Navy's New Railgun Shoots at Mach 7, Can Hit Targets 100 Miles Away : 80beats
The article I linked above talks about the U.S. Navy's new successful railgun weapon test. It got me thinking about how feasible this technology would be in space to launch probes out past the inner planets, or even potentially out of the solar system. I thought it might be possible to have an orbital station powered by a combination of nuclear and solar energy. With less drag and gravity to slow down the probe, maybe they can get them going much faster. A drawback I see there though is that the probe would need to decelerate once it reached it's destination.
I admit I don't know the math of this, so that's kind of why I am posting it here.