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The system design for a railgun powered by capacitor-based energy stores distributed along its length is presented. It is assumed that it is required to accelerate a mass of 10 kg to a velocity of 10 km/s. Parameters for the railgun and its energy stores are derived, and the performance of the system is computed with particular attention being paid to the efficiency with which store energy is converted to launch-package kinetic energy. It is shown that efficiencies of 90% can be expected from a properly designed system.>
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Marshall et al. (1991) studied this question.
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