Orbital Railgun — Fire from Orbit

⚡ Orbital Railgun

Sim date (UTC)—

Time scale—

Projectile

Status—

Mass—

Kinetic energy—

Time since launch—

Altitude—

Speed |v|—

Resulting orbit

a—

e—

i—

Perigee alt.—

Apogee alt.—

Period—

v∞ (excess)—

Gun platform

Altitude—

Speed—

Period—

Recoil Δv—

Flight (current shot)

Path length—

Impact point—

Impact time—

Predicted impact—

Target

Lat / Lon—

Range (straight line)—

Closest approach—

Drag a slider, or type an exact value in its box (↑/↓ arrow keys step).

Gun orbit

Altitude — 400 km

Inclination — 30°

Projectile

Mass — 100 kg

Muzzle velocity — 8.0 km/s

circular 7.67 · escape 10.85 km/s at this altitude

Launch angle

In-plane θ (vs velocity) — 0°

0° prograde · ±90° radial · 180° retrograde

Out-of-plane φ — 0°

±90° normal to the orbital plane

Target

Click any point on Earth → aim & fire at it. Shift+click → aim without firing. Aiming is line-of-sight at fire time — the projectile also carries the gun's orbital velocity, so exact hits take practice; the closest-approach readout shows how close you got.

Model options

Atmospheric drag Gun recoil Orbit prediction

Time

Time scale — 100×

Two-body propagation (RK4) · drag: exponential atmosphere, steel-sphere cross-section · recoil: momentum vs 5,000 kg platform · gun mass & drag ignored for the platform