Darren New wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>>>> or the dubious claim that it can fire projectiles at near lightspeed 
>>>
>>> That's what a railgun is for.
>>
>> No it's not. A railgun accelerates a projectile with something like a 
>> linear accelerator. You get a fast-moving slug but I don't think 
>> anyone's under the illusion that it could be relativistic.
> 
> I think it's more that it's the only technology that's likely to be able 
> to accelerate something to relativistic speeds in a reasonable "barrel 
> length."  Certainly an explosives-based lump-in-a-tube cannon won't.

Maybe, but only if it's a very small projectile, and probably only 
useful in a vacuum (see your friction-vapourisation-explosion discussion 
above).

According to a quick shufti on google, a particle with a rest mass of 
1mg would need to be given 4.5 MJ of kinetic energy to get it to 0.01c, 
and about 450 MJ for 0.1c. I guess that's feasible as a weapon...

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