One The One Hand:
You can now buy your own fully functional semi-automatic coilgun:
Nine hundred fitty bones for a first-gen sci-fi spacegun ain’t bad. From the video, it seems to work jsut fine:
On The Other Hand:
I have but one issue with it:
| Muzzle velocity | 45 m/s |
| Muzzle energy | 4.65J |
Meh. Get ten times the muzzle velocity and a hundred times the energy, then we’ll talk. The system is advertised as being 6.5% efficient, so presumably some improvements can be made there. 45 M/s is a mere 147 ft/sec, 4.65 J is a mere 3.43 foot-pounds. A .22 caliber air rifle generates about 26 foot-pounds of muzzle energy, while a .22 rifle generates around 130 foot-pounds.
For what it is, I like the looks of it. It would probably be better as a bullpup arrangement to build up barrel/accelerator length without greatly increasing rifle length.