Cena_mark - 2017-09-20
Why we don't have universal healthcare.
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OxygenThief - 2017-09-20 If we repeal the estate tax the money that trickles down will allow us to afford universal healthcare and space-based electromagnetic weapons.
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SolRo - 2017-09-21 yes, computers are exactly the same thing as big railguns.
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jfcaron_ca - 2017-09-21 Americans had pretty much the same access to cutting-edge computers as the Nazis did. "IBM and the Holocaust" is a wonderfully traumatic book to read.
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Sexy Duck Cop - 2017-09-22 You'll be eating those words when we have to declare war on God.
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Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2017-09-20
Btw these things dont really have any military applications. For example they can fire a projectile almost as fast with a hyper-velocity *normal* gun, and it doesnt have any of the weird drawbacks of this (like needing massive amounts of electricity)
I think may be an example of Capitalism creating the seeds of its own destruction.
For the military-industrial complex, all that matters is that money is transferred from taxpayers to the complex. What it is actually spent on, doesnt matter at all. So losing a pointless war in some random shithole, or building a giant useless mega-cannon, whatever.
One would imagine that this pseudo-random behaviour would weaken the US and thus the complex, hence the whole capitalism seeds destruction thing
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Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2017-09-20 Also if thats the case then it makes me happy. The US cant collapse fast enough imho.
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garcet71283 - 2017-09-20 Well, since many ships are now nuclear powered, electricity is generally something that there is plenty to spare. The intent behind these weapons is to offset the cost of million dollar missiles by providing a "conventional" weapon with similar range and accuracy.
The concept for these is to fire a projectile in a high arc and come down on the target hundreds of miles away. The supposed accuracy has been claimed at around 3 feet.
The navy has shifted roles in the past 20 years to a support function for ground troops. No matter how advanced land weapons get, you can't beat the floating platform for sheer amount of firepower. This weapon is actually designed to reduce the cost of those support operations, since missiles are currently used at the aforementioned million dollar costs.
Or it could be a colossal waste of money, but damn if it isn't cool.
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Monkey Napoleon - 2017-09-20 Big advantages of this are you don't have to carry any chemical propellant, and eventually (down the road) you don't even need explosives in the rounds. So, ammo safety.
The other thing you get with a rail gun is that the power of the weapon scales with upgrades to the power source. Traditional artillery has to be completely replaced to achieve any upgrades whatsoever. These are going to be initially mounted on 100% electric scout class vessels, which means they're going to need beefy power supplies anyway. These can be scaled up to a velocity where the effect of whatever warhead you load into the thing is VASTLY outclassed by the kinetic energy of a huge chunk of titanium. Who even knows what kind of staging systems they're cooking up for when these become adopted?
The popular view of our military is that it's funding is wasteful and kind of dumb. It's not true. Unnecessary, probably, but not dumb. They know what they're doing.
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Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2017-09-20 According to that related video..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7tn0T_wEk0
Theyre no longer marketing the railgun as artillery, and are now trying to sell it as missile defence, which lasers would probably be much better at.
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SolRo - 2017-09-20 I'm sure that in 20 years, after 10 redesigns, 5 pre-production upgrades, 15 delays, 5 after-release redesigns due to catastrophic failures or faults, and a satirical movie, the military will get the exactly weapon they want, will take because so much money was wasted and it would waste even more to fix it, or don't really need anymore.
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garcet71283 - 2017-09-21 Yes, but how else am I supposed to do 15 points of damage when rolling double 6's?!?!
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Nominal - 2017-09-21 The smartest thing about this so far has been them disabling the Youtube comments.
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animegurl1000 - 2017-09-21 My phone doesn't have a GPS. Its position is calculated by triangulating its signal with nearby cellular towers.
A majority of cell phones these days do location this way, actually. GPS radios are battery hogs.
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SolRo - 2017-09-21 Call me crazy, but I happen to think there may be more efficient ways to advance science for the general good besides hoping a military killing thing accidentally has unintended benefits for the civilian sector.
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jfcaron_ca - 2017-09-21 I'd be happy with slower technological progress if it meant a more equitable and less violent world. I mean we've got email, indoor plumbing, anaesthetics, and antibiotics. We've got it pretty good, I'm ok with slowing down from here on if it means the rest of the world can get these things.
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godot - 2017-09-22 The U.S. military does a lot of applied physics R&D. Without them, where would our physics majors get their fellowships?
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SolRo - 2017-09-23 'wont you love the massive killing machine because on its back grows some moss that cute frogs live in?!'
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M-DEEM - 2017-09-20
Lets see you take this one apart, Ian
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Gmork - 2017-09-20
SHOW THE FUCKING HIT
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blue vein steel - 2017-09-20 *footage of splash in open ocean off the coast of Virginia*
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Gmork - 2017-09-21 ghost stars ****
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memedumpster - 2017-09-22 Haha, my stars also go here.
If only Joerg had filmed this.
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