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by oneoff786 1538 days ago
Ok. So dumb question. What complicates this beyond a conceptual belt fed heavy machine gun?
2 comments

> To deliver this fusion result, First Light used its large two-stage hyper-velocity gas gun to launch a projectile at a target, containing the fusion fuel. The projectile reached a speed of 6.5 km per second before impact. First Light’s highly sophisticated target focuses this impact, with the fuel accelerated to over 70 km per second as it implodes, an increase in velocity achieved through our proprietary advanced target design, making it the fastest moving object on earth at that point.

Conceptually, maybe nothing, but we aren't really talking about your average MG-42 here.

For one thing, it's a light-gas gun - you don't just reload the projectile, you have to refill the hydrogen after each shot.