The Great Rail-i-pult
Its excessive technology for the sake of other excessive technology...Its a train!
Its a catapult!
Its a railgun! ...Yes. Wait, what? No, really, it's a giant railgun catapult...with rails. Bigger isn't always better, but when you must insist on making a chonky ship that needs to fly and needs help getting off the ground, you're covered. There's nothing new about any of those technologies. Trains have been around for hundreds of years, as have catapults in some form or another. The railgun is the newest and it's still well over 100 years old. It's the combination of all 3 that is uncommon. Some roller coasters do it, on a much smaller scale. This takes that concept and cranks it up to 142, by granting aircraft the size and weight of seafaring ships the speed they need to leave the ground if they can't quite do it on their own. Many of Lightwings's ships, such as Icarus have been launched in such a way.
Utility
It is a similar concept to electromagnetic catapults used on aircraft carriers, only taken to an extreme's extreme. It isn't meant to launch planes off runway decks, but aircraft-carrier-sized vehicles into the sky.
You start on one end, and it charges, propelling the ship to some dizzying speed, and airborne. There's also a variant that is meant to catapult ships straight up, but that one is rarely used since it would turn any living thing on-board at launch into a very messy pancake.
You start on one end, and it charges, propelling the ship to some dizzying speed, and airborne. There's also a variant that is meant to catapult ships straight up, but that one is rarely used since it would turn any living thing on-board at launch into a very messy pancake.
Social Impact
The only impact railipults have had socially is that some environmentalist complain about the power consumption... but it's all renewable clean power so...
Access & Availability
The use of one of these is fairly uncommon. There are only 5 worldwide, and all are designated peace zones.
They aren't a secret in the slightest, but they are heavily guarded do to their strategic nature. They see both military and private use, and use by a few absurdly wealthy civilians as well.
Their use has to be timed due to the absurd amount of electricity it takes to power them.
Their use has to be timed due to the absurd amount of electricity it takes to power them.
Complexity
The most complex thing about these contraptions is how to power them without temporarily making a city go dark or blowing up electrical systems due to the high load.
Discovery
It wasn't so much a discovery as it was an "I wonder if we can..."
Of course, just because you can, doesn't mean you should... but 'can' became 'did'. Surprisingly, there were no horrendous accidents in testing or once these things saw consistent use.
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