There's no electricity Mother *

"Railguns?" wondered Another Kiwi. "Why would anyone want to shoot a rail?"

Obviously he didn't watching that episode of Mythbusters where they build a chicken cannon to simulate the effects on an aeroplane windscreen of flying into a seagull. And the largest of the rails or Rallidae is the Takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri): a lot larger than a seagull, weighing up to 4.2 kg. Any plane landing at New Zealand airports must undergo rigorous tests with railgun bombardment to ensure it can survive a Takahē strike.

The weaponised version became an important part of New Zealand's defense capability, after modifying it to fire live turbots and mounting it on a Fish Tank. Considerations of national security prevent me from saying more.

Anyway, when recent advances that allow us to fire Hugo awards through metal plates are combined with a 1999 review of railgun history,** the smart money is on a railgun featuring in every second Steampunk and Dieselpunk science-fiction novel for 2012.

I call your attention to Mr Benningfield's SIVA gun from 1844, which appears to have been the illegitimate offspring of a concert piano and an espresso machine. Mr Benningfield assures us that "There is not the least danger to spectators, nor even the appearance of danger to create fear in the most timid female. Of all the Ladies who have seen it in operation not one has been alarmed, but on the contrary, they have expressed their wonder and admiration at its power". THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID. Unfortunately the SIVA gun does not appear in any records after 1844 and we must conclude that it was HUSHED UP.

The idea was revived in WW2 on the German side by Joachim Hänsler, and on the English side by someone whose name has fallen into undeserved obscurity:

This rail gun thing (Technology, 17 July) reminded me of long ago in Cambridge, late 1939 or early 1940, when a chap took over my research room and built a small rail gun with rails a metre or so long, and firing pellets of maybe 50 grams. I was annoyed because the pellets kept taking chips off my nice panelled door.

He finally had a display for some top brass, which I attended, on a common near Cambridge, with a bigger model and a projectile of perhaps 200 grams and a van full of capacitors. We stood respectfully well back, and, on firing, the shot flew all of 7 metres, but the driving band-cum-armature flew about 100 metres. I never saw him or heard of him again.

"When details [of Hänsler's work] were discovered after the war it aroused much interest and a more detailed study was done, culminating with a 1947 report which concluded that it was theoretically feasible, but that each gun would need enough power to illuminate half of Chicago."

There's no lights on the Christmas tree Mother.

Since then railguns have been in and out of fashion. In the 1950s an Australian research group came up with a version where the conducting part of the payload -- which must maintain electrical contact with the busbars along the barrel, if the payload is to continue accelerating -- is a plasma rather than solid metal. That program stalled on account of the weapon's 5% efficiency. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for railguns during the heydays of the Space Defense Initiative in the 1980s; then at the end of the decade it all crashed and burned. But no bad idea ever went unrewarded, and now railguns are cool again.

Some people might cavil about pouring research funds into this particular hole-inna-ground but I figure that any technology that allows us to accelerate Hugo awards to hypersonic velocity is money well-spent. Next we shall learn how to fire Oscars, BWA-HA-HA! That will wipe the smug smiles off the faces of those whining naysaying skeptics with their nice panelled doors.

* Obvious title was too obvious.
** Part of a special issue on railgun minutiae.