Navy's Death Star Weapon one step closer to reality

Was combing through the news stories this morning, and saw this little nugget of awesomeness:

The Navy is a small step closer to developing a shipborne electromagnetic railgun that could one day strike targets hundreds of miles away in less than six minutes.

Researchers will soon test the first industrially made prototype of the railgun, which uses magnetic fields instead of chemicals to launch projectiles at speeds ranging from 4,500 mph to 5,600 mph, the Office of Naval Research announced Monday.

Program managers say the industrial prototype represents a step beyond the Navy laboratory-made model that set records in December 2010, when it fired using 33 megajoules of energy, or enough electricity to launch a projectile 100 nautical miles.

One megajoule of energy is equivalent to a 1-ton car traveling at 100 mph.

 

This video from Discovery Channel is fairly dated, but it gives you the basics.  I was uncomfortable with him saying it could be used against Infantry, since I hate the thought of being ventilated without even hearing it coming, but if the Planet X/Mayan folks are right, an asteroid will do the same thing to us in December before this thing comes on line anyway.