How would a railgun work inside a tank

its a big tank

>>32339505
You just put it inside the tank.

>>32339505

Acquire tank
Acquire rail gun
Install rail gun in tank
Instaprofit

>>32339505
Wouldn't a railgun be better as artillery considering how many capacitors are needed to fire it?

It would run into the same issue as the idea of infantry railguns. The guns themselves could be made now, but no one (that we know of) is bothering to make them yet because there's no viable power source at those scales.

If someone really wanted to build a railgun tank *right now*, I guess the way to do it would be to try and jam a small nuclear reactor into something like a Ratte. It'd be a giant clunky piece of shit, but hey, railgun tank.

>>32339513
[spoiler]for you[/spoiler]

>>32339768
Yes.

>>32340269
Nuke tanks are an even worse idea than railgun tanks.

The energy density with current mature energy storage technology just isn't small enough for tanks right now. It's been studied for decades for this application, and it still has 20-50 years to go.

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>>32340595
>small
What kind of bitchmobile do you think we're talking about?

>>32339505
>engineering standpoint
Possible I mean yes the tank would be huge... but this would not be impossible
>practality standpoint
Too hard. Between the two magnets and the power plant it just wont cut it

It wouldn't

>>32340269
The problem with that is a nuclear reactor small enough to fit inside a tank wouldn't be able to generate enough power. Though you wouldn't need to refuel it for 50 years, all the components to extract energy, cool the reactor, and shield the crew would be too heavy.

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>>32340625
tanks are already that big

>>32340687
Not to mention if the tank went critical it would be a davey crocket on treads.

>>32340687
>The problem with that is a nuclear reactor small enough to fit inside a tank wouldn't be able to generate enough power. Though you wouldn't need to refuel it for 50 years, all the components to extract energy, cool the reactor, and shield the crew would be too heavy.
You wouldn't use a reactor, they output very little power by mass and size, their advantage is they need very little fuel and run for years.

The problem with railguns is they need pulses of several mega joules delivered instantly and the capacitors needed to do that are bulky. If there was a push to develop railguns they would probably come up with some new compact capacitor technology eventually.

>>32340741
That depends on how it is being cooled and would be more of just environmental contamination.

>>32340625

>Someone on /k/ likes dropzone commander

Fuck yeah brother.

>>32339768
Isn't that sort of the reason you wouldn't have a rail gun in a land vehicle with our current tech? If it was held to self propelled artillery, you kinda remove the advantage a rail gun has over a gauss rifle and if it was a battle tank, it'd be too big and unwieldy to work well

>>32341533
Could be something like having a vehicle dedicated to carrying the railgun itself and 2-3 others to carrying the equipment to fire it.

I think the question is flawed on the basis of expecting a tank to exist in the first place.
If you can make a railgun so small, you can also give it to other tanks and infantry (maybe not handheld but something ala MANPAD platforms).
So there whole protection schtick of a tank is completely gone as both infatry and tanks reduce any kind of armor into nothing as kinetic energy is simply something no amount of armor can help you against.

>>32340595
It's like you don't even thorium LSCR.

>>32339513
uuuu

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>>32340595
If you can't shrink the power source make the tank more bigger

>>32341967
>If you can't shrink the power source make the tank more bigger

The Abrams is already too big and too heavy.

>>32341739
>Could be something like having a vehicle dedicated to carrying the railgun itself and 2-3 others to carrying the equipment to fire it.
They already developed that concept. It works as air defense and artillery at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19OaIuJe5KY

Currently the only benefit of rail guns is a higher muzzle velocity
Putting one in tanks would be pointless, as chemical propellants have far higher energy densities than any sort of capacitors

I'm sure somewhere down the line railguns will be the norm as batteries & capacitors surpass chemical energy density
But that isn't today or in the next 20 years

>>32341967
It's disadvantageous to make tanks larger.

It wouldn't.

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>>32339505

Like this

>>32341967
Hydrogen fuel cells are becoming a thing
GM or toyota pitched a tacoma/colorad sized recon vehicle to the DoD powered by a couple of H-cells, quiet as an electric car, and the cells can apparently take a direct hit from a .50bmg
on the other side, a robotics company is developing tiny H-cells for cell phones and drones and other portable stuff

>>32345575
I'm betting my money on molten salt batteries instead anon.

>>32345644

>Molten salt batteries
>literally a stack of molten liquid salts that form a battery by virtue of their differing densities, like a beaker of oil, water, and corn syrup.
>On something that moves

jesus christ no.