The world’s first 3D portable homemade railgun has been created by a Reddit user under the name NSA_Listbot.

The man in the featured image is neither in the military nor a NASA engineer. Instead, he’s a civilian with some book smarts and a little bit of spare time on his hands. With that spare time, he now holds a fully functional weapon capable of firing graphite, aluminum, tungsten and even plasma, at speeds of more than 560 mph in his hands.(1)

A railgun is by no means a conventional gun. It doesn’t rely on chemical explosions to propel ammunition. Rather, a railgun is an electrically powered electromagnetic projectile launcher. It consists of three main parts: a power source, two parallel rails (one positively charged, the other negatively charged) and moving armature.(1)

How to works

Electrical current stems from the power supply, travels up the positive rail, jumps across the armature, and down the negative rail. A magnetic field then comes to life, which is directed vertically between the two rails. Finally, the Lorentz force (the force that is exerted by a magnetic field on a moving electric charge) acts on the projectile, aimed at the current flowing across the projector.(2)

Sources report that NSA_Listbot’s rail gun uses six 300J, 350V, 5500uF capacitors with a combined weight of 20lbs and can deliver >1050V and 1.8kJ of energy to a projectile. So far, NSA_Listbot has used the contraption to fire tungsten, aluminum, carbon and teflon/plasma, at speeds of 250m/s. In other words, NSA_Listbot’s built a plasma gun.(2)

All the 3D parts of the rail gun were printed in ABS plastic. An Emergency discharge SCR, power resistor and discharge button, rests on the front in order to discharge any remaining energy after the railgun is fired. The rails are meant to be replaced, since they are slightly damaged with each shot fired. (1,2)

NSA_Listbot’s debuted his railgun on Youtube in the following videos.

Navy scrambles to power railgun

To give an idea of just how powerful a railgun is: a U.S. Navy ship doesn’t generate enough power to fire one. It takes about 25 megwatts to fire a railgun. A 21st-century stealth battleship with electric engines is powered by a 78-megawatt array of turbine generators. In other words, blasting a railgun would exhaust at least one-third of a ship’s capacity. Many ships today don’t have more than 9 mega watts to spare.(3)

Nevertheless, the Navy has been wanting to use railguns for their ability to send non-explosive projectiles at seven times the speed of sound within a range of 100 miles. Furthermore, they are cheap, easy to transport and do not leave explosive weapons lying around at the end of a war.

The next batch of ships are with two 155mm Advanced Gun Systems, which are electrical but fire conventional rockets with 800kW of power. This is significantly higher than previous Navy ships but still not powerful enough to fire a railgun.(3)

“We have begun real studies – as opposed to just a bunch of guys sitting around – real engineering studies are being done to make sure it’s possible,” Vice Adm. William Hilarides told sources.(3)

Officials hope to test the railgun on USNS Millinocket next year. The first of three Zumwalt-class ships are expected to be delivered next year and are estimated to cost $22 billion in total.(3)

NSA_Listbot’s railgun is essentially a scaled down version that the Navy hopes to contrive. Nevertheless, it would be an understatement to say that NSA_Listbot’s homemade railgun is off the rails.

Read more about future weapons as they become a reality at AlternativeNews.com.

Sources include:

(1) Yahoo.com
(2) HackaDay.com
(3) MotherBoard.Vice.com