flickr, for now it's a rough draft in A4   
   sketchbook.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)